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What do you regret (A levels)

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Nothing in particular I guess. I'm lucky in that everything worked out alright for me... it was GCSEs where I maybe wish I had done a bit better, but oh well :tongue:

Spoiler

I feel like this. It was at A level that I actually learnt how to ask for help, how to organise my work and time properly, and how to revise effectively, but at GCSE I genuinely didn't have a clue what I was doing. I'm glad I feel ready for uni now though!

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Reply 41

Platopus

Original post by Amanda414

What do you regret not doing in A levels in terms of revision and everything?

In terms of revision, I regret nothing. I went into every exam as prepared as I could possibly be, so on that footing I have no excuses.

What I regret is the easily avoidable mistakes I made in the panic of the exam: misreading essay questions, or misinterpreting what that were asking me to do. Through sheer stupidity I managed to throw away so many marks and render all those hours of studying useless.

Reply 42

username1408342

Not pulling out of my exams in the first year when I knew I was going to fail. It meant that it was harder to get into top universities because I had done my A Levels over 3 years. Universities don't regard you having studied A Levels over 3 years if you pull out of your exams in your first year.

Reply 43

LegallyMinded

Original post by Edminzodo

Noooooooo! It took me ages, but now I love it!

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I've been doing it since September. I've had "externalities", "elasticies","monopolies" and "oligopolies" explained to me about 100 times and I still can't even say what they are or what they do.
So yes I do regret doing it.

Reply 44

Kevin De Bruyne

Original post by pineneedles

Exactly right, I wish they kind of told you how to do it at GCSE :s-smilie:

or if you don't have any older siblings that can teach you life lessons :s-smilie:

Yeah

I hope you stay motivated throughout uni :borat:

Reply 45

HyruleTenshi

Original post by eternaforest

Our teacher couldn't even do 3/4 of the coursework herself, she got fired after about 6 months and we didn't have a teacher for the rest so I had to self teach myself how to do it all. The ICT theory is so outdated as well, the books are from like 2002. A level ICT is shambles really.

Couldn't agree more. My teacher struggled with Excel and couldn't install a patch for Adobe Premiere so we ended up doing the video editing part of our coursework on Movie Maker which is pretty embarrassing for an A level class haha.

Reply 46

itsbmc

Not really revising for my English Language exam

Reply 47

markovchain17

Original post by HyruleTenshi

Did you ever have to work with Microsoft Access in your coursework? If your teacher couldn't do excel then I have no clue how they'd be able to work Access :laugh:

What's even worse is the examiner's marking. For databases, you don't even have to submit the actual file of your database. You just make a series of screenshots of it in a word document then submit that. This lead to probably all of our class just fabricating screenshots and making it look like we'd actually a built a database when in actuality, we didn't know what the f*** we were doing :rofl:

some of us even got As... just shocking tbh

And movie maker at A-level ICT... that's a disgrace :biggrin:

Reply 48

Chinook gl mms

I regret working too hard. Chances are when I get my results back I'll have 4 A*s, but there is so much more to life than A levels and I just wish I saw this earlier. I worked all day everyday. I went out to see friends twice over the whole two years of college and now I'm completely ****ed for university because I can't talk to people to save my life.

Reply 49

BR2671999

Not reading the last sentence in the law exam, and then coming out to hear that instead of writing about the two people you talked about for an hour and a half, that you had to talk about a homeless guy!!!
I can say bye to my 90℅ + in AS law now :u:

Reply 50

HyruleTenshi

Original post by eternaforest

Did you ever have to work with Microsoft Access in your coursework? If your teacher couldn't do excel then I have no clue how they'd be able to work Access :laugh:

some of us even got As... just shocking tbh

And movie maker at A-level ICT... that's a disgrace :biggrin:

I dropped after AS so never had to do the database work (thank god haha). And yeah the whole idea of just submitting screenshots was an absolute joke. The examiners never actually watched my video or powerpoints, just looked at screenshots of how I made them. It was all just about ticking boxes on the specification and not actually about making something good and professional :colonhash:

Reply 51

gapyear2018

Original post by nomophobia

Taking History and Chemistry...they almost killed me for very different reasons

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I plan on doing this combination along with economics. What was so bad about it?

Reply 52

nomophobia

Original post by ScienceFantatic

I plan on doing this combination along with economics. What was so bad about it?

History was a huge jump from GCSE - I know everyone says the jump in general is huge anyway from GCSE to A-Level but I found history to have the biggest jump and I know a lot of people agreed. I found it so hard to get the essay right, like I understood the structure and everything but my examples were never specific enough or the source was too hard. And the amount of content....200 pages to learn.

Chemistry is just hard. It's infamous for being hard - I found it difficult to apply the knowledge in a billion different ways - there's not much content but the questions, especially with the new spec are quite difficult to wrap your head around.

But don't let my opinion put you off from doing it - good luck with your A-Levels!

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Reply 53

theBranicAc

Original post by Chinook gl mms

So you basically revised every day all day? How did you have the motivation to do so?

Its a shame, that becuase of a level, you lost some of your social skills which are just as important

Reply 54

pineneedles

From reading this thread I really think that schools need to be putting more emphasis on BTEC as a P16 option. Some people are clearly suited to BTEC more than A levels. Although I feel that my experience at A level was good, I never felt that doing BTEC was an option because it was never mentioned to me at all, I didn't even hear of them before TSR. I'm thinking of my sixth form now, and the drop out rate this year was massive. If they directed people down a more suitable route sooner than later people wouldn't be wasting their time like that.

Reply 55

RDKGames

Study Forum Helper

I regret revising so much for AQA's Mechanics 3 just to not answer a good 40/75 marks of the paper.

Reply 56

username1567177

Original post by mercuryman

I wished I'd picked DT or something over psychology. Psych was a big mistake and time-waster on my end.

DT also relates to my uni course too, :frown:

huge mistake mannnn.

what did you think was bad about psychology?

Reply 57

gapyear2018

Original post by nomophobia

Thank you I appreciate this! If I may ask, what did you get at GCSE in Chemistry and History?

Reply 58

Astudent24

Do you think I am able to do maths a level and chemistry? I've heard these are the hardest a levels is this actually true or is it exaggerated would I be able to do well if I revise thoroughly, isn't chemistry mainly content based? Also I have done triple chemistry will it be of any use at a levels? Thank you

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Reply 59

amysed

Original post by Astudent24

I do both of these and I'll just tell you now.. don't expect to get everything straight away. although they are probably two of the least content heavy a-levels, applying your knowledge to questions and being able to answer them correctly is difficult to get. So when you start, don't be put off if you can't do questions and always ask your teacher if you need any help :smile: