The Student Room Group

Tips on Reaching A*?

Any tips on moving an A grade essay of roughly 19-21 marks to 23-25 marks?
Reply 1
Its known in A2 as 'Stretch and Challenge' - the A2 exams are built upon so that students who have high commercial awareness, examples and knowledge of the whole specification get the highest marks. Its taking the analysis and evaluation to the next level..recognising that the data question will be 7-9months out of date, so if you acknowledge that and answer the question with reference to recent economic events whilst doing the standard of defining EVERYTHING, and giving a solid chain of reasoning - an A* will be a possibility
Reply 2
Original post by Hobes1
Its known in A2 as 'Stretch and Challenge' - the A2 exams are built upon so that students who have high commercial awareness, examples and knowledge of the whole specification get the highest marks. Its taking the analysis and evaluation to the next level..recognising that the data question will be 7-9months out of date, so if you acknowledge that and answer the question with reference to recent economic events whilst doing the standard of defining EVERYTHING, and giving a solid chain of reasoning - an A* will be a possibility


Great thanks
Just be an absolute tank and go ape with relevant economic knowledge. I'd recommend knowing a few economists view points

so liberals such as Milton Friedman, Fredrick Hayek
and then interventionists like Keynes
Reply 4
Original post by Abdul-Karim
Just be an absolute tank and go ape with relevant economic knowledge. I'd recommend knowing a few economists view points

so liberals such as Milton Friedman, Fredrick Hayek
and then interventionists like Keynes


Thanks. Are there any diagrams that can be used that are not in the spec?
Original post by samboJ
Thanks. Are there any diagrams that can be used that are not in the spec?


Not that I know off. Besides it's not necessary. You can adapt diagrams to formulate new ideas and opinions but that's about it.
Reply 6
Original post by Abdul-Karim
Not that I know off. Besides it's not necessary. You can adapt diagrams to formulate new ideas and opinions but that's about it.


Okay. Thanks :smile:
Original post by samboJ
Thanks. Are there any diagrams that can be used that are not in the spec?

Lol - There is economics beyond the spec you know. For example, kuznets curve etc, spec only scrapes the surface
Reply 8
Do these tips apply to all boards? I'm from Edexcel, so do tips such as defining everything and citing different economists' viewpoints (like, must we actually mention "Keynesian", "Monetarist" etc, or can we just use their points without specifying which economist has that viewpoint?) apply to Edexcel? :/ Please help!
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by Hobes1
Its known in A2 as 'Stretch and Challenge' - the A2 exams are built upon so that students who have high commercial awareness, examples and knowledge of the whole specification get the highest marks. Its taking the analysis and evaluation to the next level..recognising that the data question will be 7-9months out of date, so if you acknowledge that and answer the question with reference to recent economic events whilst doing the standard of defining EVERYTHING, and giving a solid chain of reasoning - an A* will be a possibility


Do you have any advice on where the best place is to get up to date with current relevant economics statistics of the UK?
I have been keeping up with current economic events and contemporaries, however the specification indicates that we need to have an understanding of economics events that occurred in the UK up to 10 years. Now, I do have some idea of the financial crisis in 2008 but that's as far as my knowledge goes. Can someone fill me in pertaining to UK economic events of recent years?
Reply 11
Original post by Tinglay
Do you have any advice on where the best place is to get up to date with current relevant economics statistics of the UK?


Find out the important data, so GDP growth in UK, a Comparative Advantage example, Interest rates (same for 5 years done f all until recently), and other macroeconomic data - always have a country to compare it with i.e. in recent recession what did UK fall to compared with Germany, and UK current GDP is 1% and despite recent emerging market crisis china is on 7.4 (I think). Also mention MINT economies as an example...all of which can be found off any reliable google source/data bank/make some **** up
Original post by allycsf
Do these tips apply to all boards? I'm from Edexcel, so do tips such as defining everything and citing different economists' viewpoints (like, must we actually mention "Keynesian", "Monetarist" etc, or can we just use their points without specifying which economist has that viewpoint?) apply to Edexcel? :/ Please help!


No point, stick to the standard stuff.

Original post by Tinglay
Do you have any advice on where the best place is to get up to date with current relevant economics statistics of the UK?


Government websites or BBC, but there seems to be an obsession with real-world application when you can pick data from the text and gain application marks. You should only have to learn the basic things like the Great Recession, globalisation, etc
hI every one to help students prepare for their exams this summer i have kindly made a website full of revision resources, currently i covered economics,physics and computer science at ahmedabokor.weebly.com .
Original post by Abdul-Karim
Just be an absolute tank and go ape with relevant economic knowledge. I'd recommend knowing a few economists view points

so liberals such as Milton Friedman, Fredrick Hayek
and then interventionists like Keynes


This is very pedantic of me but I think you'd get picked up on describing Hayek and Friedman as "liberals". If anything they fall under the political ideology of libertarianism. In terms of where they were situated in the schools of economic thought, Friedman was a Monetarist and Hayek was part of the Austrian school.
Original post by PaulKrugman
This is very pedantic of me but I think you'd get picked up on describing Hayek and Friedman as "liberals". If anything they fall under the political ideology of libertarianism. In terms of where they were situated in the schools of economic thought, Friedman was a Monetarist and Hayek was part of the Austrian school.


You are correct for the most part. Their schools of thoughts are often associated with libertarianism these days, but classical economists had been using the word "liberalism" for their ideologies for years until the left wing morons took their word and expropriate it.

Unless you are Paul Krugman himself, in which case, I'll just shut the **** up lol.

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