What to expect from AS

Hi i am starting sixth form next year and i am planning to take Biology, physics, chemistry, maths and further maths at AS level. Can anyone give me an idea of what to expect (especially with regards to maths) and maybe material for me to look at in order to get an idea of thr work i will be doing and to keep slightly busy over the holidays. Cheers and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Reply 1

anon53

I'm also intending to stay at school to study AS Levels in September. I'm not really sure what to ezpect as we haven't had our induction days yet (it's next week), so if anyone who is currently doing A/S Levels at present could reply, then that would be really useful.

Reply 2

Arminius

Well for me, maths started off with quadratics, completing the square anf factorising etc and quick covering of bits of the gcse syllabus. Then it quite quickly moved on to differentiation where it got fun.

Physics, we spent a whole month doing maths which was so boring. But when we did start doing physics it was mechanics, essentialy the same as mechanics in maths. Mechanics incase you don't know is thinks like trolley's, elastic and inelastic collisions etc, working out the resultant of two, three or more forces in a system.

Reply 3

bricktops

do not assume anything, assumptions are the biggest cause of **** ups, its hard but not impossible. do your homework and understand everything which is taught , then when the exams come it will be easy. also you can retake all your as exams in the second year of a level.

Reply 4

kpg

Personally I wouldn't bother trying to do too much over the summer holidays. AS/A2 can be quite difficult due to the work load and imo, make the best of whatever break you get, but that's just me.

Looking back now, Chemistry and Maths are actually quite simple early on but I found it very difficult (if you get what I mean :rolleyes:

). Basically do the homework that you're given, look over your notes and if there's something you don't understand then get it sorted asap rather than leaving it till the exams. You'll find that a lot of the work you do in AS/A2 is a lot more logical than GCSE which sometimes jumps between topics. So if you keep on top of the work from early on you'll be ok.

Reply 5

Little_Button

I just took AS's in biology, chemistry, physics and maths. There is quite a jump from gcse to AS level but you should be grand so long as you work hard all year. Try to stay on top of everything, the workload tends to be heavy, especially if youre doing 5 AS's. coming up to exam time, get hold of as many past papers as you can and do them over and over. Get any issues sorted as immediately so you dont fall behind. If you want to work over the summer, CGP do a range of books called 'mind the gap' for jumping from gcse to AS, hope this helps, and best of luck!

www.cgpbooks.co.uk

Reply 6

trev

You could look at some specifications, so you know what will be learnt in the course. Not sure about which exam board you follow for your A-levels, but I provided some exam board links for you to look at since you know which exam board you are following.

www.aqa.org.uk
www.ocr.org.uk
www.edexcel.org.uk

Reply 7

arowe16

thanks very much everyone thats awesome. After this I'm probably just going to maybe go to the websites of OCR and EDEXCEL to have a look at some past papers and specifications for the oncoming year. As KPJ says its probably best not to do much and get a rest just in order not to get worn out or discouraged by some of the work that i will have to do next year. Anyways thanks once again for your helpfullness