Ccea chemistry help

I will be taking Chemistry on as an A Level. I have never worked with the exam board CCEA before and therefore I'm unsure what books I should get to help me.

I'll be doing my best to get an A, therefore anything that I can do over the Summer would be not only a great help, but necessary.

If you have set Chemistry AS/A2 with CCEA then any assistance and/or advice that you have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

I've just finished my A level Chemistry with CCEA and am waiting for my result in August, I found that chemguide was a fantastic website for most things throughout the two years and although it isn't specifically for our spec, it has most things you need. Also, memorising answers from mark schemes and looking at the chief examiner reports are very useful and give you an edge. Also, the definition PDF and acceptable colour booklet ccea provide (on their website) is very helpful. A lot of people say that chemistry a level and especially CCEA chemistry is very difficult but if you enjoy it and do work for it, it's very managable. The lowest mark I got in any of the modules was 90% so my advice should hopefully be useful :P

Wow! What would you suggest doing over the Summer for Chemistry then? I recently bought the Unit 1 AS guide and I'm going to read that, would you suggest getting Unit 2 also?

If you don't mind me asking, what other A Levels did you pick?

Thanks so much for commenting!

Thanks No problem.

Yeah sure if you're going to buy it you may as well buy it now. I didn't have access to the guides so I can't really say how useful they are but I imagine very. If you're applying to Oxbridge or the likes for chemistry/ medicine/ engineering then I would definitely recommend looking at AS and beyond over the summer (for interviews) but otherwise, I think the system has changed so as to do away with January modules, but I could be wrong, so just bear in mind that if you teach yourself the course or parts of it now, you'll probably have to keep going over it for the year just to keep it fresh. For instance, last summer I got the A2 CCEA physics book and did all the notes and homeworks which kinda meant that I had nothing to do in class the whole year and although the teacher was going over everything again I sort of neglected physics a bit (and at the time was a little out of touch with the module). Having said that, it really helped cut down time spent revising at the end as everything came back so teaching yourself parts or all of the course is definitely beneficial even from a confidence point of view.

I do physics, chemistry, maths and further maths (both maths are edexcel).
What do you plan on taking?

I'd just like to say how great it is to be able to speak to you. I am choosing Biology, Chemistry, Maths and Politics - hoping to do either Medicine or Law. What are you hoping to do?

Why did your school do Edexcel? The sixth form that I'm moving to have CCEA for all their available subjects.

I would love to be able to get someone's notes but I don't know anyone who has finished their course. Did you get other people's notes and are there any websites that you'd suggest using?

For Maths there are lots of videos but as for Biology and Chemistry I'm unsure.

Thank you again for the amount of help that you've provided, I really appreciate it!

It's no problem

For maths I think edexcel is meant to be slightly easier at AS but I don't think there's too much difference. To be honest, for chemistry I didn't really do that many notes, I just took from chemguide and ccea and any booklets our chemistry teacher gave us so I can't really help there, sorry

Examsolutions is fantastic for maths and further, so unfortunately I don't think there's anything like that for the sciences but khanacademy does do good (out of spec) biology and chemistry videos which I sometimes use.

Both those careers sound very good and well paid as well which is always good haha
I got an offer for electrical engineering at Imperial college in London, I wanted to do general engineering to be honest, so I could keep chemistry in the mix but I didn't get into do that

Do you have any ideas about where you want to go to?

Examsolutions is great, I use them and Maths247 on Youtube, they're both very helpful. I have watched KhanAcademy and love Sal's video on Euler's Identity! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgNtPOgFje0).

I'm quite fearful of A Levels as my current school is within the lowest schools in all of Northern Ireland.. But my current grades are still well up there. Fortunately, Universities look at the school you went to and take that into consideration. To give an example, I was the only person that got an A in science, all the rest got Cs or else failed the course entirely. Thankfully, I'm moving to a good Sixth Form now (B.R.A., if you know of them).

Why can't you do General? I want you to be able to do General, surely there is some way they'll allow you! Is Imperial where you wanted to go?

For me, financially it would be best to go to Queens, however Oxford have a good scheme that sorts out financial difficulties so I will apply to there at least. My girlfriend lives in England, not too far from Oxford so that would be great.

Where else did you want to go?

Yeah maths247 is awesome as well. I love that video!
B.R.A is meant to be really good like, I know a guy called Ruairi Linden who goes there (I think he would be starting AS next year as well) but I haven't spoken to him in ages.

I wanted to do general engineering at Cambridge but I didn't get an interview (which was quite embarrassing), but it was mainly due to getting 74% in M1 (they didn't seem to notice I got 100% in M2 but hey) and not getting above a 90% average across my AS levels so although Cambridge was definitely my preferred choice, when I went over to do my interview, Imperial was really nice so I'm still quite excited about going there.

Queens is really good especially for medicine and law and people were asking me why I decided to go to London instead (seeing as how expensive it is) but the way I see it, you're going to be in debt anyway so you might as well be a little bit more in debt for the course you really want to do.

Especially for Oxford it would be really good to research any work experience or any schemes they recommend on the subject website, like I wish I had done that earlier but I only thought of doing that like summer last year when it was mostly too late.

B.R.A is such an improvement from my current school (at GCSE my current school is 181/206 as opposed to B.R.A who are 41/206..).

How did you pull a higher mark in M2 than M1? Do you not develop on everything from M1 when in M2?

Also, when you do Maths do you know which modules are usually taken? Or how many modules have to be taken aside from the core ones? I've seen S1, M1 and D1. Not sure how it works!

What work experience did you do?

Yeah haha that's a pretty big difference in rankings like.
You're right, M2 does build on M1 and I got everything right on that M1 paper apart from 1 question that I bombed and didn't get very many method marks for. M2 grade boundaries are usually lower as well so I think that makes it easier.

As regards to other maths modules, I can only speak for edexcel but essentially it's a less structured system than it originally looks. Again, this is for edexcel but for maths (AS and A2) you need C1-4 and any two from either s1 and s2, m1 and m2, d1 and d2 or any combination of two from s1,m1 and d1.

For the A star, you only need 180/200 UMS from C3 and C4 and 480UMS overall. It gets more complicated for further as you can swap modules about and stuff but anyway, s1 and m1 are usually done but I hear d1 and d2 are very easy. For edexcel and presumably CCEA you can technically take modules early (I did C4 in January and thankfully got it out of the way so I didn't have to do it only once in june and risk losing my a star and offer) and this should apply to any of the modules (although elimination of January ones makes that more difficult).

There's also a "cashing in" of modules system you might be familiar with in order to get your grade at AS and A2 so if you take modules early, it's useful to check what is module is contributing to what. Again that applies to more further maths when you can use maths modules for further and vice-versa. It's definitely a system you need to know about especially if you're taking modules early or repeating.

I did my school work experience in the electrical and electronic department of Queens which was really good and then last Halloween, I did a week of chemical engineering work experience in Kilroot power plant in Carrickfergus.

There were some Cambridge run engineering like week-long schemes I would have liked to have gone to as well, but I found out about it too late.

You're allowed to repeat? I have my last GCSE Maths exam on Friday there. Unfortunately, we did the modular course and it messed everything up as I was told it was a Linear course. All in all, I picked up As in both of the "easy modules" and in all of the 7 papers I've practiced with for the "hard" module I haven't gotten lower than 95%.

My school sort of messed everything up with regards to Higher exams as only around 20 people sat them. In my science course I didn't get taught a third of the course (Physics) so I'm sort of worried if B.R.A do Mechanics..

Would the school pick the modules for you, or is there flexibility in choice?

Also, did you repeat any units? I hear that some universities don't like it when students repeat units but I'm not sure of the authenticity of my source when it comes to that.

By the way, I hope you're having a great day!