A-level biology help needed!

so, i'm currently studying the subjects biology, chemistry and maths. Chemistry and maths i'm fine with, but biology is my worst subject by far. No matter how much effort and practice i put into it, i don't seem to achieve my desired grade during exams. I wondered if anyone had any advice or tips because in biology i am able ot know all the content but applying content to knowledge i struggle with. if one can help, please let me know! thanks

I finished a level biology this year and trust me every single candidate is in the same boat as you. There's a crap tonne to learn and you just got to learn it and pray for low grade boundaries

yeah it's jusy annoying because i feel like its going to be the subject which will prevent me from getting into mediicne. how did you manage to deal with bio?

Condensed notes. My notes were basically markscheme points of topics.
I still didn't manage to learn every single detail, but was slightly lucky in the sense that it's not like GCSE where they ask you for that anyway.

so, i'm currently studying the subjects biology, chemistry and maths. Chemistry and maths i'm fine with, but biology is my worst subject by far. No matter how much effort and practice i put into it, i don't seem to achieve my desired grade during exams. I wondered if anyone had any advice or tips because in biology i am able ot know all the content but applying content to knowledge i struggle with. if one can help, please let me know! thanks

For knowledge-intensive subjects like biology, a good technique for absorbing all the content is to read through the textbook a little before you cover the content in class and then re-read it again the evening after you've learned about it. May not seem like much, but it's helped me remember stuff a lot more easily.

For knowledge-intensive subjects like biology, a good technique for absorbing all the content is to read through the textbook a little before you cover the content in class and then re-read it again the evening after you've learned about it. May not seem like much, but it's helped me remember stuff a lot more easily.

I totally understand you!! The content is a Lot!! What exam board are you doing?

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This is totally how I was. I did Maths, Biology and Chemistry too. Chemistry and maths are pretty easy if you know how to work them out, but Biology really requires more memory. The best way I found was to really analyse all of the different cycles and processes (and the fundamentals behind them) in more depth than I needed to. This gave me more intuition for these processes which really helps you make it up on the spot if you have to.

So, to be more articulate, I would find the things you're really not good at and then study them deeply. If you don't understand a little bit of it then you just need to read up on it. You also need to get a good grip of the fundamentals such as water properties and water potential. It all boils down to finding the whole picture (in as much detail as needed) and then just remembering the bits you need.

Sorry if this wasn't helpful, I can't explain it that well. But really hard work and effort is what pushed me from getting C's to A's - though we'll see how that turned out in August!

thankyou, that's what ive been trying to doing! what i stuggle with is answering the exam questions, like i'll know the content but the questions are something entirely different

Try to think about what topic(c) / concept(s) a particular question is testing you on, and then rattle out some of the standard points. Eg a question may ask "How are these plants able to uptake water from soil with a high salt concentration?"[3]
This question is clearly about active transport/diffusion, so I would write something like:


Always try as much as possible to condense your answers, packed with points. The more questions you try, the more you'll get used to their style and the points that are wanted. As a previous poster wrote, you could write your own condensed notes taken straight from mark-schemes so you know exactly what they're looking for.

Some of the questions can be quite hard, but remember they can only be testing you on what's on the spec. If they throw something in that's completely unfamiliar, think about what you know that is similar, and then just apply what you know to answer the question. This requires knowing the spec content really well and having lots of synoptic links between different aspects, which you can develop by thinking about what you are learning, or doing further reading (but the latter isn't necessary).

That was longer than I had anticipated, hope you manage to get something out of it

my exam board is WJEC eduqas ,

oh god no.

I had that exam board too lmao had my component 1,2, and 3 exams last june.

Grade boundaries gonna be mad low issa joke.

isn't that good if the grade boundaries are low? what did you get in bio?

got a B last year for AS, not sure this year results day is like 4 weeks away.

I was saying the the grade boundaries are going to be low because the exams were tough.
The higher the grade boundary, the easier the exam
It's kinda good and bad in a way.

Anyway, in terms of advice, for our exam board, application of knowledge is pretty heavily weighted.
Do the old WJEC pre-2015 papers to help you tackle the simple recall questions, but to practice application q's, try exam boards like AQA, their stuff is good, more applied.

Also the 2016 AS papers are on WJEC if you haven't tried them already and the 2017 A2 exams will be up there some time next year, definitely before June though. I tried to attach them but they're too big so I can only attach the mark schemes.

good luck!