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Don't you find it preposterous how people claim to have attained high grades, yet achieving this with minimal revision or effort. I think most people don't understand what academics is testing. You can't subconsciously know answers to material you haven't yet laid your eyes upon as it's measuring your crystallised intelligence . But by observation most high achievers are in fact work horses. Academic motivation will always trump intelligence. Of course intelligence will aid in academic attainment, where combined with academic motivation you're onto a winning formula. But intelligence alone is worthless I've seen it first hand A* candidates achieving B's and C's due to having no academic motivation. Don't get me wrong of course there's a strong correlation between intelligence and academic performance but it is by no means perfect. A lot of highly intelligent people significantly under achieve due to a vast number of reasons but primarily from motivation. Many people fall into this trap if someone claims to be doing minimal work yet constantly scoring highly on assessments they are lying. Where they in fact probably have a very structured routine and support mechanism in place so it's paramount that your ego doesn't catch on.As doing minimal work is kind of dissociating yourself in the presence of failure. Therefore upon opening your results you have no attachment as you have the ability to say I only failed due to not trying, but if I did try I would of achieved highly . As nothing hurts the ego more then when you try and fail. So it's basically an escape mechanism which will ultimately back fire on you. Where the opposite is true, most people who gave their all were far more content in regards to the one's that didn't try.
Original post by Anagogic
Don't you find it preposterous how people claim to have attained high grades, yet achieving this with minimal revision or effort.


Not really, seeing as I was able to do it until I started A level.
Original post by Retired_Messiah
Not really, seeing as I was able to do it until I started A level.


I think this is definitely a fair point; I know a fair few people who breezed through their GCSEs with relative ease. However the ones who did so without really revising suffered at AS Level & generally had to re-take papers as they treated those exams with the same attitude.

I wasn't one of those & I like to think I worked hard to achieve grades that were quite a bit better than I was predicted.
Reply 3
Hmm, you say they breeze thru yet you aren't aware of what is going on behind the scenes. What they say and do are often very different.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen it's exceptionally unlikely unless they are exposed to some excellent teaching. Which removes the need to revise which I highly doubt is present in comprehensives. The opposite is also true where I've witnessed those in class that couldn't grasp simple concepts yet to my amazement they received an A. Just goes to show the lottery of life.
Original post by Tempest II
I think this is definitely a fair point; I know a fair few people who breezed through their GCSEs with relative ease. However the ones who did so without really revising suffered at AS Level & generally had to re-take papers as they treated those exams with the same attitude.

I wasn't one of those & I like to think I worked hard to achieve grades that were quite a bit better than I was predicted.


Yeah I'm retaking 2 AS exams, fun times ahead

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