How did you get an A at Edexcel AS Chemistry?

Hi!

I am studying AS Chemistry Edexcel this year and I want an A so I can go to Medical School next year.

Does anyone know how I can get an A at AS Level for my Edexcel Chemistry.

Anyone who got an A at AS Chemistry please give us your tips, tricks, secrets, links etc....

Reply 1

theOldBean

By scoring high marks in the exam.
On a less facetious note, when you think you understand the concepts, do as many past papers as you can. Don't ever think you are 'revising' when you reread your notes.

If you run out of edexcel papers or want to 'reserve' them for nearer the exam, try AQA:

http://www.aqa.org.uk/qualifications/a-level/science/chemistry/chemistry-key-materials

be warned that not all of the Qs are relevant but most are

EDIT: As an example, once you have finished studying periodicity (for the Jan exam) you should be able to do all of Q2 on this AQA paper http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gce/pdf/AQA-CHEM1-W-QP-JUN10.PDF

SECOND EDIT: Do NOT try any edexcel past papers before you believe you understand the material, because you will then have nothing to do before the exam. Use the AQA questions, or Qs your teacher sets, or Qs in the revision guide, as a learning tool.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 2

F1's Finest

Original post by Agent Smirnoff

you get an A by working hard, easy to think, but difficult to achieve.

i got a B and was 14 ums off an A which is like 6-7 marks. one of the unit 2 papers were hard which is why i was brought down to a B. make sure you do past papers and fully understand whats going on with the concepts.

apart from that, good luck

Reply 3

POWCATTY

what the first person said. but also you must make sure that you understand what is going on. anything that you dont get now will more than likely come up in your exam coz its hard, and probably your next exam too as pretty much everything is interlinked. if you dont get it ask your teacher/friends/tutor/family/random person in the year above or below you for help. write down everything they say and every single step for calculations. go home and read over it, do questions in the books, understand each step and remembering it will be sooo much easier.
but the best thing to do is revise nice and early, sort of like now just go over the work you did in your lesson and the other stuff youve done previously, and do as many practice questions as you can get your hands on. i found that i could only do questions once because i then remembered the answers (if i got them wrong mostly), this is also not a bad tactic as long as the answers you memorise are correct lol.

Reply 4

webteacher

i v been teaching edexcel for 8 years..wt i v experience so far is
40% theory knowledge
60% examination practice

Reply 5

AspiringGenius

Subscribes :smile:

although I'm doing AQA, thanks for the materials whomever posted them!

Reply 6

Med_Geek

Original post by Agent Smirnoff

I'm doing edexcel chemistry too *hi 5* :biggrin:

Okay, so for AS, the first unit is definitely a lot easier than the second one. The key is to learn the basics off by heart, and then try to apply them to different situations in different exam questions. Edexcel like doing that kind of thing. For the practical, make sure you listen to what your teacher tells you AND get the student unit guides from Phillip Allan (they are brilliant!) I just missed an A in chemistry because I was ill when I sat the unit 2 paper, but I got an A in the practical and unit 1 paper.

The key thing is, if you don't understand it, ASK someone. Try asking another teacher, maybe seeing a different method of explaining will help you to understand :smile:

Reply 7

zell

one thing i did was to make those spider diagrams for each topic with different colours, which helped me remeber everything. for me, one of the best tools was the cgp revision guide and the mock exam questions they have, which are great since they are very picky. in my mock i got a b, but in real thing i got 89% because of what i did above