Advice for A-level exam boards

I do OCR Salters Chemistry...exam papers are laid out well, but there's a hell of a lot of content to learn! AQA Biology on the other hand, not quite so much to learn content-wise...but the exams are annoying. Lots of data analysis (if you love graph reading you'll be fine) and very picky mark schemes :L


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I hate the picky answers/graph analysis questions lol. What do you know about OCR? Not the salters one

You'll definitely hate AQA then haha. Not much really - I don't know anyone who does the normal OCR course, but I'd guess the content is similar in most Chemistry courses really...though if between AQA and OCR, OCR would probably go into more depth with explaining things

I dont mind the depth, but AQA are looking for specific answers rather than explaining your knowledge, a great deal of exam technique is required in AQA.

What would you outline the pros and cons of OCR as?

As I've done Salters, I'll say for that...Pros being that you cover a lot of material in depth, exam paper questions are generally logically laid out, and you can actually explain things, and aren't having to be as tightly tied to the mark scheme as with AQA.

I suppose you could also view the workload as a negative thing, because it's quite a lot, and some concepts take a little while to understand. But putting the difficult stuff aside, it's a good course

Is it possible to do your ISA/EMPA externally not in your school?

Is it possible to do your ISA/EMPA externally not in your school?

*unlikely

No i know a centre where they do ISAs, but if my college are doing the EMPA I would rather do the ISA, would I be able to do it externally?

I would like to take the following subjects for AS-level in September :

Biology
Chemistry
Physics
Mathematics

And I would like to drop either Maths or Physics at AS depending on how I do,

Can you please advise me on which the 'easiest' and most user friendly boards are for these subjects? Because i've heard AQA are overly specific on short precise sentences etc, whereas I've had a look at an OCR exam paper and I like it's format..

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I did AQA for chemistry and biology and it was fine.

The markschemes are generally very lenient as long as you have got the concept correct you will get the marks. An example:

Question: there is an equilibrium A <--> B + C. More of B is added, explain what changes would occur (2 marks)

Markscheme:
•Shift to left (1) (also accept: 'B and C will react together' and/or 'more of A will be made')
•To oppose the change (1)

Note: you don't have to word it exactly like the markscheme, e.g. 'this will oppose the change' would get the second mark just like 'to oppose the change' would.

Obviously there are some questions that require specific key words to be mentioned, but all exam boards will have those. But as you can see it isn't exactly stringent where you have to word it exactly as the markscheme requires.

Also the AQA textbooks are very very good. I bought them all from WHSmith and used them at home rather than making notes in class.

I did edexcel for maths and that was very good too - most people do edexcel for maths so I would advise this as past papers and markschemes and edexcel-specific help is readily available on the internet.

My final A-level results were Maths: A*, Chemistry: A, Biology: A (just so you know that I know what I am talking about)

Pls don't ever do ocr b physics

Why not? What's wrong with it?

It's just terrible you don't even want to go there, even OCR A but never B, it's just so stupid and the exam was like not even relevant to the course specifics and like thousands of people complained and ugh just don't please

Ok great, thanks for your advice! Would you recommend physics at AS though? Everyone says it is difficult, however I have an interest in it and I think that everything is difficult if you don't work for it, and I can see myself potentially taking another 'easier' subject and not working for it due to my lack of interest. What's your opinion on 'easy' A-levels?

For the course I want to do, Biology and Chemistry are a MUST, I will need 2 more subjects and I can drop one of those after AS.

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