GCSEs: A Subject-by-subject Guide from Someone Who Got Ten 9s

The people who have viewed the post?

It’s not hard. I got those grades and did one of my GCSEs early, and so did some friends of mine, and before you ask it was a not a private or grammar school, with a small cohort and rated Good by Ofsted. I just don’t get why there are so many of these posts which are basically just bragging. And one person’s thoughts about a GCSE isn’t much to listen to, as everyone has such different interests and experiences, even within the same class. Years in the future no one cares about your GCSE grades. Even once you have a degree no one cares about A levels. Tbh GCSEs are useless for the majority.

It’s not hard. I got those grades and did one of my GCSEs early, and so did some friends of mine, and before you ask it was a not a private or grammar school, with a small cohort and rated Good by Ofsted. I just don’t get why there are so many of these posts which are basically just bragging. And one person’s thoughts about a GCSE isn’t much to listen to, as everyone has such different interests and experiences, even within the same class. Years in the future no one cares about your GCSE grades. Even once you have a degree no one cares about A levels. Tbh GCSEs are useless for the majority

About me:

Hey everyone, I've been on TSR since the start of year 11, I finished my GCSEs in 2019 (very grateful that I wasn't supposed to them in 2020 or my grades would have been quite a bit worse if given by teachers). I was expecting and hoping for mostly 8s/9s but when I saw that I had a clean sweep I was very suprised. I'm writing this to help all the new year 11s who are doing the new specification achieve top grades as efficiently as possible.


GCSEs:

Maths
English Literature
English Language
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
French
Geography
Computer Science
Design Technology


I'm not extremely intelligent and I do a lot of extra curricular stuff such as sport/music/volunteering/part-time work. So no, you don't have to be an insanely smart person to achieve top grades. Whilst there are people like this who go and get top grades, you don't need to be. If you know your way around exams and how to beat them with some common sense, you can easily do well. I like to think I put in the minimum effort to get the maximum grades (you could take this literally as I was on the grade boundary for a couple of subjects).

When did I start revising?

I revised a lot in Christmas for my mocks and my grades consisted of mostly 7s/8s.
Serious revision started in February for about 2 hours a day. This is less than others but the time I did spend revising, was effective.

Before the Easter holidays I listed out every topic from different subjects that i needed to cover and worked through them all spending about 4-5 hours a day during these holidays.

I also did a lot of last minute revision on the days before each exam to make sure i didn't forget any content and this probably bumped my grade up a level in a couple of subjects. So last minute revision is helpful although some will say it won't affect your grade if you were learning properly throughout the year.

Have a look at your grades now and the grades you want to get by the end of the year and decide when you want to start putting more hours into your work - there's no need to start before Christmas but doing a little a day will help.

You don't have to do the same amount of hours that I do. You should not be measuring the amount of revision you do through hours, but in your uunderstanding of topics on your specifications. People always ask "how many hours revision should I do?", but this doesn't really matter. Quality of revision > Hours of revision.


MATHS

Initial thoughts: I always see people say that "me and maths don't go well together" as if there's no chance that they can pass. The only difference between a grade 3/4 student compared to a grade 9 student is the number of practice questions they have done and methods they have mastered. Unless you have dyscalculia or something similar, the excuse that you and numbers don't go well together is not valid. You really can boost your grade dramatically by repeated practice.

How to get a 9:

1) Find the exam specification for your exam board and learn ALL the concepts on there. This means going through your textbook and just learning how to do things such as simplifying fractiosn and factorising quadratics. If you don't have a textbook I would highly recommend using Hegarty Maths. He explains concepts well (https://www.youtube.com/user/HEGARTYMATHS). You can also use other resources such as the CGP revision guides. Just make sure everything you learn is exactly what is on your exam specification.
2) After you feel you have a grasped a concept, you should start grinding out practice questions on the topic. You may struggle at first so refere back to the resources you used to learn the concepts. Eventually you will start to get the hang of the questions and after many questions, they should become easy. Only stop doing these practice questions until you are confident in the techniques used to answer questions in this topic. You can find these questions in your textbook/CGP workbooks/online.
3) Once you have done many questions on ALL parts of the specification, move onto exam papers. Since you are on a relatively new spec, save the past papers till the very end and do some of the old spec papers first. Initiall you can do these untimed but once you are confident start trying it timed. Once you have completed the old spec papers move onto the sample/specification/past papers. Aim for 100% in each test, whilst this may seem unrealistic, it's good to aim high and hit lower. Assuming you completed steps 1 and 2 i mentioned above, 100% is entirely possible. You should being seeing improvement in each paper you take, if you aren't go over the concepts you are consistently losing marks in or struggling with and repeat step 2.
4) if you do this, you shouldn't be memorising anything other than equations, you should know all the techniques to attack any type of questions and can use these to do new questions. Before your final exams make sure all the equations are stuck in your head and be confident in yourself. If you aren't planning to study maths beyond GCSE, you can forget everything you have learnt, so go for it!

Closing thoughts: For those at grades 6-8 you can easily get to a 9 with some thorough grounding in the concepts and lots of practice questions. For those at 5 or below, once you get past the first big hurdle of understanding maths you will be plain sailing to get to the top grades. Don't give and keep going at the questions. Other than getting a good grade, I believe that being good at maths is beneficial for your overall thinking - whilst you may never use y = mx + c, having strong arithmetic and problem solving skills will help you in other areas of life.

This is a subject where you can't memorise information, you have to adapt to questions in the exam which is why practice questions are so important compared to something like Biology.


ENGLISH LITERATURE

Initial thoughts: I’m gonna be honest, I hated English and only did the bare minimum to get the grade. I didn't spend much time revising but the night before I was memorising things till about 4am and it wasn't pleasant but I probably deserved it for not putting effort in during the course of the year. My method of getting a 9 is like a shortcut method. If you want to study English further then don't do what I did. However, if you just want the grade you can do what I did.

How to get a 9:

1) First off, read ALL the examiner’s reports from previous years as well as mark schemes because they literally tell you what they want and don’t want you to write, about in each question. You can figure out the things that examiners like to see and then write accordingly in the exam
2) Try and get hold of past papers with filled in answers from people who got grade 9s before. My school had some exemplar papers from previous years but if you can't get any of these then llook for answers to previous exam questions online. Again, this just helps you to see what sort of things get high marks and what doesn't. Any good techniques you can then take and use in your exam
3) The next bit of advice I can offer, is learn advanced literary terms. For example, "plosive alliteration" and "polysyndeton" etc. will really impress your examiner. Look at an A-level vocab list and memorise as much as you can and learn how to identify each term in your texts and poems. I memorised advanced key terms from this website: (http://holytrinity.academy/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Literary-Terminology.pdf)
4) My BIGGEST tip would be don’t just memorise quotes, memorise quotes AND THEIR ANALYSIS. Rather than just memorising random quotes, group quotes together into a paragraph and add grade 9 level analysis at home, then memorise the whole paragraph. This may seem tedious but it’s so much better than coming up with analysis in the exam and wasting the limited time you have when, instead you can just write amazing analysis from memory. I only read each of my texts and poems once (and that was in lessons), other than that I just memorised quotes + analysis + context for every text we had and I made sure that my analysis stood out. I didn't really know what happened in the texts we did, I just knew how to analyse stuff.
It’s a shortcut method to get top grades. Also, don’t forget context, especially in poetry as its an easy way to lose marks if you forget. And ONLY write about context in questions where it’s required.

A little bit of something I prepared before going into one of my exams from Jekyll and Hyde:

London is described as empty “street after street…street after street” – Repetition of street, suggests a labyrinth – another typically gothic feature, creating the impression it is never-ending and inescapable. Also how desolate the area is “as empty as a church”. Reference to religion not being present when a hellish action is about to appear.

I would not have been able to write like that on the spot in the exam. All the stuff I wrote about was of this quality because i memorised everything that I wrote.

