I don't see why not. In my year 11 mocks I got 5's in science and kept failing physics. I didn't do a ton of revision and got 7's in the actual thing. If you learn your content off by heart, do as many practice questions as possible, then I think it's possible. There isn't too long left so you must grind hard now if you really want it. I think you can go from 5 to 8 as well. I was consistently getting 6's in English lit and it would never budge until I started doing past paper questions and then in the exam I got a 9. For science, I used all the cgp resources and vids on youtube.

Reply 5

SuspiciousDuck

13

Honestly, if you buckle down and learn the syllabus in time for the exam, I don't see why you can't get a 9 if you wanted it enough, never mind a 7. The main piece of advice that I would give is that you're going to have to change something, 99% of the time the problem with a student's learning of a subject is either down to the teacher or student. If you are hard working and listen in your lessons, it's your teachers fault and you need to start self learning the syllabus, if you have attitude/concentration problems in lessons then you really need to start looking into private sessions with your teacher or retrain yourself to concentrate and work harder in lessons (and party harder later :tongue:

).
The fact that you're asking this question makes me think you're of the former category, since you seem already eager to listen to the opinions of complete strangers! So, I'll give you a few starting tips.
1. Download and read the subject syllabus (this can be found on your exam board's website), it's really really long and it'll take a long time to read it all so you might want to just read the index page of a revision guide instead XD.
2. Learn it A-Z, there are thousands of videos on each and every aspect of the syllabus, some of which are great, some of which are crap but find whatever works for you and keep on watching similar videos.
3. The required practicals, you'll do these in lessons irregardless but if you miss a lesson or need to revise one or two, they're abundant on youtube.
4. Take control of your own grade, at the end of the day remember it's your decision which grade you get, if you learn the subject content then noone can stop you putting it down in the exam
And finally,
Accept that there are somethings you can't change, extensive studies into exam boards have found time and time again that exam markers constantly misgrade papers due to 1,000s of factors, at the end of the day no matter how hard you work you can walk out with a U or a 9, so don't beat yourself up if you don't end up getting the grade you want (one bad grade won't ruin your life).
I wish you luck with all your future studies and I hope you take that last point really to heart, there is life after GCSEs and failure is just the start of the improvement process! :biggrin:

Reply 6

SuspiciousDuck

13

Just as a final point, get yourself a revision guide ASAP (unless you have already) and use it until it's beat up and tatty, they're designed to cover everything your'll face in the exam (some also come with practise papers in the back) and IMO are way better than any teacher. When you get nearly to exams and feel more confident in the subject, do every exam paper there is (I did back to 2000 when I did my GCSE) and your'll learn there's a pattern of questions they like to ask (some chemistry papers have nearly identical questions lol), learn them and you're set. Good luck :smile:

Reply 7

SuspiciousDuck

13

Original post by anonymoustony

I don't see why not. In my year 11 mocks I got 5's in science and kept failing physics. I didn't do a ton of revision and got 7's in the actual thing. If you learn your content off by heart, do as many practice questions as possible, then I think it's possible. There isn't too long left so you must grind hard now if you really want it. I think you can go from 5 to 8 as well. I was consistently getting 6's in English lit and it would never budge until I started doing past paper questions and then in the exam I got a 9. For science, I used all the cgp resources and vids on youtube.

I wonder if all the schools have a conspiracy to make mocks as difficult as possible so that our GCSE results are nicer than what we expect? I'm talking as someone who was constantly graded 2 grades under in the mocks XD (expect history where i went from a 3 to a 7) and maths where I actually went down a grade :frown:

(tbf though one of my papers was disqualified for incorrect information on the front)

Reply 8

Toast210

16

If you bang out tons of past papers, you'll defo be able to reach a high grade in short amounts of time. It's tough, boring and a lot of stress but achievable.

Reply 9

cbal4

6

certainly! mocks are only mocks and you've still got plenty of revision time left! when i did my GCSEs i remember i got a 4 in geography but revised consistently over the following months and came out with an 8 :smile:

Similar thing happened with chemistry too
just think of those mocks as a good foundation for the last few months of your revision and you'll get there in time. you got this!

Reply 10

ArcusF

13

for science I went from 9s to 5s. Imagine the downgrade I had

Reply 11

SuspiciousDuck

13

Original post by ArcusF

for science I went from 9s to 5s. Imagine the downgrade I had

Everyone has off days, I'm sorry you didn't get the grades you were expecting, but I hope you've moved onto something bigger and better!

Reply 12

ArcusF

13

Original post by SuspiciousDuck

Everyone has off days, I'm sorry you didn't get the grades you were expecting, but I hope you've moved onto something bigger and better!

Yup ended up doing maths physics computer science for a levels

Reply 13

TSR George

OP

17

Original post by cbal4

certainly! mocks are only mocks and you've still got plenty of revision time left! when i did my GCSEs i remember i got a 4 in geography but revised consistently over the following months and came out with an 8 :smile:

Similar thing happened with chemistry too
just think of those mocks as a good foundation for the last few months of your revision and you'll get there in time. you got this!

Original post by SuspiciousDuck

Just as a final point, get yourself a revision guide ASAP (unless you have already) and use it until it's beat up and tatty, they're designed to cover everything your'll face in the exam (some also come with practise papers in the back) and IMO are way better than any teacher. When you get nearly to exams and feel more confident in the subject, do every exam paper there is (I did back to 2000 when I did my GCSE) and your'll learn there's a pattern of questions they like to ask (some chemistry papers have nearly identical questions lol), learn them and you're set. Good luck :smile:

thanks for the advice, when do you recommend i start revising? it seems like a lot of hard work to get my grades up but i’m still being set homework and i have my art project to be doing so i don’t have much time

Reply 14

SuspiciousDuck

13

I think you need to find a distinction between revision and learning, in my mind atleast, it makes little sense to go over a topic I already know. So what I would recommend (because it sounds like you have a bad teacher) is doing a preliminary mini test or exam, using either the questions in the revision guide or a few past papers and seeing what you do and don't know, if you do know it then you can just skip that page or 2 in the revision guide :biggrin:

, but if you lose marks on it go to that topic in the guide. Again, personally I didn't actually do a whole lot of revision until a few days before my exams, I more did what I like to call diagnostic testing and then fixing the gaps in my knowledge. A lot of students fall into the trap of revising stuff they already know, getting burnt out and then not actually learning the stuff they do XD. Again, this is all personal (and we did lots of class revision due to finishing our courses early) but I found that this method took waaaaay less time and really strengthened the areas where I wasn't confident. In terms of homework, I would say do it if you can but don't get too upset if you don't, what's the worst that can happen? A 10-30 minute detention (where they usually let you do homework/revision regardless)? You won't have to see those teachers again in a year and a bits time anyway so there's no long term damage done XD. I think if you do use this method of 'diagnostic testing' I think it's important to do it throughout your studies (as the further along you go the harder it is to do it). I hope this helped.

is it possible to go from a grade 3 to a grade 9 in time for GCSEs?

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