A-level Computer Science Study Group 2023-2024

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Hey I hope you are doing well with your course. If you have done your mock exam and have access to the papers and answers can you send them to me so I can practice myself.

Same on your end please....I am doing AQA as well. If you have done mock exams, can you send me your papers? I currently have mocks going on right now and as soon as they're done, I will share them with you.

Reply 21

pinkapoppy

Did anyone else do the 2023 AQA papers? We just had our mocks and I’m slightly in shock. Our teacher isn’t great anyways but still, I feel like I only know the surface level content and I have no idea how to answer exam questions..

Reply 22

vnayak

Original post by pinkapoppy

I do AQA but no, I don't think I did the 2023 one. Is there any way of checking and verifying? I had my Computing Paper 2 mock on Monday this week. They never give us the paper from last year for some weird reason even though they have full access to it. I felt that it was straightforward enough but I made stupid mistakes and I had to waffle on a public key encryption with digital signature question because my mind blanked out.

I have my Paper 1 mock tomorrow and I'm so worried about the Skeleton Code. I know it back to front but I'm really not too sure how to solve the problems. I'm genuinely so worried about it. So happy that my offers only require an A in CS.

Answering exam questions - yeah, I don't know either but purchase the AQA textbook and read through the sections so you understand what you need to know so that when you see an exam question, your mind goes to thinking "OK, so what do I need to mention here?"

Surface level content - I find that flashcards will help you to tackle the surface level content problem. The thing with Paper 1 is you need to understand and apply because they can come up with a range of scenarios. But with Paper 2, they can only come up with a set of exam questions so if you prep correctly, chances are you'll run into some of the ones you've prepared and for the ones you haven't, you can still do because it links really closely to what you've done. My theory side teacher has been the same. Since Year 12, he hasn't taught us anything in a single lesson. He's put out the course notes from the textbook I mentioned and expects us to just go through that. It's the driest thing known to man and sometimes, doesn't explain things well but you gotta find your own way to understand the content (when I say you, I don't mean you specifically - I am speaking just generally), which is why I spent my time making flashcards during the year on the entire course. I finished making them before my year 12 mocks and have accumulated a total of around 1800 flashcards covering the entirety of paper 2 and 600 flashcards covering paper 1.

What else I find useful is watching Craig n Dave on YouTube. Again, the video itself is really boring but it teaches you everything you need to know so very much worth watching it.