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How to get FULL UMS in AQA Biology Unit 4 and 5?

Bruno26

How do people achieve full UMS in Biol4 and Biol5; hence getting A*s?!
I appreciate any tips? :smile:

Reply 1

amood00

CGP and smash out the past papers. nuff said

Reply 2

Awais A

Original post by amood00

CGP and smash out the past papers. nuff said

I second this but use the textbook too even though it has a lot of irrelevant stuff its got more detail.

Reply 3

AdamskiUK

Original post by Bruno26

How do people achieve full UMS in Biol4 and Biol5; hence getting A*s?!
I appreciate any tips? :smile:

Original post by amood00

~~CGP~~ and smash out the past papers. nuff said

Avoid CGP revision guides like the plague. You will not get full UMS using them alone, or even as a base. They contain some random info which isn't relevant and omit important information. This goes for any subject. The reason for this is that they write up a page (for example, on meiosis) and they use the exact same page for every exam board that requires meiosis (all of them, I should hope) to be covered. Different exam boards want you to know different things about meiosis but CGP generalise everything, simplifies it and then prays for the best.

Use the official AQA textbooks - that's how I full UMSd Biol4. Be confident with your essays/knowledge of Bio1/2 and make sure you know all the possible nuances. I can't remember what it was but in my Biol5 test (June 2014) there was a 1/2 marker for reading 1 sentence in the official textbook. It was found nowhere else and was pretty damn obscure. Not seen that happen before except for my year's Chem5 paper which was the exact same.

Reply 4

amood00

Original post by AdamskiUK

Well there was always two schools of thought on CGP. The one above is the other one. Well OP its up-to you. But if you want to take it from me (I managed full UMS in papers in both Bio and Chem (CGP isnt good for maths)) and many of the freshers at my medical school; CGP is the way forward. Used it for both my GCSEs and A-levels and for 99% of my A-levels I did not open the textbooks because yes they are thorough but have so much irrelevant detail. As for the fact that CGP contain the same material for each board then that is outright BS. The above poster clearly hasn't opened a CGP book before. Their main selling point is that they are specific to each exam board and don't waste your time with irrelevant science.

Best of luck anyways

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 5

AdamskiUK

Original post by amood00

Original post by Bruno26

/facepalm

You don't *need* to take my word for it. Go pick up a CGP guide in WHSmith and take a look for yourself. You'll find pages with whole sections which are word-for-word the same in each guide. Also, if the clever UCLer could read, he would notice that I never stated or implied the whole book was the same, merely that big chunks are downright identical. Perhaps I was exaggerating a bit too much. Either way, you look inside the main textbook and boom, you'll find extra info. which is necessary for the exam. It's not up for debate - this is universally known. CGP guides are good to go over stuff before the exams.

ALSO, in no way am I discrediting the CGP *textbooks* - they were great for Chemistry.

EDIT: Maths, especially, was worse for this. The books were the same, just re-ordered.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 6

Bruno26

Thanks guys for your reply! I'll take what you both said to consideration and see what'll work for me :smile:

Will probably have a look at the CGP textbooks to see if it's good and if it is, I'll probably buy it :smile:

I'm just really impressed by people who get full UMS at A2 exams.. like the closest I've got to full UMS- is on Biol 4 Jan 2010 paper, with 98 UMS :tongue: