AQA Physics PHYA4 - Thursday 11th June 2015 [Exam Discussion Thread]

Quickly read through the multi choice doing the ones that don't require too much thought like the knowledge based ones. Then do the long answer ones. At the end go back to the other multi choice because if you run out of time you can easily guess a letter and there is a 25% chance of you getting it right but if you run out of time on long answer questions you're a little screwed. good luck.

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hey guys, i have a mock on this unit tomorrow, the mocks probably on june 14 paper but i haven't looked it up as i want to see how well I'm doing but just a question;
which is best to do first, multiple choice or the longer questions??
thanks

It seems after years of running them they still use the same system haha!

Oh really? Okay! Astro will take about 5 weeks to complete plus the EMPA meaning we will probably be more or less finished by Easter - eek!

Aw haha it's a tough decision - there's so much pressure to choose Oxbridge over everything else which is completely unfair. I had a letter from my college the other day saying "sorry you didn't get into Oxford, you'll be great elsewhere". As nice a sentiment as it was, they only do those "sorry" letters for the Oxbridge rejections, whereas my friend was absolutely gutted about being rejected from Bristol and didn't even receive an email from their tutor!

Ah I'm sure we'll see each other's username a lot over the next few months then! It doesn't seem real how fast time flies!


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Be aware that if it is the June 14 one, everyone at our college was at least a little short for time on it - it's very tight!

Thanks so much Dalek How's your revision going?


Posted from TSR Mobile

hey guys, i have a mock on this unit tomorrow, the mocks probably on june 14 paper but i haven't looked it up as i want to see how well I'm doing but just a question;
which is best to do first, multiple choice or the longer questions??
thanks

Yeah, it never gets any better :/

This half term is really short as well, only 5 weeks! Hopefully we get some time to prepare for the EMPA (should really start reading some past papers), definitely my weak point.

Yeah as soon as I say anything everyone's always like "go to Oxford!!!" :| also in the very weird situation where not only is one of my friends also going to go to Oxford, he ended up getting in to the same college as me! (fortunately he's very nice so it doesn't really affect my decision it's just strange). I'm taking my time to think it through, don't have to reply until May 6th. Yeah my friend got rejected from Wolverhampton (it was for nursing, so very competitive, but still), it wasn't her first choice or even her highest grades and they were really rude about it saying her application wasn't good enough??? Clearly it was good enough for everywhere else she applied, there's no need for that really.

Won't be able to get rid of me I only joined TSR this year, think it'll come in useful around exams though to have other people to discuss things with

Revision is going quite well I am getting in the 60s usually which means 110s UMS based on the Grade Boundaries(I got a couple of marks into the A* in my mock), although AQA can mark very harshly I know that from last year when I got a B in Unit 1 despite getting 68/70 in the mock.I am finding the multiple choice questions really easy and have got 100% on two papers so far and I am annoyed if I get a multiple choice question wrong even though I generally average around 23/25 there are the odd tricky ones though.

Yeah the term is far too short! I don't know how to prepare for the EMPA which is probably why I didn't do well last year!

Yeah for some reason Oxbridge are tiered above the rest, which is a stereotype that will take years to break. I'm not anti-Oxbridge - I went on summer schools at Oxford and Cambridge last year, but always held the view that it wasn't for everyone. In a similar manner, if you think you'll thrive off of it then go for it! It's a choice only you can make unfortunately :/

Ah no matter how long people have been members for it doesn't matter
I only really start to properly use it around exam time - GCSEs, AS, and now A2 hoping it works again this year!


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It's making exams seem very close! (I mean, they are quite close, but this isn't helping)
I don't really either, but reading the past papers to familiarise myself with the type of things they ask seems a good place to start and then I'll see what my teacher comes out with (my teacher... who taught GCSE before this year... I am filled with confidence...).

Yeah no uni is going to be the best for everyone. People just get a little too hung up on Oxbridge sometimes - I actually had originally settled on Sheffield before I was invited to interview at Oxford (I'd already visited/been interviewed everywhere else I applied so I started to think about decisions because I wasn't expecting an interview, definitely wasn't expecting an offer, so that changed my mind...), so I went through interviews without being stressed out really because I had nothing hanging on it and it made it a really nice experience. It was never "If I get into Oxford I'm definitely going", it was always "I'll give it a shot and see how it goes" because everywhere else I applied for Physics and Astrophysics. But people get so attached to the idea of Oxbridge sometimes that they forget that other unis are also very good.
I think the problem I have now isn't "right, two good courses at good unis, both with good things going for them, which one do I choose", it's more I want to go to both of them but obviously I have to choose one!

It seems like a useful place anyway - hopefully this way I can avoid driving any of my friends mad this way! (they are, overall, very against discussing how the exams went).

What subject have you applied for at uni (sorry if you already said before!)?

Yeah it's difficult because the revision guide doesn't include much on the EMPA either!

Ah you should try and look for other ways to compensate for your teacher - have you looked at some of the YouTube videos for physics? They're pretty handy. I'm not saying that what you're going through is justifiable though, but I'd hate for you to suffer as a result!

Ah I totally get what you mean - the interview process for me was after receiving 4 offers from my other unis so I wasn't nervous. I just went in there and obviously wasn't their cup of tea!

Ah I love discussing how the exams went! (Hence the threads). I'm odd like that - I just want to know as much as I can about what others thought and wrote so that I can reassure/console myself and get a gist of how I did in comparison! It helps me avoid disappointment in the summer if I can say with certainty after an exam "that didn't go well".

Not sure I've even said before!
I've applied for Computer Science. I want to go to Bath, but will probably have Southampton as an insurance. That said, both their offers are identical so the whole insurance thing is kinda redundant!





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Yeah EMPA resources are few and far between :/ I'll try and dig out the booklet we had last year for it and see if there's anything useful in it.

I can pick it up out of the revision guide etc easily enough I'm just lazy and I like complaining about him

Everyone said I must have done really well on the PAT to get an offer, they all thought I must have done not that well in interviews, but then it turns out I only got one mark above interview threshold on the PAT so they must have gone well!

Yeah I like seeing all the opinions on it and comparing how everything went - it's nice to know which stupid mistakes I made in advance! I pretty much predicted my grades last year just based on that, no surprises is much nicer.

If I go for Sheffield as my first choice then that's my joint lowest offer so yeah, slightly pointless insurance!

They are! It's really hard to judge how hard the EMPA will be by the experiment's difficulty as well!

Oh, if you could that would be great!

Ahah. You're allowed to complain on here. The (near enough) anonymity is a blessing.

Oh wow, how do you know your score? I might request feedback on my application.


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I'll find that on Tuesday or Wednesday then. As far as I can remember it's mostly about stuff like errors etc, and then we had one booklet after AS exams about logs etc that might be related to possible EMPAs, maybe if capacitors are involved?

The wonders of the internet

Just email your main college that interviewed you and ask for feedback, yeah! I kind of wish I asked for interview feedback as well now I know how the PAT went but I don't want to be a pain and keep emailing :/

Oh right! That sounds very useful. I'm sure it would be very helpful if you found the time to upload - then again, no pressure . I was debating setting up an EMPA thread but I realised, unlike an exam, people do it at different times and it may invoke cheating etc :/

Ah I'll feel odd emailing now! Are you sure I've not left it too late?



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I definitely will if there's anything good in it, or I'll type up the relevant bits yeah we might as well just discuss EMPA prep in here or something, wouldn't want people cheating :/

From the university website: "Feedback on admissions decisions should be requested from the college which considered the application, before 30 April in the year after the application was made." so yeah I wouldn't worry!

Yeah I don't want this or any other thread shut down for cheating - but we can certainly discuss our preparations

Oh right! I'll email them now then ! Not expecting a response for about another 4 weeks though I assume ahaha.

Definitely not, that would be sad! Preparations sounds safe (and useful!)

If you just ask for your score it'll probably come back faster than if you ask for interview feedback as well, but seeing as it's after the busy time when they'd just sent out letters you shouldn't have a long wait at all

We didn't even get a mock last year so fingers crossed! Even if we don't get much more than the marks back and a quick look through it'd be better than nothing.

I hate waiting for results, I always just want to know how I've done!
Same here, even people who're waiting for offers or whatever know what they're going to choose.