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Need to get it right this time!

hi, i didn't so well at AS hence me retaking a lot of the units alongside my A2s. The problem is that the immense work that will build up from retaking seems like too much. i plan to do every paper from 2001-2013 Jan and Jun before May 2015 which is when exams start.

I am retaking:
-C1
-C2(?)
-S1
-BIOLOGY UNIT 1
-BIOLOGY UNIT 2
-BIOLOGY UNIT 3 (EMPA)
-CHEMISTRY UNIT 1
-CHEMISTRY UNIT 2
-PHYSICS UNIT 2

Alongside taking:

C3
C4
M1
BIOLOGY UNIT 4
BIOLOGY UNIT 5
BIOLOGY UNIT 6 (EMPA)
CHEMISTRY UNIT 4
CHEMISTRY UNIT 5
CHEMISTRY UNIT 6 (EMPA)

Now, if i were to do all of the papers from 2001 to 2013 then i would have about 26 papers to do on average per unit excluding empas.

so
Maths : 156 Papers
Chem : 96 Papers
Bio: 96 Papers
Phys: 24 Papers


Considering that i need to spend time understanding the content (or reviewing for AS), How should i approach it months by month starting from September?

Please Help :frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown:
(edited 9 years ago)

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Original post by rakib567
hi, i didn't so well at AS hence me retaking a lot of the units alongside my A2s. The problem is that the immense work that will build up from retaking seems like too much. i plan to do every paper from 2001-2013 Jan and Jun before May 2015 which is when exams start.

I am retaking:
-C1
-C2(?)
-S1
-BIOLOGY UNIT 1
-BIOLOGY UNIT 2
-BIOLOGY UNIT 3 (EMPA)
-CHEMISTRY UNIT 1
-CHEMISTRY UNIT 2
-PHYSICS UNIT 2

Alongside taking:

C3
C4
M1
BIOLOGY UNIT 4
BIOLOGY UNIT 5
BIOLOGY UNIT 6 (EMPA)
CHEMISTRY UNIT 4
CHEMISTRY UNIT 5
CHEMISTRY UNIT 6 (EMPA)

Now, if i were to do all of the papers from 2001 to 2013 then i would have about 26 papers to do on average per unit excluding empas.

so
Maths : 156 Papers
Chem : 96 Papers
Bio: 96 Papers
Phys: 24 Papers


Considering that i need to spend time understanding the content (or reviewing for AS), How should i approach it months by month starting from September?

Please Help :frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown::frown:

I tend to find exams mocks are enough to not worry about reviewing as much.
Reply 2
WOW !!!!:bl:
Firstly, consider how badly did you actually mess up. If its just slightly (like a few marks of the next grade)then i advise you just try your absolute best with A2 exams so that you're able to make up for the marks you dropped in AS exams. If you did severely screw up then there are two options. The first thing you could do is to simply restart the year. This may seem bad at first but it will mean that next year you will achieve some absolute killer exam results due to the knowledge you have gained this year. The second option is your initial thought of retaking the AS exams along with your A2 exams. If this is what you have your heart set on then i advise you focus on your A2 work. This is because you will have mock test throughout the year and you'd want to do well in these to prove to the teacher and to yourself that you'll smash A2 exams. However you should also leave some time each week just so you can refresh yourself on AS work and do a mock exam in each subject at the end off each week just to test yourself and improve upon area your struggling. All this work will not be easy but is achievable. GOOD LUCK :smile::cool::nyan::lttd:
Reply 3
I think you would be better of dealing the year since that amount of work will kill you.
Reply 4
I can't retake the year because the course i want to do for uni states that resitting the year is not possible.
I know people who are very clever and did all their AS and A2 in the same year. They ended up with ABB though... You seem very determined and very motivated so I would say throw away your social life. In september, start revising your AS, since you already know them you can get them over and done with. Also, AS topics sometimes used in A2 so thats an advantage. I suggest you get all your AS content revision out of the way by the end of December, also keep up with A2 in classes. If you have frees, revise in those. Stay after school, if you can't revise at home. Weekends are gems! MAKE SURE YOU REVISE ALL DAY - with breaks of course xD Have a lot of snacks with you on the revision table. Stop revising when you feel as though a head ache is coming and walk around a little...
Good luck, dude! xD I hope you achieve what you want after this...

Past papers: Work from recent to old because you might run out of time and the recent papers are the ones you should really look at.
(edited 9 years ago)
It may sound harsh, but do you really need to retake all those modules? You'd be much better off redoing the three or four you did worst in and getting 100% in them and leave more time for the A2 modules in my opinion, rather than overloading yourself with loads of exams. Also think about which will be easy to go back to- C1 and C2 will be really easy after C3 and C4, so you won't need to do much work for them, whereas S1 when you've done no stats all year would be much more difficult. The EMPA could be a good one to do as it can be done before the rest of your exams to take the pressure off a little bit, whereas I really wouldn't bother redoing a physics unit as you'd be much better off to get ABBe or something than BBCc when you've been focusing on the physics. Unis will care much more about your three full A levels!

Having retaken C2 and got 100 I got an A overall in maths with my individual module grades being BAABBD, so having one lower mark in there won't necessarily hurt your grade too much! Similarly, in physics I retook the first unit and got ABBBDA (with all of them except the D being very close to the next grade/100%) for a B overall. So my point is, you don't need to have a perfect mark in every unit to do well overall, and retaking that many is liable to make your overall grade worse!

In terms of revision, work steadily from the beginning and make sure you understand all the new A2 content as you go along- prioritise this over the AS stuff and then work on that when and if you have time. Don't go too overboard with it though, you don't want to burn out partway through the year! :redface:

I hope that helps a bit and feel free to ask any more questions if that got too confused and muddly :smile:


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(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 7
Original post by furryface12
It may sound harsh, but do you really need to retake all those modules? You'd be much better off redoing the three or four you did worst in and getting 100% in them and leave more time for the A2 modules in my opinion, rather than overloading yourself with loads of exams. Also think about which will be easy to go back to- C1 and C2 will be really easy after C3 and C4, so you won't need to do much work for them, whereas S1 when you've done no stats all year would be much more difficult. The EMPA could be a good one to do as it can be done before the rest of your exams to take the pressure off a little bit, whereas I really wouldn't bother redoing a physics unit as you'd be much better off to get ABBe or something than BBCc when you've been focusing on the physics. Unis will care much more about your three full A levels!

Having retaken C2 and got 100 I got an A overall in maths with my individual module grades being BAABBD, so having one lower mark in there won't necessarily hurt your grade too much! Similarly, in physics I retook the first unit and got ABBBDA (with all of them except the D being very close to the next grade/100%) for a B overall. So my point is, you don't need to have a perfect mark in every unit to do well overall, and retaking that many is liable to make your overall grade worse!

In terms of revision, work steadily from the beginning and make sure you understand all the new A2 content as you go along- prioritise this over the AS stuff and then work on that when and if you have time. Don't go too overboard with it though, you don't want to burn out partway through the year! :redface:

I hope that helps a bit and feel free to ask any more questions if that got too confused and muddly :smile:


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I see your point, but at the back of my mind i am still thinking that by retaking all of maths would just increase my chances of getting an A.

this year i got:

63/100 ums c1
69/100 ums c2 ( 1 mark off an B)
59/100 ums s1 (1 mark off a C)

I am not someone who ends up getting Cs and Ds so my mentality is to get all As. Which one would you say i should retake?
Reply 8
Original post by chemlover12
I know people who are very clever and did all their AS and A2 in the same year. They ended up with ABB though... You seem very determined and very motivated so I would say throw away your social life. In september, start revising your AS, since you already know them you can get them over and done with. Also, AS topics sometimes used in A2 so thats an advantage. I suggest you get all your AS content revision out of the way by the end of December, also keep up with A2 in classes. If you have frees, revise in those. Stay after school, if you can't revise at home. Weekends are gems! MAKE SURE YOU REVISE ALL DAY - with breaks of course xD Have a lot of snacks with you on the revision table. Stop revising when you feel as though a head ache is coming and walk around a little...
Good luck, dude! xD I hope you achieve what you want after this...

Past papers: Work from recent to old because you might run out of time and the recent papers are the ones you should really look at.


How would you say i should revise my AS. should i re-do my notes or just start with past papers because i know the content already. Also how can i balance it with my A2s?

Also considering there are so many past papers to do (from 2001-2014), how can do them and revise for A2 while doing A2 papers?. If i start past papers from January and let's say i do 1 or 2 a well per unit, i would hardly be able to cover all of the papers!:angry:
Original post by rakib567
How would you say i should revise my AS. should i re-do my notes or just start with past papers because i know the content already. Also how can i balance it with my A2s?

Also considering there are so many past papers to do (from 2001-2014), how can do them and revise for A2 while doing A2 papers?. If i start past papers from January and let's say i do 1 or 2 a well per unit, i would hardly be able to cover all of the papers!:angry:


Hey, well firstly If your university said resitting was not an option then this may include resits of exams not just resitting the year. I know for a fact most medical and veterinary degrees operate under this due to fairly obvious reasons. Secondly, Id suggest if this was not the case to not resit every single exam. There is probably a chance you didn't do badly in every single one. Id ask for your exam papers back on the exams you got 1/2 marks off then go through them with your teachers, if you can find extra marks then send off for a resit(However remarks are £40 if your grade does not change so asking for your exam paper back for a meer £10 seems like a good choice). Finally if these do not work then simply sit the exams you did badly in, I know very smart people who were overloaded by the amount of work AS and A2 brought and ended up completely flunking out. Good luck :smile:
Original post by rakib567
How would you say i should revise my AS. should i re-do my notes or just start with past papers because i know the content already. Also how can i balance it with my A2s?

Also considering there are so many past papers to do (from 2001-2014), how can do them and revise for A2 while doing A2 papers?. If i start past papers from January and let's say i do 1 or 2 a well per unit, i would hardly be able to cover all of the papers!:angry:



Oh! That's great! Do you do OCR Chemistry and Biology? Um, if you already know the content then there isn't much point in re-doing your notes. You should start past papers and when it gets closer to the exam, re-do those very recent (umm, from like 2010 to 2014) past papers (like two/three days before). Since you already know your AS content, you can make notes on your A2 subjects from the very beginning while balancing that with AS past papers. I'm sure you will be able to do all the AS past papers by the time you finish writing up your A2 notes. Then you can, start A2 past papers. I re-sat Unit 2 biology, chemistry and C2 maths - it isn't as much as yours but yeah. With those I took my AS revision out of the way and focused on my A2. For my A2 maths, I did four hours of revision every week - I did S2 and left that to the last three days because all I had to do was 17 past papers and thought i could fit it in then.

Why not do past papers from 2005 and onwards?
Reply 11
Original post by chemlover12
Oh! That's great! Do you do OCR Chemistry and Biology? Um, if you already know the content then there isn't much point in re-doing your notes. You should start past papers and when it gets closer to the exam, re-do those very recent (umm, from like 2010 to 2014) past papers (like two/three days before). Since you already know your AS content, you can make notes on your A2 subjects from the very beginning while balancing that with AS past papers. I'm sure you will be able to do all the AS past papers by the time you finish writing up your A2 notes. Then you can, start A2 past papers. I re-sat Unit 2 biology, chemistry and C2 maths - it isn't as much as yours but yeah. With those I took my AS revision out of the way and focused on my A2. For my A2 maths, I did four hours of revision every week - I did S2 and left that to the last three days because all I had to do was 17 past papers and thought i could fit it in then.

Why not do past papers from 2005 and onwards?


i really want to make sure that i know every single type of question and how to answer it. i think the mistake i did last year was that i did not do enough exam pratice. btw what was your stratery to revise AS biology and chem?

Did you just start doing papers or did you refresh your memory of the content by doing notes and then papers?
Reply 12
Original post by VickeeehLovesYou<3
Hey, well firstly If your university said resitting was not an option then this may include resits of exams not just resitting the year. I know for a fact most medical and veterinary degrees operate under this due to fairly obvious reasons. Secondly, Id suggest if this was not the case to not resit every single exam. There is probably a chance you didn't do badly in every single one. Id ask for your exam papers back on the exams you got 1/2 marks off then go through them with your teachers, if you can find extra marks then send off for a resit(However remarks are £40 if your grade does not change so asking for your exam paper back for a meer £10 seems like a good choice). Finally if these do not work then simply sit the exams you did badly in, I know very smart people who were overloaded by the amount of work AS and A2 brought and ended up completely flunking out. Good luck :smile:


i phoned the unis and they said that resitting within the 2 years is fine but sitting an extra year is not allowed.

i already ordered some papers back and will discuss with teachers.
Original post by rakib567
i really want to make sure that i know every single type of question and how to answer it. i think the mistake i did last year was that i did not do enough exam pratice. btw what was your stratery to revise AS biology and chem?

Did you just start doing papers or did you refresh your memory of the content by doing notes and then papers?


Yeah, exam questions are essential. I forgot all the content so I made notes on it. Most of unit 2 came up in unit 4/5 for me so I couldn't really forget it. Oh, for Biology - since it's so content heavy - I suggest you understand the content instead of memorising it and do a lot of practice for both subjects. A LOT of exam questions.
http://www.a-levelchemistry.co.uk - chemistry
http://mrsmillersblog.wordpress.com/as-biology/ - biology
There are so many question here that are worth answering. All, I did was exam questions after questions and in the end, I understood why question A was answered that way.

I wouldn't call it refreshing because I didn't even know some pages in the book existed when I went over it during A2 times... It was shocking so basically, I started from scratch. Since you already know your content, I suggest you dwell right into the past papers.
Original post by rakib567
I see your point, but at the back of my mind i am still thinking that by retaking all of maths would just increase my chances of getting an A.

this year i got:

63/100 ums c1
69/100 ums c2 ( 1 mark off an B)
59/100 ums s1 (1 mark off a C)

I am not someone who ends up getting Cs and Ds so my mentality is to get all As. Which one would you say i should retake?


