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ARE YOU READY FOR THIS...? This is how to get an A*

Ladies and gents,

I will share with you the secret of acheiving the dream set of grades. The best of the best. Are you ready? ...... It's all you. You, essentially, are the limits that you set yourself. If you believe that you deserve that A* in your exam, you have to put in the time and effort and grit and blood, sweat and tears into those grades. I read a book last year called 'The Secret' and it spoke about the Law of Attraction and how whatever you think, you will attract. Think good things and good things will come your way... In this first post, I just want to talk a bit a few of the things I have done/am doing currently to help me with my revision. Notice that I've made the word 'help' bold because these are not my revision tips, but what I do so that I am able to revise effectively. I can't promise that these tips will be original and life affirming because each to their own, I guess.

This is how I stopped being lazy with my studies.

1. Checklist

I'm sitting a horrific number of exams in the summer and to be honest, I've never been more scared. But what I've done is established EVERYTHING that I need to know for my exams and stuck it up in my room, right besides my desk. I've literally written it out and yes, it took me 2 hours of my Saturday morning but it honestly makes the work you have to do SO much clearer and concise. And it may seem a bit daunting, looking at this long list of topics that you have to know inside out, but harness that fear and use it to boost your motivation! I don't care what anyone says, but having fear for your exams is a good thing. It shows that you care and with 4 months left until the final exams, there's no time at all to lose focus and start slacking. Once you have that list, you can begin to work your way through it, slowly but surely. If you've reached a dead end and you just don't get it, phone a friend, ask a teacher, post it on TSR and ask others for help. There are a lot of sources to help us, we just don't see it. (EDIT: I mentioned how to formulate a very precise checklist in response to another user's question a few posts down, so if you're stuck, 'check' it out :wink: that was a lame pun, I'm leav ing k byeeeeee)

2. Cutting out bad habits

Now this is one to make note of, people. Everyone has habits that they can't let go of. If you don't, well done, you're one step closer to those dream grades, because let me tell you... You have to cut out distractions if you want to revise. My habit was constantly watching YouTube videos. I love a good Tyler Oakley video, but it wasn't working out with my revision timetable. My cousin absolutely loves watching Korean dramas but each episode is about an hour long, and then she asks me why isn't she motivated like I am. It's simple. Her priorities do not lie with her studies and she's constantly procrastinating by wasting her time. Not bashing Korean dramas, I'm sure they're great but is it really worth letting time go by now, rather than in the summer holidays where you can watch to your heart's content? And it's different for everyone; whether it's texting your friends after school, watching YouTube videos, scrolling through Instagram and Tumblr, you can do it all in the summer. So the solution is get rid of the source. Tell your mum or dad to keep your phone after school and only give it back once the revision is completed, or turn the beloved wifi off, or even delete the apps off your phone! Seems a bit drastic, I know, but these things will only help you get that A*. Go to those measures people, you will thank yourself on results day.

3. Results' day

Speaking of results' day, my final point is actually about it! This is what genuinely motivates me to revise and I'm surprised to hear from my friends that they don't do this. Okay, so every time I reach a slump or a low point, I imagine myself on results' day opening my results to the best possible grades. Just that feeling of utter pride for yourself and glee. Imagine how happy your parents will be and how satisfied you will feel inside. There will be so many opportunites opened for you, so many choices that you can pick from. I know for a fact that if I don't receive the grades that I want, I will be absolutely devestated and I will keep thinking about all those times I could've revised but I didn't. I've felt that feeling before and it's the worst thing ever. It's kind of like you're sinking whilst everyone else is so happy and ugh... Never want to feel that again. Use the time you have now wisely and trust me, think about results' day and how wonderful it will feel to have those grades.

All in all, it's a few more months guys. That's honestly the best way of looking at it. A few more months of working so hard for your future and you are on your way to being a cardiologist, or a successful lawyer! Become organised, prioritise and look ahead; my three main tips on helping with revision!

I hope it helped anyone who's having difficulties with staying motivated. I think my next post will be about my actual revision tips and what is most effective for me! So watch this space haha

:smile:

EDIT:

A lot of people have messaged me asking for revision tips, and I have posted about it on a seperate post on this thread, so if you want to read them and take some notes, go to the next page and they should be there!!! It's what I do to revise and it's allowed me to revise effectively so please have a read and let me know if I've missed anything in that list!

EDIT 2:

I thought I might as well just add the revision tips on this post anyway because this thread is getting a bit long and it's quite difficult to locate them. So here you are! Enjoy :smile:

So... Someone messaged me asking what my revision tips are and how I consolidate my knowledge. And I did say I'd do a seperate post on how I revise effectively, so here it is!

1. Don't read through textbooks, hoping it will sink in. You read the content and try to understand what it's saying, make notes on it and review the notes at the end, so make a summary of it all. For example, take a topic, learn it and write notes, then summarise into short bullet points. If you completely don't understand something, then it means seek help from someone else, perhaps a teacher or a friend, so make note of it and make sure you go over it more times than the other topics.

2. This is a really useful tip but can easily make you distracted as well. Meet up with ONE friend after school or during the weekend and teach each other the content. Sometimes seeing something from a different perspective helps you understand it better, and you never know, their explanation of something could make a whole lot more sense to you. Or you could teach it to them. Trust me when I say thay nothing sticks more in your head than teaching it to other people. Why do you think teachers seem to know everything? It's because they've taught it which has helped them to consolidate their knowledge as well. Also, I've capitalised 'one friend' because I've tried meeting in a group and it always ends up with all of us eating chocolate and forgetting the revision.

3. This links with the 2nd point. Repetition. If you've learnt about something, don't dismiss it, because chances are that you'll forget it in a few days or even hours. It takes a lot of repeating for information to be processed from your short term memory to your long term. So do step one, then a few weeks later, do step one again. Soon enough, you will begin to be able to write out that information from memory.

4. This is an obvious one, but exam papers and practice questions. It's a no-brainer really! I can't stress how important this tip is and it actually works. It gets you from that A to an A*. It gets you from that D to an A*!! Persist through those 6 mark Science questions and long English questions. The more practice you have at doing these questions, the better you'll create your own style of effective writing. Get your teachers to mark it and give feedback, and if you've made mistake, fix the errors and re-do the whole question again.

5. Do not revise with music because studies have shown that music doesn't help. Your brain will associate what you learnt with it and so you may find it hard in exams to remember content. Yeah, some say that classical music helps but honestly, you'll be taking in so much content, why would you want excess noise in the background as well? But if it helps you, obviously continue doing so. I just found it to be distracting. And often times, I'd find myself back on YouTube stuck on which song I'd want to play next. :colondollar:

6. Use your specification for different subjects to go over all the topics. The specification is basically the examiners reaching out a helpful hand. This is the guidelines of what they're allowed to put in the exam. Anything that's not in the spec and they've decided to add in... well, I'm pretty sure you could sue.Then you can prioritise and start studying on the parts you need help on, before the parts you're confident on.

7. DO NOT COMFORT YOURSELF BY REVISING STUFF YOU ALREADY KNOW. In all honesty, I can truthfully say that I used to do this. I used to revise all of the easy stuff, the stuff that I understand, and at the end of the day, I felt productive. But there's no point in kidding yourself that you don't need to know the hard stuff. If you get titrations, great! Move onto purification and measuring yield. There is no point revising for things that are already in your long term memory. Yes, go over them but revising them all the time will not help you.

Anyways, these are my tips and I hope they benefit you in any way. Let me know how you get on with your revision and if you have a great revision technique! I'd love to include it in my revision!

Happy revising!

I hope this helped a lot as this is what's making the information stick in my brain!!
(edited 7 years ago)

Scroll to see replies

I hope you do well :smile:
Reply 2
Original post by benjaminfinch
I hope you do well :smile:


Thank you!! :redface:
Reply 3
Good Luck :biggrin:

Are you doing GCSE's?
Reply 4
Original post by Cherx
Good Luck :biggrin:

Are you doing GCSE's?


Thank youuu!!! And yes I am haha
Reply 5
Are you doing GCSE Physics? Please say yes, I am struggling with it soooo much!!!!
Reply 6
Original post by AuroraU
Are you doing GCSE Physics? Please say yes, I am struggling with it soooo much!!!!


Yes I am! I actually struggled with it a lot, but I am doing much better in it now. I used to be best at Biology, then Chemistry and I was the worst at Physics. Now it's I'm good at both Biology and Physics and I struggle with Chemistry. What are you finding difficult?
Reply 7
Original post by khatx
Yes I am! I actually struggled with it a lot, but I am doing much better in it now. I used to be best at Biology, then Chemistry and I was the worst at Physics. Now it's I'm good at both Biology and Physics and I struggle with Chemistry. What are you finding difficult?


I'm good at understanding the content, but my exam technique is rubbish and I end up getting fewer marks than I should get :frown: Which exam board are you taking? I'm OCR Gateway B
Reply 8
Original post by AuroraU
I'm good at understanding the content, but my exam technique is rubbish and I end up getting fewer marks than I should get :frown: Which exam board are you taking? I'm OCR Gateway B


Ah, exam techniques are so hard to nail! Practice makes perfect, I think. I'm taking OCR 21st Century, so it's kind of similar to your exam board...? I don't know the difference, haha. With my exam board, the questions are always buried deep inside a whole load of unnecessary context, but a great skill to develop is unpicking the question. Try and find out what the question is asking you exactly, rather than beating around the bush. A way I find easy to do this is by highlighting key words or phrases in the question so when I look at it, I can skim past the random bits and get to the nitty gritty physics of it all! Hope that helps. :smile:
Reply 9
Original post by khatx
Ah, exam techniques are so hard to nail! Practice makes perfect, I think. I'm taking OCR 21st Century, so it's kind of similar to your exam board...? I don't know the difference, haha. With my exam board, the questions are always buried deep inside a whole load of unnecessary context, but a great skill to develop is unpicking the question. Try and find out what the question is asking you exactly, rather than beating around the bush. A way I find easy to do this is by highlighting key words or phrases in the question so when I look at it, I can skim past the random bits and get to the nitty gritty physics of it all! Hope that helps. :smile:


Yeah it does, thank you :smile: What are the grade boundaries for your exam board?
Reply 10
Original post by AuroraU
Yeah it does, thank you :smile: What are the grade boundaries for your exam board?


No problem! Feel free to message me any time if you have any questions or need help. :smile:

And the UMS grade boundaries (out of max. 400) for Physics are:
A*= 360
A= 320
B= 280
C= 240
D= 200
E= 160
F= 120
G= 80
U= 0

I think it's the same as OCR Gateway
Reply 11
Original post by khatx
Ladies and gents,

I will share with you the secret of acheiving the dream set of grades. The best of the best. Are you ready? ...... It's all you. You, essentially, are the limits that you set yourself. If you believe that you deserve that A* in your exam, you have to put in the time and effort and grit and blood, sweat and tears into those grades. I read a book last year called 'The Secret' and it spoke about the Law of Attraction and how whatever you think, you will attract. Think good things and good things will come your way... In this first post, I just want to talk a bit a few of the things I have done/am doing currently to help me with my revision. Notice that I've made the word 'help' bold because these are not my revision tips, but what I do so that I am able to revise effectively. I can't promise that these tips will be original and life affirming because each to their own, I guess.

This is how I stopped being lazy with my studies.

1. Checklist

I'm sitting a horrific number of exams in the summer and to be honest, I've never been more scared. But what I've done is established EVERYTHING that I need to know for my exams and stuck it up in my room, right besides my desk. I've literally written it out and yes, it took me 2 hours of my Saturday morning but it honestly makes the work you have to do SO much clearer and concise. And it may seem a bit daunting, looking at this long list of topics that you have to know inside out, but harness that fear and use it to boost your motivation! I don't care what anyone says, but having fear for your exams is a good thing. It shows that you care and with 4 months left until the final exams, there's no time at all to lose focus and start slacking. Once you have that list, you can begin to work your way through it, slowly but surely. If you've reached a dead end and you just don't get it, phone a friend, ask a teacher, post it on TSR and ask others for help. There are a lot of sources to help us, we just don't see it.


OK so how do you write it out/ structure the checklist? do you just have one massive piece of paper? or is a page per subject? and how do you write out "EVERYTHING that I need to know for my exams" ?? i waste so much time making checklists/ timetables that I don't even stick to instead of revising so I think a checklist will be a good idea, but i'm not sure whether I should write subheadings for each topic/unit in a subject or write all the topics i'll need for an exam?

i feel like i'm going to confuse anyone who is reading this -_- if i am.........im rlly sorry. this just reflects my confused state.



basically how do i structure the checklist? heh.
Reply 12
Original post by khatx
No problem! Feel free to message me any time if you have any questions or need help. :smile:

And the UMS grade boundaries (out of max. 400) for Physics are:
A*= 360
A= 320
B= 280
C= 240
D= 200
E= 160
F= 120
G= 80
U= 0

I think it's the same as OCR Gateway


sorry our teachers etc in school don't tell us...what's UMS?
Reply 13
Original post by khatx
No problem! Feel free to message me any time if you have any questions or need help. :smile:

And the UMS grade boundaries (out of max. 400) for Physics are:
A*= 360
A= 320
B= 280
C= 240
D= 200
E= 160
F= 120
G= 80
U= 0

I think it's the same as OCR Gateway


do you work out the UMS mark from the "normal" mark?
Original post by khatx
Yes I am! I actually struggled with it a lot, but I am doing much better in it now. I used to be best at Biology, then Chemistry and I was the worst at Physics. Now it's I'm good at both Biology and Physics and I struggle with Chemistry. What are you finding difficult?


I am doing Triple Science too and my preferences are the other way round :biggrin: I prefer the physics, then chemistry and then biology. I too have a GYG blog so we could exchange ideas and help each other along :smile: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3897511

Original post by AuroraU
Are you doing GCSE Physics? Please say yes, I am struggling with it soooo much!!!!
How can you have a horrific number of exams? You're only doing GCSE.
dsdvgfd
Reply 17
Original post by hals
OK so how do you write it out/ structure the checklist? do you just have one massive piece of paper? or is a page per subject? and how do you write out "EVERYTHING that I need to know for my exams" ?? i waste so much time making checklists/ timetables that I don't even stick to instead of revising so I think a checklist will be a good idea, but i'm not sure whether I should write subheadings for each topic/unit in a subject or write all the topics i'll need for an exam?

i feel like i'm going to confuse anyone who is reading this -_- if i am.........im rlly sorry. this just reflects my confused state.



basically how do i structure the checklist? heh.


This is a completely valid question, I guess I was too vague haha. Okay, I'll tell you what I did and you can either do it exactly the same, or make your own based on mine. And I'll try and make it as clear as possible. Also, personally, I don't think it's a waste of time, you just need to ensure that you stick to it and don't overlook it. If you make it for all your subjects in one go, you're done for the rest of the school year. Don't waste time making it look all pretty, trust me, there's no point. Just make sure it's legible and concise.

So what I did was for each subject I had my own sheet of paper. It can be whatever size you prefer. The more topics, the larger the paper. For example, I do Edexcel Maths and there are a lot of topics, therefore I require two A3s, but that's cool, we can do that! Label it "*BLANK* CHECKLIST" for all subjects.Then using whatever materials you have (e.g. exam specification, a revsion guide, your own exercise book, use Bitesize - they have topics listed for each exam board etc), list everything you need to know in order to get that A*. It doesn't have to have subheadings and catergorised into relevant topics, but if it helps, go ahead. This is your checklist, do as you wish.

I'll use my Maths checklist as an example. So I have a list from my Maths teacher which has all the general topics on it and if you ask your Maths teacher for one, they'll definitely give you one or formulate one for you. However, I found that it was too broad and not detailed enough so I bought the CGP Higher Level revision guide off Amazon. Highly recommend it, it was a great purchase for only £5. It is the one from my exam board, Edexcel, which means everything they cover in that book, is my exam guide. So I used the contents page of that revision guide and made my list using it. The contents page is split into 6 sections: numbers, algebra, graphs, geometry and measures, pythagoras and trig and stats and probability. Underneath are all the other topics, which I wrote down and that completed my Maths checklist.

For a subject with more content, like Science, the best way to go about this is use your exam board specification. Honestly, it will be your best friend. Read through the spec and group together points that go into relevant topics. For example, in my Biology spec, there are a few points regarding enzymes and the lock and key model and optimum temp. for enzymes. I would group that into one category: ENZYMES. Then I'd do it for the rest.

Anyways, I hope this was a lot clearer. Please message me again if you're still unclear about anything and I'll try my best to help you. Obviously for some exams, a checklist is not needed... like English Language (you may still want to do one), but do what you think is best.

Happy checklist-ing! :smile:
Reply 18
Original post by morgan8002
How can you have a horrific number of exams? You're only doing GCSE.


I don't know about how it works where you live, but I have 24 exams in the space of a few weeks. That may not seem a lot to some, but it is to me :smile:
Reply 19
Original post by brainzistheword
I am doing Triple Science too and my preferences are the other way round :biggrin: I prefer the physics, then chemistry and then biology. I too have a GYG blog so we could exchange ideas and help each other along :smile: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3897511


Haha Biology is my faveee! :tongue: And yes, I'll definitely check it out!

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