AQA A Level Biology 2018

This years biology papers were solid. What do you reckon the grade boundaries will be? Higher or lower than last years because they were pretty low.

Definitely lower

I reckon similar bc this year's paper 1 and 3 were harder, but the paper 2 was much easier. Last year was first year of a new spec as well, so possibly, overall, a bit higher than last year's.

Reply 3

on9977t

66±2% Overall for an A*? I personally think it will be around 64% ish compare to 67% last year... But hope it will be lower.

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 4

on9977t

Paper 2 is not much easier... It is similar to last year

Reply 5

thatmememachine

Original post by on9977t

Paper 2 is not much easier... It is similar to last year

Agreed, I didn't find it to be any easier than last years but apparently a lot of people did :frown:

Reply 6

GCShElpme

Probably lower tbh. Loads of people ran out of time on the first paper, the second paper (the 'easier' paper) was only easy in comparison to the first (and was of a similar difficulty as last years paper), and the third paper was harder.

Reply 7

GCShElpme

Original post by thatmememachine

This years biology papers were solid. What do you reckon the grade boundaries will be? Higher or lower than last years because they were pretty low.

How'd you find this years papers? :smile:

Reply 8

thatmememachine

Original post by GCShElpme

Yeah, the timing on that first paper was tight. I'm so glad I flicked over to the last few pages about 10 minutes before the exam ended. I don't understand how people found that second paper 'easy'.

Original post by GCShElpme

How'd you find this years papers? :smile:

Meh. It's the A level I'm least confident about so not good. I found the papers to be a lot harder than last years papers and they were hard enough. Not happy with this new spec also, too many random maths questions thrown in. I can understand there being a couple but man they really rinsed out the calculations.What do you think?

Reply 9

thatmememachine

Original post by westcw13

I reckon similar bc this year's paper 1 and 3 were harder, but the paper 2 was much easier. Last year was first year of a new spec as well, so possibly, overall, a bit higher than last year's.

Yeah they could be higher because it's not the first year of the new spec but honestly found all 3 to be harder than last years papers.

Reply 10

GCShElpme

Original post by thatmememachine

Yeah, the timing on that first paper was tight. I'm so glad I flicked over to the last few pages about 10 minutes before the exam ended. I don't understand how people found that second paper 'easy'.

Meh. It's the A level I'm least confident about so not good. I found the papers to be a lot harder than last years papers and they were hard enough. Not happy with this new spec also, too many random maths questions thrown in. I can understand there being a couple but man they really rinsed out the calculations.What do you think?

Honestly, I found these papers much more difficult than last years papers. Very maths and application heavy. I think the GBs are gonna take quite the hit this year. Which esssay did you end up doing, and how do you think it went?

Reply 11

thatmememachine

Original post by GCShElpme

Hopefully they hit rock bottom :biggrin:

I did the one importance of control of movement or something like that I can't quite remember the title.

Reply 12

thatmememachine

Last years boundaries were (2017)

Overall (out of 260)
A*=174
A=147
B=124
C=101
D=78
E=56

Paper 1 (out of 91)
A*=61
A=51
B=43
C=35
D=27
E=19

Paper 2 (out of 91)
A*=60
A=50
B=42
C=34
D=26
E=18

Paper 3 (out of 78)
A*= 54
A=46
B=39
C=32
D=25
E=19

Reply 13

GCShElpme

Original post by thatmememachine

Hopefully they hit rock bottom :biggrin:

I did the one importance of control of movement or something like that I can't quite remember the title.

I did the interactions one! I'm really worried about the essay- I wrote about blood glucose control and blood water potential. Do you think they're too similar/count as one topic? I'm ****ed if they do :')

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 14

westcw13

Original post by thatmememachine

Yeah they could be higher because it's not the first year of the new spec but honestly found all 3 to be harder than last years papers.

Probably similar then, but that was just my opinion about the paper 2. It might be that I was a bit more prepared for it than I was for when I did last year's as a mock, but I found that there was a bit more recall

Reply 15

67823

Grade boundaries are dependent on how the cohort performs. For AS bio the grade boundaries decreased by 5% in 2017
The a levels papers for bio were much harder this yr & a lot of students didn’t manage to finish paper 1 and 3
So I think the grade boundaries will go low

Reply 16

67823

Original post by GCShElpme

I found the 3rd paper Way harder than last yrs. Similar to paper one, there were just too many questions with not enough time to process the questions.

Also who else feels there were more than 91 marks in paper 1