I'd say C1 or C2, or both as neither should take a lot of work as you'll have built on both this year. Your S1 mark isn't horrendous, if you do well on the other two you can still get an A overall on the AS and even go a few marks over to take the pressure off the A2 modules a bit :smile: As maths modules do constantly build on each other they are easy to retake, as opposed to your other subjects which will take a lot more work so I'd only advise resitting one.


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(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 15
Original post by furryface12
I'd say C1 or C2, or both as neither should take a lot of work as you'll have built on both this year. Your S1 mark isn't horrendous, if you do well on the other two you can still get an A overall on the AS and even go a few marks over to take the pressure off the A2 modules a bit :smile: As maths modules do constantly build on each other they are easy to retake, as opposed to your other subjects which will take a lot more work so I'd only advise resitting one.


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only one?!
Hey, i was in the same situation as you when i was in year 12... i did biology, chemistry, maths statistics and economics messed up bad and got 4Ds (this was my fault, i was lazy and didn't take A-levels seriously, i treated it like gcses and expected to get A*s again without any work)... but having asian parents, retaking the year was not an option.... so i dropped economics and continued doing maths statistics, biology and chemistry whilst retaking all my AS exams (including the AS economics that i dropped)...I took it seriously this time and recently got my results.. i got B in AS, BCD which is not good at all, but it was a improvement, but its not good enough... most of this is due to the fact that i had 20 exams this summer with no january exams... i reckon if i had january exams, i would have done much better...

but seriously, im telling you from experience, if you are really prepared to overload yourself with exams, you have to be prepared... you have to be well ahead of everyone. You will experience a stress that you have never experienced before. For you, the exams will be more of a test of endurance, not on what you know... exam period will burn you out...
so if you do decide to do this, throw away your social life and dont get distracted, just be prepared... remember, you only have one shot at it now since all the exams are in the summer and you would be in year 13.. and since you're doing more than 1 science, they will ALWAYS, ALWAYS put science exams in consecutive days... the hardest science units are always on consecutive days... there was one week where i had 6 exams..
I'm gonna have to take a gap year and retake around 6 exams and I'm also going to decide to finish my econ A-level and study for A2 on my own, so i'd have a total of 8 exams in my gap year...

The **** up in year 12 is really ****ing me over....
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by rakib567
only one?!


I meant one from each (possibly except maths and not necessarily including EMPA), not just one overall :tongue: I retook three this year which gave me eleven exams, nine of which were in the space of two weeks and trust me it was hell! Any more and you're in danger of being so overloaded that you do worse overall instead of better.


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Reply 18
Original post by Bustamove
Hey, i was in the same situation as you when i was in year 12... i did biology, chemistry, maths statistics and economics messed up bad and got 4Ds (this was my fault, i was lazy and didn't take A-levels seriously, i treated it like gcses and expected to get A*s again without any work)... but having asian parents, retaking the year was not an option.... so i dropped economics and continued doing maths statistics, biology and chemistry whilst retaking all my AS exams (including the AS economics that i dropped)...I took it seriously this time and recently got my results.. i got B in AS, BCD which is not good at all, but it was a improvement, but its not good enough... most of this is due to the fact that i had 20 exams this summer with no january exams... i reckon if i had january exams, i would have done much better...

but seriously, im telling you from experience, if you are really prepared to overload yourself with exams, you have to be prepared... you have to be well ahead of everyone. You will experience a stress that you have never experienced before. For you, the exams will be more of a test of endurance, not on what you know... exam period will burn you out...
so if you do decide to do this, throw away your social life and dont get distracted, just be prepared... remember, you only have one shot at it now since all the exams are in the summer and you would be in year 13.. and since you're doing more than 1 science, they will ALWAYS, ALWAYS put science exams in consecutive days... the hardest science units are always on consecutive days... there was one week where i had 6 exams..
I'm gonna have to take a gap year and retake around 6 exams and I'm also going to decide to finish my econ A-level and study for A2 on my own, so i'd have a total of 8 exams in my gap year...

The **** up in year 12 is really ****ing me over....


Thanks for the post. What was it that you did wrong? how was your time spread out during revision? eg. when did u finish the syllabus and when did u start doing papers? i totally understand the pressure that i will have to go though but i HAVE to do it. there is no other way
I resat all biology units after getting a D at AS, and really struggled with all the content. If there's a unit you can possibly avoid retaking then try to do it... After resitting the AS, I got A (1) A (2) C (3) and because of this my A2 units really suffered: C (4) D (5) C (6), so I only got a C overall. If you absolutely have to retake all of the units though, then past papers are the key! Make sure you know absolutely everything AND understand it; they will ask you about everything and anything; I found that reciting particular things to myself made it click. Also, make sure the teachers know what you are doing, as they will support you with the workload. Good luck!

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