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University vs A Levels

I'm starting university in September (to do biology), and I was just wondering what are the main differences in terms of work you do and exams in uni compared to A Levels?
It depends where you're going really as different courses are run in different ways :h:

On my course we do very little human biology (human biology is mainly done by the Biomedics) and most of my A Level was human biology. I loved this because I hate human biology, so this was a big difference for me! You'll also learn lots of little details that were missed out at A Level so you'll actually understand how the things you learnt at A Level work.

I also found labs were more complex and you're given a lot more freedom. Although having said that there were some people on my course who said they were like the labs they had at school, so if you go to a really good school now you may not find a huge difference :smile:

Exams will differ depending on where you're going. In general from people I've spoken to you don't have structured questions where the marker is looking for one phase with the exact wording they have to get the marks. You'll get marks if it is relevant to the question, even if it wasn't what they expected. Also, for example, in an A Level essay five 'ticks' may equal 5 marks, however at uni they will look at what you have overall (so content, structure, spelling) and see what mark it is closest to. For example at my uni if you have good content and structure you may get a 2:1, but if you have the same content with a poor structure you may get a 2:2. That sounds bad, but it's actually really good. You're being marked on how well you understand the subject not by learning a mark scheme :smile:

Hope this helps and good luck at uni!

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