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OCR AS Physics (new spec)

Has anyone tried the locked specimen papers? Did one today as a mock and it made me re-evaluate life . Been getting solid marks on G481 and G482 but they're a complete joke compared to what I saw today.

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Just had my depth mock which was one of the locked specimen papers, my god it was nasty compared to anything I had done before. Usually I will score 80% average when the teacher uses past paper questions, but I will be lucky to get 50% in this.
Reply 3
Original post by Desert_fox15
Just had my depth mock which was one of the locked specimen papers, my god it was nasty compared to anything I had done before. Usually I will score 80% average when the teacher uses past paper questions, but I will be lucky to get 50% in this.


Exactly. That depth paper was mad. I just don't see how it's possible to revise for a lot of the questions that came up.
Original post by AAls
Exactly. That depth paper was mad. I just don't see how it's possible to revise for a lot of the questions that came up.


What really ticked me off was that large sections of the spec were not even touched, very few electricity questions, a strange emphasis on unit 1 and 2 and it doesn't feel like physics at all.
Reply 5
Original post by Desert_fox15
What really ticked me off was that large sections of the spec were not even touched, very few electricity questions, a strange emphasis on unit 1 and 2 and it doesn't feel like physics at all.


Yeah the style of questioning in general was weird. Had to really think before I was confident on attempting a question. As the name suggests, the depth paper will be full of long questions on a few topics so you're pretty much revising the whole textbook when very little of it would come up. I enjoy physics in general and was definitely going to do it next year but OCR f**ked up.
(edited 7 years ago)
Well the grade boundaries will be far lower than usual that's for sure and we are going to have to get used to the questions fast as there's very little time left, I just don't see myself getting an A if the actual exam is like this though ffs
Reply 7
Original post by Desert_fox15
Well the grade boundaries will be far lower than usual that's for sure and we are going to have to get used to the questions fast as there's very little time left, I just don't see myself getting an A if the actual exam is like this though ffs


What other a levels are you doing btw?
Maths, further maths, economics and physics, and I'm finding physics the hardest lol
Reply 9
Original post by Desert_fox15
Maths, further maths, economics and physics, and I'm finding physics the hardest lol


Doing the same but chemistry instead of econ. What are you doing to prepare for physics now? I pretty much brushed it aside after my mocks :s-smilie:.
I'm stuck at a roadblock as there's so few resources for this year's spec, I'm going to have to focus less on theory and more on application but apart from that I don't know what to do, btw do you go to school in Greater London, I have a suspicion you may go to my school with the number of people who have taken that combo at my school.
(edited 7 years ago)
I did the depth and breadth papers. Terrible. I got an E overall -- Around 47%. I don't know how to revise for physics anymore? What are you guys doing to revise????
Original post by Starmock99
I did the depth and breadth papers. Terrible. I got an E overall -- Around 47%. I don't know how to revise for physics anymore? What are you guys doing to revise????


Try Cambridge international physics papers and don't rely on the textbook, it helps very little, and there will be an expected shift downwards in grade boundaries of around 20% so you more likely got a c if you got that in the real thing.
I'm doing ocr A but the Cambridge international papers are very rigorous and there's lots of them, I don't have access to the breadth and the depth although I have done them and got my result back for my breadth which was pretty bad.
Original post by Desert_fox15
I'm doing ocr A but the Cambridge international papers are very rigorous and there's lots of them, I don't have access to the breadth and the depth although I have done them and got my result back for my breadth which was pretty bad.


What did you get lol
Reply 15
seems to be a lot of focus on the practicals ... especially to with uncertainty - cover that and with basic theory i feel like it should be relatively straight forward.
Original post by Starmock99
What did you get lol


56% in the breadth the highest in my year being 70%, and my school is quite respectable with results in maths and physics so I don't think it's looking good anywhere in the country.
Original post by jackthb
seems to be a lot of focus on the practicals ... especially to with uncertainty - cover that and with basic theory i feel like it should be relatively straight forward.


You need to know your stuff in the depth though, some questions can be extremely complicated and with very little time to do the paper compared to what we would like to reasonably have it is very easy to make mistakes.
Reply 18
Original post by Desert_fox15
You need to know your stuff in the depth though, some questions can be extremely complicated and with very little time to do the paper compared to what we would like to reasonably have it is very easy to make mistakes.


Most of my teachers have claimed that specimens are comparably harder than what the actual papers will be - mostly just to impress the government. Allegedly a bloke from OCR who has seen the real paper said it would be easier than a paper that I did that I would guess is just about as difficult as the current breadth and depth specimens.
Original post by jackthb
Most of my teachers have claimed that specimens are comparably harder than what the actual papers will be - mostly just to impress the government. Allegedly a bloke from OCR who has seen the real paper said it would be easier than a paper that I did that I would guess is just about as difficult as the current breadth and depth specimens.


If you have the rest of your subjects sorted out though I would not sit back in any shape or form, being over prepared is better than being under prepared, what other subjects are you guys doing.

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