tips for 3A*

yeah I think D1 is hell in exam form tbh. im not sure if ill now drop chemistry or further maths. good luck with 4A2s and I hope you bag all 4 stars

Thanks i think you should drop fm cuz of the C grade but it depends on what course you're going to do.

I am not sure you need to do this. Year 13 was probably one of my most social years lol. Put in lots of work at home, but you don't have to work flat out, you can be checking facebook or whatever as you work. In general, practice questions from textbooks and past papers are the way forward, but you probably know this. Focus on understanding the material. Become familiar with how marks are allocated. Check the specifics of the syllabus. Time yourself and mark yourself on papers. Especially in Maths, check your working as you go along, rather than leaving all checking to the end when the questions aren't fresh in your mind.

So just to make sure. It is possible to go from ABC to A*A*A*? Obviously I the hard work is put in.

N

Put it this way a level biology textbooks will be around 700 pages and cgp revision guides will be around 200/300 pages, so there will be a lot of content missed in the cgp books

Idk, I mean the only thing I have ever used for revision for GCSE and AS was the CGP Guides (I literally copied them to revision cards and learnt by heart and past papers) and got 5 A's at AS; are they not detailed enough then to get A* at A2? What else should I buy?

The textbooks. CGP guides are ****.

What textbooks are you referring to? Sorry if this is a stupid question, I've only been using (and heard of) CGP guides for OCR Maths, new spec AQA Physics, and new spec AQA Chemistry.

Quality over Quantity
I would say focus on good quality revision that's consistent rather than trying to blast 4hrs straight over 1 or 2 out of 7 days. I did that at GCSE. Unless you have an eidetic memory, it won't work.

You will remember things far better if you read over the areas you revised yesterday or the day before for e.g 15 mins. Do short but consistent periods.

I did 25 minute revision sessions each time using what's known as the 'Pomodoro technique'. You do 25 minutes revision, 5 minute break then another 25 minutes and then read over what you have revised. Then take a break and repeat. Worked really well for me. Try it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Breaks

Take regular breaks to walk about, exercise, socialise etc. Breaks will keep your head fresh and help it to retain information better. I got A*AA and I found time to hang out with friends and exercise. I read books and played chess in some of my free periods. Keep your head clear.

Ask questions

Big one: Use your teachers well. Do not be afraid to ask questions, that's what they're there for. You don't have to ask in the middle of class. I went to my teachers at lunchtime and after school to get help on certain questions/areas of the course.

You have to be honest with yourself on what your weaknesses are or it'll be much harder to get the marks in the exam. Everyone has questions but not everyone asks them! This proved useful for Bio and Chem for me.

Following on, if you're good at something then put it on the back-burner and focus on your weaker areas. Keep the good areas ticking over (i.e 15mins each day doing questions, reading over) and then dedicate the core revision to areas where you are weaker.

Past-Papers

I did PPQs from Start to finish and then started doing full papers closer to the exams. Do as many questions as you can.

Examiner's reports are a free gift from god, use them and find out what areas people consistently make mistakes on. http://pastpapers.org/, This site provides legacy papers for lots of exam boards. You'll want all that you can find.

Plan

Make a plan. This helped me a lot as well. Even if you don't follow it religiously, at least you'll have a good idea in front of you on what areas you should be focusing on and not neglecting.


Revising 2/3 hrs everyday starting immediately will do wonders for you later on.

Thank you. However, I'm only doing 3 A2 because I think Cambridge and imperial are out of my sight because my C at AS. So I think i'll apply for bath Birmingham etc so 4A2's would be a bit unnecessary

Your grades are great well done! Like everyone said work hard start revising early and yeah why not u can get them A*'s easily!
I just finished my As aswell got
A maths
A fm(with C in d1 60ums🙈)
B physics
B chemistry
Not happy with my B grades , but i also want to try get 4 A*'s im planning not to drop anything aswell. Btw you think i should retake d1 as it looks weird , even though i could still get an A* hopefully keeping it like that?

(..)