Do you think the A level reforms are unfair?

I don't prefer them since they took out ums. Apparently 20 marks above the A grade boundary is still not good enough for an A* prediction.

It's better to get realistic predictions instead of eg. A*A*A* & applying to courses with v high requirements and then in the real thing only achieving ABB and not getting into uni at all.

You've actually got it better than him retard cos next year he will have to sit more exams than you

I think the AS is slightly better preparation as the question style especially in biology has drastically changed and there are a lot more experiment questions than there were before. But you do raise a good point, it was quite unfair of the school, they could just stick to a linear system?

What! That's actually crazy! How much do you need?

But you should be practicing Biology questions all the time. If the past questions have a different style, then re-word them or get the teacher to.

Ikr. Tbh I was 19 marks over and my school made the cut off at 22.

They are, and they aren't. It depends on how you look at it.

I strongly dislike how I will be competing with applicants who only did internal mocks, and may look better on paper than I do, but at the same time I have the advantage of having practised and will know how to maximise my performance in this A2 year. I feel confident about my English Literature texts as I got an A grade in my AS exams, for instance, and I can rely on that A grade standard as it was externally assessed. On the other hand, I got 100% in Paper One History and had a bad day for Paper 2, so I came out with a B despite my work being the best in my year group. I have to rely on my references and other aspects of my application to prove to my chosen Universities that I am good enough for their courses. I have mixed feelings about the reforms.

Oh wow, interesting perspective. What was so bad about your day?

A few things. My dog was ill (slightly pathetic, but hey, pets are an important part of family life) and I have a chronic condition. It flared up around the time of this particular exam. Having gotten 100% in one paper, 15/40 is an outlier. Under the module system, I feel as if it would be easy to see it not being a true reflection of my performance. Now, I feel as if I'll be weaker on paper than I wanted to be, especially as I want to apply to study History.

Have you made your teachers aware of this and the exam-board?

I did practice biology questions all the time. They've just made the questions more application-based and so you can't really predict what will come up

Not the exam board, but my teachers are aware and I'm making sure that it's included in my reference.

Of course you can't predict on a new specification. Did you do the right sort of practice questions, given the changed format?

I did literally every past paper question in existence and the end of topic questions in the OCR a book. I think maybe I should have used that book more rigidly than that stupid pearson OCR a book which I was given because that book is awful and I think it contributed to me missing the A grade by 3 marks.