Best way to cram revision?

Oh right. How are you finding it? Generally, I've learned to not leave all of your work till the last minute as it gets pretty bad then. Same thing applied for revision, you'd rather do some as you go along and not leave everything like a week before. Some people actually prefer this for some strange reason.

Doesn't the majority of Computer Science work consist of coursework and then some of it is exams?

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it! Course is extremely intense most of the time, but it does feel rewarding in lots of ways. Mostly I feel really prepared for the world of work and feel like I have tons to offer now. I've had fun along the way though when I can fit it in

I think that's a valuable lesson to have learnt! I don't particularly enjoy the way I work, but it's something I've unfortunately become used to. The pressure drives me to work at my optimum. For projects, if I start something too far before a deadline I don't work well enough. I simply seem to think of better ideas under pressure.

For exams, I've found that for me, early revision is a complete waste of time. I will forget all the intricate little details within 2 days of not supplying my brain with constant repetition. Its in those margins where the difference is made. As an extreme example, the pre-exam morning revision session is the difference between a 75% and 85%. Realistically my brain is only going to let me dedicate x hours to some given module, but the closer one of those hours is to the actual exam, the more valuable it will be. Revision more than 4 weeks away from an exam appears to get wasted in my situation.



For a lot of courses I think thats the case. Mine is generally about 30% coursework per module and the rest exam, although this year its more than 50% coursework overall

-Start now
- Make checklists of everything you need to revise in each subject
-Make a timetable and prioritise the subjects you're not best at
- Don't have any distractions (e.g phone) with you, leave them for when you finish revising
- Have a cut off point (e.g 8:00pm) where you don't do anymore work for the day and spend the rest of your evening relaxing
- Eat well
- Sleep before 11pm
- Wake up early (10am maximum)
- Revise effectively, not 8 hours of reading a textbook on your bed, but a few hours doing past papers, making flash cards etc.
- Look at these mocks as an opportunity since they are an outline of what your GCSEs are going to be like

Best of luck for your mocks

You’ve got three weeks, that’s plenty of time for something of A-level difficulty. You don’t need to cram at all. Have fun for two weeks, then work no longer than feels comfortable and just blitz through past papers in an infinite loop until mock day.

Every year I learn 8 university modules from scratch in about three weeks by simply writing out the lecture notes over and over. You’ll be fine.

End of the day, quality revision wins over quantity. Personally, I wouldn't get up at 4am everyday - maybe make a timetable using your school timetable as a template for revision in the weekends. Even though you are cramming, make sure you do put in some breaks.
I was in the same position as you for my mocks. As I was running out of time, I only made notes on topics that I found difficult, using the exam boards specification as a tick sheet so I made sure I included everything I need to know. Practise papers are key - but as you're probably doing the new GCSE exams, test yourself on questions from workbooks and do specimen papers (or sample papers) which you will find on your exam board's website.
Final piece of advice: stay calm. I know, easier said than done, but by panicking you are more likely to not concentrate as much
Hope this helps and best of luck

(Also when you get your mock results back, don't look at the grades you received, except from English and maths. This is because the grade boundaries are unknown for all the other subjects, so just look at the mark you received. I got a crap grade for my English lit mock which really knocked my confidence but ended up getting a 9 for the real thing - in the actual exam I felt that I did worse than my mock!)