[lp386]

(Original post by Ray_Han)
Thanks, I know I can write a decent essay or four in the time... if the right questions come up. There's just way too much material to cover, even if I do skip out most of IR .
Hehe, I was secretly counting on that, but I'm not sure how true it is .

Personally I'd advocate skipping all of IR and just focusing on the other two - then you'll still have six questions left to choose from. It's the people who just do Victorian and then interwar unemployment that I get worried about. One nasty question (or missing question) and you're screwed.

[alex_hk90]

(Original post by Ray_Han)
Thanks, I know I can write a decent essay or four in the time... if the right questions come up. There's just way too much material to cover, even if I do skip out most of IR .
Hehe, I was secretly counting on that, but I'm not sure how true it is .

Just don't do what I did in first year and revise 11 IR topics only for 1.5 to come up.

[Ray_Han]

(Original post by lp386)
Personally I'd advocate skipping all of IR and just focusing on the other two - then you'll still have six questions left to choose from. It's the people who just do Victorian and then interwar unemployment that I get worried about. One nasty question (or missing question) and you're screwed.

(Original post by alex_hk90)
Just don't do what I did in first year and revise 11 IR topics only for 1.5 to come up.

Thanks, I think it went well in the end. Got some nice questions on whether Victorian Britain failed, financial institutions in Victorian Britain, unemployment in the inter-war period, and a tricky one on the General tariff, topics that I had revised.
I hope politics will be nice tomorrow, though I suspect it wont with less question choice this year.

[Hashshashin]

(Original post by lp386)
Personally I'd advocate skipping all of IR and just focusing on the other two - then you'll still have six questions left to choose from. It's the people who just do Victorian and then interwar unemployment that I get worried about. One nasty question (or missing question) and you're screwed.

Doing that, reading nothing but the lecture notes and Solomou's book, and not writing a single supervision essay all year got me 61. The history paper isn't nearly as difficult as a lot of people seem to convince themselves it is. The amount of work they expect you to put in throughout the year (judging by reading lists) far exceeds what's needed to get a 2.1.

[lp386]

(Original post by Hashshashin)
Doing that, reading nothing but the lecture notes and Solomou's book, and not writing a single supervision essay all year got me 61. The history paper isn't nearly as difficult as a lot of people seem to convince themselves it is. The amount of work they expect you to put in throughout the year (judging by reading lists) far exceeds what's needed to get a 2.1.

I can't say I'd necessarily endorse that strategy - especially if you're from the more mathsy end I'd definitely advocate doing the supervision essays, working on essay plans, and at least learning some references - this left me with a 68.
But whatever works for you...

(Original post by Ray_Han)
Thanks, I think it went well in the end. Got some nice questions on whether Victorian Britain failed, financial institutions in Victorian Britain, unemployment in the inter-war period, and a tricky one on the General tariff, topics that I had revised.
I hope politics will be nice tomorrow, though I suspect it wont with less question choice this year.

Yes, it's tricky with only eight questions - you have the choice between either learning all three so you have latitude or essentially answering whatever comes up in your two chosen topics. Don't envy you that one.

[Ray_Han]

(Original post by lp386)
I can't say I'd necessarily endorse that strategy - especially if you're from the more mathsy end I'd definitely advocate doing the supervision essays, working on essay plans, and at least learning some references - this left me with a 68.
But whatever works for you...



Yes, it's tricky with only eight questions - you have the choice between either learning all three so you have latitude or essentially answering whatever comes up in your two chosen topics. Don't envy you that one.

With economic history I think it's worth learning the main arguments for a good range of essays and drafting essay plans, though I think there is the scope to do far more than is needed. If you read everything on each reading list and do each essay you will probably know too much for what is only a 3 hour exam. Even just going over a decent amount of topics there is so much cover that you can't learn every minor statistic and put a name to every argument. Well I suppose you could... it just seems like a lot of extra effort for diminishing returns.

Luckily I could rely on NK for the standard 3 governing Britain questions (although this is down from 4 last year), but the fourth question I picked on HDI was kind of awkward. I don't like it as a measure, which is good as the question asked me to criticise it, but there's not all that much you can say considering I could have got a question covering the measurement of development in general.

[lp386]

(Original post by Ray_Han)
With economic history I think it's worth learning the main arguments for a good range of essays and drafting essay plans, though I think there is the scope to do far more than is needed. If you read everything on each reading list and do each essay you will probably know too much for what is only a 3 hour exam. Even just going over a decent amount of topics there is so much cover that you can't learn every minor statistic and put a name to every argument. Well I suppose you could... it just seems like a lot of extra effort for diminishing returns.

Luckily I could rely on NK for the standard 3 governing Britain questions (although this is down from 4 last year), but the fourth question I picked on HDI was kind of awkward. I don't like it as a measure, which is good as the question asked me to criticise it, but there's not all that much you can say considering I could have got a question covering the measurement of development in general.

Curses. I've revised HDI for four sets of exams out of the last five (GCSE and AS Level Geography, first and second year Development) and it's never come up once... If only that had come up last year! Yeah, that's an easy question so long as you can understand the material and realise that it's essentially arbitrary. I ended up doing two NK questions and two Development last year as it was.

Congratulations on finishing and hope the maths paper went well!

[Ray_Han]

(Original post by lp386)
Curses. I've revised HDI for four sets of exams out of the last five (GCSE and AS Level Geography, first and second year Development) and it's never come up once... If only that had come up last year! Yeah, that's an easy question so long as you can understand the material and realise that it's essentially arbitrary. I ended up doing two NK questions and two Development last year as it was.

Congratulations on finishing and hope the maths paper went well!

Thanks, it's awesome to have (finally) finished
QM was OK I guess, maths was good, stats was tricky, but I'm going to try and forget about it till results.