Nuffield Synoptic Paper 26th June

Anyone else doing it? I don't find it too bad but I don't really understand how it can be a Synoptic paper when all that comes up is topics 16-20. Also 2 hours is quite a lot of time and it enables you to look loads of stuff up in your text book.

Reply 1

3.14159265

it is quite hard actually, the markscheme is very rigid. it is synoptic cos you need to use knowledge from topics 1-15 for some questions.

Reply 2

Kentish Man

3.14159265

it is quite hard actually, the markscheme is very rigid. it is synoptic cos you need to use knowledge from topics 1-15 for some questions.

Oh ok. Have you done it or are you currently doing it?
Yeh the markscheme is rigid but the A-grade boundary is usually pretty low (about 42/60) compared to some of the other papers.
What do you mean 'use knowledge' from Topics 1-15? It seems to be only the organic pre topic 16 stuff that comes up? I could be wrong though.

Reply 3

3.14159265

Kentish Man

yeh im doin A2, i scraped an A for AS and got a really crap coursework mark for A2 meaning i gota do really good in the unit 5 exam.

in some papers they ask questions which involve stuff about intermolecular forces and bonding. its stuff which you'd easily remember from AS. but u dont have to remember any specific reactions apart from the general organic alcohols stuff.

ive got to do all of A2 this year, finding it quite difficult. the inorganic stuff in 19 is particularly difficult.

Reply 4

Kentish Man

3.14159265

Oh right. Did you not do Unit 4 in January then? Are you doing to Biochemistry for Unit 5 then?

I think the Synoptic is quite hard but there's really not that much on it and 2 hours is quite a long time. The same things seem to come up all the time. Maybe my confidence is misplaced.

Yeh topic 19 is really hard. I've got lots of postits in my text book about Topic 19. I can never find the right electrodes.

Reply 5

3.14159265

im doing food science which is ok.
yeh its tricky getting used to the electrodes stuff but its gets ok after a while. i seem to find the complex ion stuff a lot harder.

Reply 6

*Emily*

topic 19's not that bad, i think the hard bit about it is when they dont make it clear what they want you to do, and when you have the anticlockwise rule with two reactions and a catalyst, and then hav to calculate the Ecell of the whole thing..!!!

but its synoptic coz they tie all the topics together really and include stuff about entropy, alkenes etc!

Reply 7

Kentish Man

Is it your last exam? What do you guys need for it to get the grades you want overall? Are you doing Biochemistry Emily?

Reply 8

GarageMc

This is a basta'd of an exam.

Reply 9

smessy

i'm doing biochemistry...it seems ok, but i also do biology, so when i write biology answers which are techincally correct it's marked wrong in the markscheme!! synoptic seems hard, but could be so much worse!! a lot of the same things come up in each paper, which helps!

Reply 10

*Emily*

Kentish Man

Is it your last exam? What do you guys need for it to get the grades you want overall? Are you doing Biochemistry Emily?

no i've got 3 french exams the next day!! :eek:

i dont know exactly what i need to get, i got 266 for AS so have a slight cushion! i'm doing food science, i wish we were doing the biochemistry tho, as i do biology aswell! and foodsci is so incredibly boring :rolleyes:

Reply 11

Robob

Damn it, Im okay with the synoptic, but I was ill/away for the whole of the complex ion and electrode stuff so dont really know much about it, tend to make it up as I go along :p: