When should I start revising for year 12 summer exams?

I’m currently doing doing light revision now but I don’t know if I started too late and I should of started earlier? These exams are really important for my predicted grades and I want to do medicine so HELP!

Hello! Offer holder for medicine this year so I can provide some input, although my input ain’t the best since I didn’t do my end of year 12 exams last year! You don’t have long till those exams, so best you can do is now layout a structure to do past paper tests. Along with government advice, schools are to release 2018-2020 papers (I think they should with AS too) so take a look at AS papers. However, be careful and not exhaust yourself and use all the resources too quickly, the most effective revision is spaced out revision. Try do questions by topic from physicsandmathstutor, then if you found any topic specifically that you struggled on, read up on the textbook and try pestering your teachers to give you more questions on that topic! Every second counts, especially if you are looking to do medicine!

One adjustment I’d do with the active recall is to not recite them to yourself, but rather write them out as that makes it more likely to stick to your brain in your memory. Active recall is effective, and is good in subjects like biology, but there are some things that active recall can’t help (amount of substances, mechanisms, biology maths for example) but active recall is good if you combine it with exam practice. Start doing full on past papers a month before your exam, until then, try practice exam technique by finding questions by topic on what you struggle on. If your exams are in mid June, then mid May is a good time to start practice papers as you have mentioned. Again, revision techniques differ from people to people, what works for me might not work for you! Any more questions do feel free to ask!

What was your revision technique and what are you predicted for a levels if you don’t mind me asking?

My predicted A levels are 4A*s. How I revised was for biology, I did questions by topic and studied mark schemes. Chemistry I mainly revised the basics (so physical chemistry) as that applies to everything else, as well as memorising mechanisms and practicing amount of substances. Maths I just did practice papers same with further maths.

Wow! You are so smart, well done on those grades hopefully the government don’t screw it up haha! Also for amount of substances do you mean like mole calculations and stuff? Also did you use active recall at all during revision?

Thank you! Yh let’s hope they don’t! Me personally I did not do active recall, nor do I do it now as I don’t think it works for me. For others it can do wonders but not for me personally. Once I learnt a concept and I go back to revise on it, I quickly skim over it for a refresher, but not fully revise it as I want to test on what I need to know, For example I just did a bank of questions on respiration, and got a good percentage that would get me A* (if respiration was the only thing they tested me on lol) when skim reading. I now got a good process of respiration in my head now after answering questions and seeing what the mark schemes want. I was losing ez marks because I was forgetting something repeatedly in the questions, so now I know what I need to work on so I emailed my teacher to gimme more respiration questions. On my break now and then I’m going to revise some chemistry by quickly skimming over a topic (like I give myself 2-3 mins to immerse myself) and then knuckle down on questions! This is my revision technique and it works the best for me!