Jade's aim for AAAA at AS

Good luck with all your subjects! I did exactly the same as you last year and I definitely found history to be the hardest subject - any questions you have, feel free to ask!

Although I'm applying for medicine, not biomedicine but you can still ask away!

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Hey! I am finding history so hard, how did you manage all the information? I find with science it just logically is in my head but there are so many individual facts to learn with history that take so long to drum into my long term memory. Are you in Yr.13?

It's impossible to learn EVERYTHING but I would say something I found useful was a drawing up a time line, I found this particularly helpful for the breadth of study section (mine was British empire) because there was a million and one dates to learn. Another thing is to just keep learning it and testing yourself.

I felt exactly the same when I was doing history, although tbf I think bio is the same.

And yeah! I'm in year 13 now and dropped history (most people in my college did lol)

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Yea that sounds like the best way of revising for it, i just need to work at it and build the knowledge up i think.
I have another question, if that's okay, how much harder does maths get in year 13? Because i really want to drop history but i'm worried i won't be able to because i will end up finding maths hard and have to drop that instead?

Personally and a lot of my friends said this as well, the jump between year 12 (core 2) and year 13 (core 3) was HORRIBLE. Everyone really struggled with Core 3 and the teachers said core 4 was harder. But now Core 4 is much easier than Core 3 so it gets better during the year. However I'd say history is gonna be harder than Maths because you have to do coursework in the second year along with learning more content than first year.

But that's my take on it, it depends on whether or not you currently find Core 1 and Core relatively easy - if you're not struggling too much so far you should be fine next year. Another thing with Maths is that the more you practice the easier it gets.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Good luck !! I'm in year 12 and i do the same subjects as you except from History where I do Economics I will be watching your thread Please do keep us updated
Also this is my thread : https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4228678

23/12/2016
Welcome to my first update post on my Grow my Grades thread! Here is what i did today:

8am - 10 am
I did two hours of History revision on Churchill using my flashcards. I covered about 100 flashcards in two hours. The key thing i learnt from my work today was about peoples opinions on Churchill and also about the percentages agreement and spheres of influence at the Fourth Moscow Conference in October 1944, this then lead to Stalin not getting involved in British backing of the Royalists in Greece. My target is to learn more key dates to put everything into context and so it is clearer in my mind.

10am - 12pm
I did two hours of Biology revision on Biological molecules. I covered about 150 flashcards in two hours. The key thing i learnt from this work today was about semi conservative replication and cofactor transport and why these are important for functioning in the human body and what happens when this goes wrong. My target is to go over my flashcards one more time before attempting a past paper to put my knowledge into practice.

2pm - 4pm
I did two hours of Chemistry revision on atoms ions and compounds. I did this by doing two past papers from the OCR website. On the first paper i did (http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/57906-question-paper-unit-f321-01-atoms-bonds-and-groups.pdf) i got 78% which i was annoyed at as i mucked up on one 3 mark question and one 2 mark question which drastically borught my grade down and they were silly mistakes, however i have learnt to be more aware of reading the question and will understand this next time. In the second paper i did (http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/61530-question-paper-unit-f321-01-atoms-bonds-and-groups.pdf) i got 92% which i was very happy with, especially since we hadn't covered some of the stuff yet such as ionsiation energy.

Overall i have had a relatively successful day, but i need to make sure not to get distracted during history revision.
Happy revising,
Probably Jade

Hey Guys!
So, i realise I am a little late started one of these threads, but I am just so busy with the jump from GCSE to AS. So, I didn't participate in 'Grow your Grades' last year but I managed to achieve 12A*s and 2A's in my exams, which I was really happy with, and hope that the hard work will pay off again this year. I am lucky enough to go to a school that does A/S levels still so will be taking the exams at the end of this year, and feel that this is extra important as these are the grades i will be applying to uni with next year, i will be writing more about universities as the year goes on.

What subjects do you take? This year I have chosen to take Maths, Biology, Chemistry and History

What do you want to do after A-levels? I am currently looking at doing Biomedicine, preferably as a russel group uni, but currently I am looking at Oxford, King's College London and Edinburgh as my favourites. When i go visit them next summer I can update you on that!

What grades are you hoping to achieve this year and next year? So, my target grades this year are four A's (just to clarify there are no A*s at AS), and my school is doing this system when they divide each grade up into three sections, so there are A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3. This means the percentage you got within those grades, so say an A3 was 80% and i got 78% i would be on a B1. I hope that makes sense. Next year i aim for an A* in biology and then A's in the other two i continue which will probably be Maths and Chemistry.

Any other aims? I hope to get more work experience and attend more lectures to build up my CV. I have got work experience in February half term at my local university in the Biomedical research center, so i can update you guys on that when it comes around. I am also apply for Nuffield and UNIQ so, hopefully i will get places on those as well.

How do you revise? I use http://www.cram.com/ to make flashcards and then I learn them. The great thing is that you can sync them to your phone and then do them anywhere, so I can make the most of my revision time by doing them on the bus or waiting for something. To learn them, instead of just doing them in my head I like to write down the answers in black/blue ink and then i turn over and correct them in green ink. Here is an example photo of how i do this for history. Then, on Cram, you can tick whether you got it wrong or right and then after you have gone through them all it makes you redo the ones you got wrong. As I go I will link my flashcards so you guys can use them too! I also really love watching the 'Crash course' videos on Youtube by Hank and John Green, they are on practically any subject so even if you don't do the same as me you can go check them out!


So seeing as i’m a little late to the game I thought I would clue you in on the types of results I have been getting on my tests so far for each subject. I am really lucky that we have regular tests at school so that I can constantly see what level I am at. I’m not going to go into much detail about each test as there are quite a few, however I will do this for all tests I have in the future. I have two teachers for each subject so they each teach a different unit or part of the course.

Biology: Exam board - OCR. Target Grade: A


Maths. Exam board - AQA. Target Grade: A


Chemistry. Exam board - OCR. Target Grade: A


History. Exam Board - OCR. Target Grade: A


I'm trying not to over face this thread with too much info and writing and stuff because i tend to do that a bit, so one last thing, here is a 'table' of the hours of revision i have done so you can see where i am at!

Biology: 43 hours
Chemistry: 50 hours
History: 46.5 hours
Maths: 28 hours

So usually i average about 2 hours a day during school week of revision and 6 hours each days at the weekend.

I look forward to growing my grades with yall!

ProbablyJade

Those are amazing GCSE grades and your resources are so useful! It's a shame you didn't make a GYG thread at GCSE, as it would have been great to follow Best of luck with all your studies and I'll be following your thread

Thank you! Sorry i haven't posted over the weekend - i spent christmas away with other family

238/12/2016
Welcome to my second update post on my Grow my Grades thread! Here is what i did today:

8am - 11 am
I did two hours of History revision on the French Revolution using my flashcards. I learnt some important key dates and learnt about, and put into context the attack on the Tuileries as well as covering the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Whilst i feel i have made an improvement on my French rev work, i feel as though i am not learning the dates as quickly as i could because i have no idea of context or chronological order. Because of this i spent the third hour making a timeline, this is the first time i have ever used timelines to revise and only covered the first chapter out of 4 but i felt as though it made everything much clearer, especially about the different Controller Generals leading up to 1789 and the time period which contained the economic crisis.

10am - 12pm
I did two hours of Biology revision on Cells, i did this through revising my flash cards linked above. I made good improvement on the different functions of the different components of the cell membrane yet could still do with some more work on the function of glycolipids and proteins as i am still getting these confused. Another thing i have learnt today from this was about co-transport, which i hadn't particularly understood until this point and now i can describe the process of the co-transport of glucose and amino acids in the ileum into cells and then the bloodstream as well as draw a diagram.

2pm - 4pm
I did two hours of Chemistry revision on atoms ions and compounds. I did this by doing my flashcards which i have now nearly gone through once. I am making improvements on the shapes of molecules which i find particularly difficult and remembering all the bond angles and also the definitions of different things such as relative atomic mass, relative isotopic mass, sub-shells, shells and orbitals. I aim to finish my flashcards next time i revise this topic, look over periodicity once more (as we have not yet been taught it but i know it is in our mock in January) and then start doing more past papers and refining my exam technique.

I am really proud of my work today as i didn't get too distracted and i did seven hours work which is one hour more than normal.
Happy revising,
Probably Jade

You motivate me so much Jade ! I legit look forward to read your blog every single day. Well done on what you have achieved today X

Thank you so much! It makes me so happy, to hear this!