How to ace my exams to apply for medicine after getting bad AS results

Hi everyone,
I really need some advice. My AS were BCCD in history, biology, english literature and chemistry. The thing is its only one exam in my biology and chemistry subjects which is bringing my whole grade down so i need to retake those. For chemistry i got a B in my coursework and unit 1 exam but a D in my unit 2 chemistry exam so im retaking that.
What i really need advice is on how to revise and how to get the best grades possible because i want to do medicine. Should i just learn the specification off by heart or are there other more important things than that. I dont want to habe to retake exams in my gap year so please can you give me advice on how to get all A's in my exams.

Reply 1

Wallen15

Original post by Arie1239

Hey,
I'm also applying for medicine, but got 4 As in biology, chemistry, geography and maths, but I do have some advice for you! As long as it's just the one module in biology and chemistry, you should be able to resit them with, dare I say, 'minimal effort'... My best advice would be to start revision NOW!!! If you start learning your course throughout the year, then when it comes to revision time, you won't have to learn anything, it will just be revision and past papers... With biology especially, the synoptic part of it is very important. Around 1/5 of the marks available for the essay (for AQA which I'm doing) are dependent on extra knowledge, so read around the subject... With chemistry this isn't important so just learn the syllabus... I'd suggest writing up all the notes from class and any notes from the day in subject books at home. Also doing questions really helps, this is how I revise... If you are predicted As in U6 then you should be okay, just make sure you apply to unis not requiring a certain mark in the 4th AS, or if you do, make sure it's not above C grade.
Hope this helps and good luck!
P.S. if you have any questions feel free to send me a message!

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 2

Arie1239

Thank you so much for the advice, btw im doing OCR biology and chemistry. Also i would like to retake a part of my english literature to atleast get a B in it since it is my 4th subject but im not sure if its worth it because the grade boundaries for coursework are really high, for an A i need 48/50 and i dont have anyone i can get help from. Also would retaking my unit 2 for bio and chem be too much with my A2 exams, im finding biology a little difficult and very wordy this year. My predictions are ABB and i was thinking of applying to the foundation med course if i dont get the grades because i have done a lot of work experience and extra curricular things :smile: