Help need to decide by friday!

I am very confused as to weather I should retake the whole year, or do January retakes?
my AS grades are just rubbish, ABDD.

psychology-A
Biology-B
Chemistry-D
History-D

I am going to drop history, but I don’t know if I can get chemistry up to a grade 'B' by re-sitting / anyone done this?

Also I don’t know how I got that D, I mean through out the year I missed approximately 3 months of school and a every other week I missed a day or a lesson. And my attendance was 63% in most lessons. And so my teachers tell me its cause of this I got bad grades, but still I revised like 3 or 4 weeks before exams, although I had to teach myself a lot things. And plus I found that exam to be hard out of all the past papers I sat.

I don’t blame my attendance at all for those grades, cause I know I knew everything topics wise, and the only thing I can think of that let me down was cause the exam was hard, harder than the past papers I tried. So I can say it was just not my day with exam papers! So what shall I do ? Do year 12 again ?

And if I do year 12 again, I will take all sciences, cause art subjects take a hell of a lot of your time, I revised more for my art subjects than by sciences because it was that much to know and remember.

Reply 1

mkchelsea

well retaking the whole year realyy depends on what you hope to get. I think if you continue onto A2 you can achieve a A or B in Chemistry in your retakes, it shouldn't be too hard. If you are looking to raise the Bio and History grades, you might have alot on your plate.

Reply 2

Laus

It's totally up to you really. Do you want to stay on another year? If you think you can then go for it. Believe it or not, good attendance can help. Although my attendance was pretty poor in year 12, I definitely benefited from going to all of my History lessons. Sometimes, learning the material at home isn't enough to do well in a subject. The teachers are there to guide you throughout. Debate and discussion is also important (although I did tend to fade into the background :redface:

... I still benefited from listening to other people and putting across my ideas when I felt the need to).

From what I've heard, Chemistry at A level is really challenging. Perhaps you would benefit from some extra tuition? I'm not a Science person myself so I can't really help you out there. At least now you've seen a really hard exam paper you can brush up on what you don't know. I think it's always best to prepare for the worst. If you go into an exam anticipating that something that's come up in the past is going to come up again, you're more likely to panic when an unexpected question pops up. Sure, working through past papers is really important but you've got to make sure you're prepared for anything and everything... learning stuff beyond the exam syllabus isn't always necessary at A level but I believe it can help a great deal.

If you don't want to take any arts subjects then that's fair enough. Do what you enjoy and what you think you can excel in. Seeing as you've done so well in Psychology why don't you take it at A2 along side Chemistry and Biology. That way, when you go into year 13 (your 3rd year now) you'll have a full A level and two AS levels. You can complete Chemistry and Biology and perhaps, if you think you can manage, take on a further subject at AS. Result = 3 full A levels, an AS in History (at a D grade or higher if you decide to retake) and another AS. The decision is yours :smile: