Geography B Edexcel GCSE Unit 3 (DME) June 6th 2014 Discussion

How is everybody feeling about this test? And how do you think you did in Unit 1 & Unit 2 and what grade are you aiming for?
For me, my controlled assessment is an A*, Unit 2 went really well but Unit 1 was the opposite!

exactly the same situation as you tbh... But I am definitely better at decision making than unit 1 so i guess i am feeling okay. I wouldn't mind an A tbh but i really don't want a B.

not feeling too good about it, admittedly, seeing as I bodged it in my mocks.

Same with me! I honestly don't want a B. I'm hoping for an A/A*. I don't think this paper is too hard but since they've changed the spec this year so we don't have a brief overview of what the paper is on, it could be more difficult than usual

ikr i hate being the guinea pig year i guess we just have to answer the questions really careful and hope the grade boundaries are in our favour.

I'm feeling okay about this one. Everything so far has been okay, although I'm slightly disappointed with unit 1. I just hope I do well in this one! I really would like to get an A*.

This is the only geography exam I'm looking forward to.
In my school most of the geography students failed the Unit 1 mock (there's about a hundred or so of us). In fact our head said that he had never seen so many Fs in his life!
Our teachers are so crap that we didn't even get a Unit 2 mock.
As for the Unit 3 mock (we did 3 but not 2? God I hate my geography teacher) everyone improved. I got from a F in Unit 1 to an A* in Unit 3.

What I'm tring to say is, that all you have to do is decide, bullcrap a lot, and use only one case study as an example of how your plan will work. Also, the booklet we get in the exam is much shorter than in previous years.

Good luck guys!

So you did mocks but not the real GCSE exams? Or you did the real ones? I'm confused haha
And I agree with you; we have to decide on an option and talk a lot of rubbish but what do you mean about a case study? And is our exam shorter than previous years?

Haha no I did the real exam too- but basically the mocks went terrible. (Always fun to have your teacher scream at you for forgetting to look at the back of the exam which had an 8 marker )

About Unit 3: You get a problem described to you, and like 2 or 3 options to choose from to solve it. When you select your option you need to back up your argument with a short paragraph about a case study that followed the same approach in solving another problem.
I don't know how clear this is so I'll give you an example:
You get information about how to improve the life of people in Bolivia, as they have issues with trade and a large population. (makin this up btw)
So in your answer you could mention China's anti-natalist policy in order to decrease the size, and evaluate how successful it is.

You only need a smal section on it, and if you can't link it to anything then a) don't include a case study b) make one up.

As for the length of the exam its 1hr30mins. I've never seen a previous exam so I don't know how the time compares. But I do know that we get a smaller booklet, as they got their booklet before the exam.