Any advice on how to achieve high UMS?

Any advice and tips on how to get 90UMS+ in the AS level sciences would be much appreciated.

Just learn your stuff? :giggle:

Knowing the content is crucial, obviously...

Past papers are awesome. Get your head around the way marks are usually allocated (e.g. the specific words they look for, questions that always come up, etc.) and do as many papers as you can :fluffy:

Reply 2

thecatwithnohat

Replace your night time reading with examiners' reports before you go to bed.

When on holiday, read mark schemes while sunbathing the beach

Reply 3

Diligence

Original post by Neuth

Just learn your stuff? :giggle:

When did you start revising intensively and how many hours did you spend revising a day?

Reply 4

Neuth

Original post by Diligence

When did you start revising intensively and how many hours did you spend revising a day?

I just did constant stuff throughout the year... didn't 'start' as such - it's important to do things as you go along. So essentially I was doing revision after the very first lessons :fluffy:

There's no "right" amount of hours. It varied for me. Some days I had much more to do than others - I was doing work at least 2/3 hours a day though, I'd say (this includes work set in lessons, although for me, that was often work I could incorporate into revision!)

What subjects are you studying then?

Reply 5

yasaminO_o

Original post by Diligence

Any advice and tips on how to get 90UMS+ in the AS level sciences would be much appreciated.

Biology: cram the night before
Chemistry: work all year (at least an hour a night) learn your definitions and do every past paper
Maths: just do the exercises you get for homework and past papers leading up to the exams

Can't really say much for Physics as I didn't take it

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 6

EastGuava

Original post by yasaminO_o

Biology: cram the night before

Lolwat?

Reply 7

Student403

Can only really advise you on physics... the UMS tends to be quite generous (or it was with Edexcel, my exam board). This summer, only 56/80 raw marks on Unit 1 and 63/80 raw on Unit 2 would have gotten you full UMS on both papers.

So aim to get EVERY question correct. And I don't mean "try" to and if you don't, say "Oh woops - better luck next time".

I mean don't stop revisiting mistakes and material until you are getting over 90%+ raw marks. I guarantee with enough past papers & revision in that style, you will get full UMS in every paper. And if it comes to exam time and you're still struggling, at least you'll end up with over 90% UMS in each :biggrin:

Reply 8

yasaminO_o

Original post by EastGuava

Lolwat?

Literally I pissed around in Biology my whole AS year, scraped Bs and Cs in class tests and crammed the night before both my exams and got 100% UMS in each of my exams and 97% UMS overall lmao

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 9

EastGuava

Original post by yasaminO_o

Literally I pissed around in Biology my whole AS year, scraped Bs and Cs in class tests and crammed the night before both my exams and got 97% UMS overall and 100% UMS in each of my exams lmao

That's crazy :eek:

Reply 10

pippa-1998

Learn your definitions, that's really helpful as you can pick up an extra few marks that you wouldn't get otherwise. There's this app called Memrise which I used, I just did it on my breaks at work but it definitely improved my marks. Also I think practice papers are the best way to revise for A-levels in the Sciences as there is much more application than GCSE. There's still some recall, so you do need to go over your notes but you will probably find the best way to get the high UMS is through the practice papers. :smile:

Reply 11

yasaminO_o

Original post by EastGuava

That's crazy :eek:

Don't try it for other subjects though it won't work. I worked hard in all my other subjects all year and got Bs in Chem, Maths and French at AS, so I worked stupidly hard to bump them up in Year 13. Hard work will pay off, but you don't need to do an awful lot for biology