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2015 aqa science past papers

Has anyone noticed that they are much harder than the older versions?
Especially with the way the questions are formated.
Reply 1
Avatar for 0lut0
0lut0
20
You didn't need to say this...now i'm scared. But ya you're right and the grade boundaries are being pushed higher as well.
I found the C1 B1 and P1 quite hard. The C2 and B2 were fine and the P2 was easy
No, I found C1 and P1 to be fine. B1 was an wtf becuse we did it for a mock and i got the first few GRAPH questions wrong because it was so ambigious and the percentage change!!! C3 was like wtf, they ran out of questions n were making em up LOL
Original post by 0lut0
You didn't need to say this...now i'm scared. But ya you're right and the grade boundaries are being pushed higher as well.


are they? how much do you need to get a*? I thought grade boundaries are determined after the exams have been marked/moderated. They usually fluctaute each year depending on the difficulty of the exams. e.g. if everyone in the country got less than half of the marks on an exam, the grade boundaries would decrease .
Original post by igness-reel
I found the C1 B1 and P1 quite hard. The C2 and B2 were fine and the P2 was easy


Same! I think P1 was most difficult.
Original post by shohaib712
are they? how much do you need to get a*? I thought grade boundaries are determined after the exams have been marked/moderated. They usually fluctaute each year depending on the difficulty of the exams. e.g. if everyone in the country got less than half of the marks on an exam, the grade boundaries would decrease .


45/60, usually, this only fluctuates by two/three marks (decrease/increase). This is therefore approximately 85 % and counts for 90UMS so technically it isnt hard. However you need to get 90 UMS across all three exams and on the ISA.
Original post by Oblivion99
45/60, usually, this only fluctuates by two/three marks (decrease/increase). This is therefore approximately 85 % and counts for 90UMS so technically it isnt hard. However you need to get 90 UMS across all three exams and on the ISA.


Doesn't seem hard. how many marks do i need on the ISA's to get 90 UMS?
Is there a way of revising the answers (like understanding what i need to include in my answers to get full marks on the exam?) because i usually get 50-54/60 on my science exams. I want to get higher marks just incase I don't do well on a diffferent unit.
Reply 8
Avatar for JT_888
JT_888
20
Original post by shohaib712
Has anyone noticed that they are much harder than the older versions?
Especially with the way the questions are formated.


I think you mean that the questions in each unit can be harder than some years as some sections of the unit aren't included in the test. I'm in Year 10 atm and I have done a few past papers from 2015 for B1 and C1 if I remember correctly and didn't find it too hard although the difficulty does vary throughout the questions in the paper. Personally, I don't think there's a problem with the way AQA formats their questions though occasionally that could happen but from what I've heard OCR are even worse for GCSE Sciences.
Original post by JTran38
I think you mean that the questions in each unit can be harder than some years as some sections of the unit aren't included in the test. I'm in Year 10 atm and I have done a few past papers from 2015 for B1 and C1 if I remember correctly and didn't find it too hard although the difficulty does vary throughout the questions in the paper. Personally, I don't think there's a problem with the way AQA formats their questions though occasionally that could happen but from what I've heard OCR are even worse for GCSE Sciences.


sort of.
I meant that the style of the questions are different to the old papers. e.g. the new papers are asking a variety of types of questions such as introducing some ISA questions, fill in blank questions and more bigger questions which involve explaining models/concepts into the papers.
Reply 10
Avatar for JT_888
JT_888
20
Original post by shohaib712
sort of.
I meant that the style of the questions are different to the old papers. e.g. the new papers are asking a variety of types of questions such as introducing some ISA questions, fill in blank questions and more bigger questions which involve explaining models/concepts into the papers.


I've definitely noticed some fill in the gap and more of those 6 mark questions which require you to explain certain concepts etc which I think is a good idea to some extent.
Original post by shohaib712
Doesn't seem hard. how many marks do i need on the ISA's to get 90 UMS?
Is there a way of revising the answers (like understanding what i need to include in my answers to get full marks on the exam?) because i usually get 50-54/60 on my science exams. I want to get higher marks just incase I don't do well on a diffferent unit.


They to tend to repeat questions and have specific guidelines for the answer, so it will come potent for the exam. However, biology/physics rely strongly on data questions so you need to know how to analyse/interpret graphs. Thirdly, its usually 44/50 to scrape an A* on the ISA and that is 90UMS. However, 45/50 would probably be 91 UMS.
I was in year 10 when I sat my core science exams in june 2015, in our school b1 was the worstly done exam,like only 20% got an a/a* on that paper because every question on that b1 had a graph, it was such a shame that the b1 paper felt more like a statistics paper. To make matters even worse, even tho that exam paper was challenging, the grade boundaries were still high as 47/60 for an a* which was the highest so far. I have never seen such a hard b1 paper in my entire life.
where are you guys getting the old papers from

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