2016 AQA Biology Unit 1 - Unofficial Mark scheme 2016

36/60 is usually an 'A'
20/20 i think is a 'C'
and a 'D' is 6/60
this is what i have heard from my teachers anyway...

did anyone else feel there wasn't enough time? there was too much reading like hello aqa give us time, the format putt me off as well, and I put lichens and mayfly larvae for the last one for water pollution...concentration of dissolved oxygen and lichens for air..sulfur dioxide in the air.. oh god b2 will be a shIIIIITteeee !!! but for the 0.67 i multiplied it by 100 so i got 67%................. urgh i hate myself aqa needs to evaporate i am not looking forward to c1

In the 6 Marker, I mentioned Vitamin C and it prevents Scurvey, would that be a valid point or did I just lose 2 marks?

In the 6 Marker, I mentioned Vitamin C and it prevents Scurvey, would that be a valid point or did I just lose 2 marks?

Your teachers are definitely being nice at the lower end I'm afraid!
The boundaries move year on year, but they've pretty consistently got higher as students have got better at answering the questions (in 2012 they were ridiculously low).
Lowest I've ever seen for a D is 11 marks, but on some papers it's been 20+ (e.g. last year's B3 you needed 27 for a D!)
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General Predictions

Plenty of papers always start with atomic structure, so that is charges, location of sub-atomic particles, electronic configuration, mass of atoms, etc.

Most likely there will be equations that will need to be balanced, they are getting harder each year though.

AQA has started asking questions about topics such as emulsions and hardening of oils. You should know the structure of the emulsifier and the conditions for hardening. If you are every stuck when it comes to talking about conditions with anything to do on C1 just write down that it needs to be hot with a catalyst.

Looking at examiner reports, they often complain saying that students rarely answer bromine water questions correctly. The examiners love asking questions about topics that students will have no clue on (as we've seen in B1 already).

Displacement reactions might come up. Along with this a lot of practical experiment questions pop up in exams, so you should know how to work out the mean, spot anomalies, drawing graphs, predictions from data, lines of best fit, etc.

A lot of organic chemistry is likely to come up because of the amount of it that was on the course. For example, ethanol, how it is used, how it is produced, the problems with it; alkanes and alkenes and polymers as well. These were topics that examiners commented on in last year's report.


Potential 6 mark questions:

Anything to do with limestone, so quarrying, its production and the cycle of limestone. The reason for this is because it is not in the new specification so we will be one of the last years to be examined about this.

Polymers may appear because it is a big part of the new specification. So you need to know how to draw polymers, ethical issues to do with plastics, etc.

The Miller-Urey experiment hasn't come up in a long while either.

The reason I got 66% is i put the sum into the calculator x 100 and before converting to 0.67 it said 2/3. I thought it was 2/3 as in a statistic out of 1 because it's the same for probability out of 1...meaning that 2/3 out of 1 = 66.67%. I don't know if that mistake makes sense to anyone but now I know I've defo dropped one mark Can only go downhill from here!

Same. I'm reassured.

Well you're right! It's beyond the scope of the spec, but I reckon so many people will make that point it'll be added to the post-standardisation mark scheme

Well you're right! It's beyond the scope of the spec, but I reckon so many people will make that point it'll be added to the post-standardisation mark scheme

Anyone else get 0.67%???

I wrote exactly the same thing

Well you're right! It's beyond the scope of the spec, but I reckon so many people will make that point it'll be added to the post-standardisation mark scheme

ok, i failed then! ops...

Missed out the calculation on the markscheme, The 0.67% of people that die from malaria.
Also, lichen can be used as an indicator of pollution.

im pretty sure it asked for an animal though