Getting A/A* at A-level

ryan051991

So for people who got As or A*s or are gearing towards that, when do you guys start revising for january exams?

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Reply 1

charcharchar

I did 5 days flat out revision for my psychology exam last year and got 98/100 :biggrin:

Reply 2

allieee

The day before... but I think I was just lucky :smile:

you can never do too much revision!

Reply 3

Jing_jing

Christmas holidays I expect ^^
I'm so bad with revision, it always ends up as cram revision (and every year I swear to change) :p:

Mind you, I don't have many exams this January, only three and one is a retake so I'll probably spend the majority of my holiday revising for FP2 and then in the time between my FP2 exam and the other two (which I think are on consecutive days) revise for those two.

Reply 4

jonasdb

Original post by Jing_jing

Christmas holidays I expect ^^
I'm so bad with revision, it always ends up as cram revision (and every year I swear to change) :p:

I feel FP2 and 3 will be priority for most of next year too haha

And yea i will be starting christmas holidays too. I find that if you pay attention in class and make sure you understand it all, a couple cram in days are plenty for any mathsy/physicsy tests. :smile:

Reply 5

Freerider101

I'll start doing practise papers for maths 1 month before exams. So in about 3 weeks time. For Physics I'll revise my notes about 1 month before exam plus do the questions in book. Chemistry same approach as physics.

Reply 6

Jing_jing

Original post by jonasdb

Yeah, worried that FP3 is going to be really hard, FP2 isn't too bad at the moment, but a bit difficult having not covered C4 in class yet =/ I was really shakey with integration at the beginning as I started the chapter on integrating trig with only basic C2 integration knowledge... that was an interesting few days :p:

Yeah, a lot of practice papers normally does it for me. Saying that, I totally lost my head in my M1 exam last year and did a lot worse than predicted (seeing as I dropped one mark in my mock :p:

) Retaking it in Jan and haven't starting revising for it yet, but seeing as I'm doing M2 and M3 at the moment I'm hoping it won't require too much revision as lots of it is probably ingrained into my brain by now!

Reply 7

kaosu_souzousha

Original post by Jing_jing

Yeah, a lot of practice papers normally does it for me. Saying that, I totally lost my head in my M1 exam last year and did a lot worse than predicted (seeing as I dropped one mark in my mock :p:

I am doing FP3 AQA and there is the whole bunch of calculus from C3+C4. I thought my head would explode at the start but after a week of hardcore work everything became chilled :cool:

Reply 8

ViralRiver

From the start of the first term. I need my A*s ><

Reply 9

Philosopher-of-sorts

This year with C1 C2 and S1 I've been doing a couple past papers a week since the start of November...I'll move that up to probably 4 per week and some practice questions come December, but I'm doing a bunch of other stuff on my gap year so Christmas break isn't as open to revision as it will be for A2 year people.

It really depends on how intensive a revision schedule you want or can handle. For my final A2 exams I did 7+ hours per day for the last month and managed 96%+ for all of them. For three exams in January, (so probably closer to what you'll be able to do) I started in early November doing a couple hours every few days, just rewriting my notes in the best format for exam revision. Then by Christmas holidays mostly I was able to just relax and read my notes, do a bunch of past paper questions etc.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 10

Jing_jing

Original post by kaosu_souzousha

I am doing FP3 AQA and there is the whole bunch of calculus from C3+C4. I thought my head would explode at the start but after a week of hardcore work everything became chilled :cool:

Aaah, calculus, it was so simple back in C2 and C1, thinking about it makes me giggle now, our single maths class won't know what's hit them when we start integration in C4, some of them are still unsure over C2 integration :p:

It's going to be a fun lesson, I shall come armed with cake.

Yeah, we blitzed (okay we = my further maths teacher and I) C4 integration in about 5 minutes and then moved on XD Do you prefer FP2 or FP3? My friend who did further maths said that she enjoyed FP3 a lot more, but it looks harder than FP2 (purely being of that chapter title calculus with complex numbers) :biggrin:

I do like calculus though, I think it might be my favourite topic after induction even though it gives me endless amounts of frustration sometimes!

Reply 11

jonasdb

Original post by Jing_jing

Yeah, a lot of practice papers normally does it for me. Saying that, I totally lost my head in my M1 exam last year and did a lot worse than predicted (seeing as I dropped one mark in my mock :p:

yea M1 should be such an easy exam at this point ^^

And we had to do all the FP2 intergration without C4 too. it was a nightmare, our teacher just showed us one or two of the rules a lesson and moved on. I have forgotten all exept one now cause we needed it for M3, which also has horrible differenciations/intergrations :frown:

Reply 12

Bella Occhi

Original post by charcharchar

I did 5 days flat out revision for my psychology exam last year and got 98/100 :biggrin:

I may follow your lead :awesome:

Who's that in your sig, btw?

Reply 13

charcharchar

Original post by Bella Occhi

I may follow your lead :awesome:

Who's that in your sig, btw?

Jeremy Kapone, french actor.

French men are so superior to english :wink:

Reply 14

ryan051991

You see my problem is when i have no motivation at home

Reply 15

Jing_jing

Original post by jonasdb

Yep, just did a past paper and it was all find and dandy so just need to remember to actually read the questions this time round and not panic like I did last time!

:biggrin:

I remember doing that M3 chapter without it too... over the internet through distance learning. Good times :p:

I've used those C4 integration rules so much over the last couple of months that I just know them now, should result in some good C4 lessons in future though! I'm lucky in that I'm the only student in the school taking further maths so it wasn't confusing when my teacher gave me the rules in my further maths class.

Reply 16

Pensivedore

I only have 1 exam in january.. and that's Law, 'cause apparently all my other subjects have exams in the summer.
I have a mock exam for law on the last day of term, so on the 16th which means that I'll begin revision tomorow (hopefully) But it's only a mock soo I'm not sure whether to even do any hardcore revision for the mock.. Should I revise for the mock or just leave it as it's only a mock??

Original post by ryan051991

You see my problem is when i have no motivation at home

Yeahh, same I don't have much motivation at home which is why I come on here. So.Much.Motivation

Reply 17

comrade_jon

Ignore all advice here about when to start due to personal experiences or whatever. I used to wonder the same, but it varies way too much for me to go "well I do it in this amount of time" and thus somehow you should do the same.

Also, don't forget the A/A* aim isn't about quanity of revision but quality. The most useful things to revise are often not directly the things on the course: for arts/humanities subjects, look at mark schemes, ways of improving your writing (often a nifty quote in the introduction does the trick), that kinda thing. For sciencey ones I don't know too much, sorry OP.

In terms of methods, again it's whatever helps you. But don't revise so early that the first stuff you'll forget. This method may help you or may not, but generally I have about two weeks give or take a bit to fill up an empty notebook with notes and stuff (it might be a condensed history of everything that happened in Britain 1951-2007, with colour coordinated bits and quotes and things like that). If your exam is on January 30th, do you really want to be doing that in November/early December? No.

But like I said it's a case of working out what NEEDS doing, then working from there, and ignore other people's advice. My revision was a lot less than some of my friends, and it was a lot more than some of my others, and I did well enough to know that what I did was fine.

Good luck all :smile:

EDIT: And also...

Original post by allieee

you can never do too much revision!

Yes you can. Believe me, it happened to me - I did Maths AS two years ago, Maths wasn't my thing so I struggled and thought revising the hell out of it would sort me out - nope, screwed me over far worse, barely got a D. Retook it, with less revision, in the summer and got a B, which for me was really good.

It's easy to tell when you've done too much, your brain gets fried, you get sick of even hearing the name of your subject etc. etc. at that point, go on Facebook, go on iPlayer and watch some crap, whatever, just go and have some fun and come back the next day. Or if the exam's the next day, stop revising!

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 18

kaosu_souzousha

Original post by Jing_jing

I do like calculus though, I think it might be my favourite topic after induction even though it gives me endless amounts of frustration sometimes!

Ahaaha I had the same 5 min "blitz" on C3-C4 xD. According to my further maths teacher (she is from FM support network) FP2 is harder than FP3 and the reason for it is quite simple. FP3 is straight forward questions when you know the stuff but FP2 is "spot the trick or lose a mark". However FP3 is hellalot of calculus but it's brilliant :biggrin:

.
We are skipping FP2 and do FP4 instead.