Closing thoughts: English is a subject where the highest grades are given to those who seem the smartest, as long as you write fancy terms and seem like you know what you're on about, you will get a good grade.

Make sure that when you go into the exam hall, you know exactly what you are going to do - you know how long to spend on each question, the structure to use for each question, the number of pages/paragraphs to write for each question. English is about knowing what you have to do and write rather than learning any real content. Know your exam paper structure inside out before you do the exam and you will do well.
I had a plan - executed it with precision in the exam hall - then forgot everything about English for the rest of my life.


ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Initial thoughts: A lot of what I talked about for English Lit applies here as well, especially reading examiner’s reports and knowing your structure. Structuring your answers correctly is probably the most important thing.

How to get a 9:

1) Make a list of possible things to talk about when it comes to each of language, structure and form (eg. Fragmented syntax, colloquial language, anaphoric repetition etc.) so you can quickly identify advanced techniques to critique in the exam.
2) Using synonyms for “successfully” is also useful when evaluating some writing. The evaluative adverbs I used were: Effectively, efficaciously, compellingly, engagingly, successfully.
3) Always refer back to the reader when you make a point. Eg. “This suggests/emphasises/portrays/conveys/implies to the reader…”
4) For creative writing I also, memorised most of it. I wrote a story and edited it to perfection before the exam, memorising the whole thing. I left gaps so that I could fill in to make sure my story was actually relevant to the exam question, and these small sections were the only bits I wrote spontaneously. If you struggle with creative writing, I recommend you do the same or at least memorise some really good sentences, descriptions and vocab that can be used in any situations to increase the quality of your writing.

Closing thoughts: The papers are usually time pressured so work out before the exam roughly how much time you want to spend on each question, and make sure you have enough time for the longer question as this is where you will get most of your marks from. I remember my teachers telling me to spend a disproportionate amount of time on smaller questions. For example, they said spend 15 minutes on a 6 marker and 20 minutes on a 20 marker. This just doesn’t make sense. Spend your time proportionately, based on the number of marks of each question.


PHYSICS

Initial thoughts: Physics was probably the easiest subject for me to get a 9 in at GCSE. Almost half the paper is really simple equations and maths and a lot of the rest of the paper is common sense. If you have started to improve at maths, physics should become substantially easier.

How to get a 9:

1) LEARN ALL THE EQUATIONS. This is like 40% of the marks and if you know all the equations, how to re-arrange them and how to do the basic maths , it makes getting a top grade so much easier. I'd go to your exam board's specification and there should be a list of all the equations you need to learn for your exam. Then make double sided flashcards, on one side have the equation, on the other have the three (or how ever many) parts that make up the equation.
For example: Have V=IR on one side, then on the other side write: What is the equation linking current, potential difference and resistance?.
Go through these every day until you've learned all the equations off by heart. After that I'd just try practice questions online and keep practicing until you can get every practice question correct.
2) For the rest of the paper, it’s more similar to maths unlike the other two sciences. You have to understand what you’re learning about so you can adjust to any question in the exam. You can’t just memorise everything. Keep going over the revision guide/textbooks to learn the concepts and understand what’s actually happening rather than memorise what the guide says. Then try loads of practice questions and do all the past papers and old spec papers. Good questions can be found here: (https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/physics-revision/)

Closing thoughts: The grade boundaries are usually lower for physics compared to the other sciences, I think it was 70% for a 9 in my papers which is why I think it's one of the easier subjects to get a 9 in. A lot of the advice I gave about maths applies here as well.


CHEMISTRY & BIOLOGY

Initial thoughts: I struggled with these initally and was at a 6/7 at the start of year 11 but once I spent just memorising the content my grades started to go up.

How to get a 9:

1) For these sciences you really just have to know the content and exam technique - there is no shortcut and it will take a lot of time to learn all the content and memorise unlike maths where you can just understand techniques.
2) To learn the content, I bought the CGP revision guides and read over them, making notes on each topic. Then I kept on reading my notes until I was thorough with each topic. Make sure you cover everything on your specification. Use the best revision method that works for you and start early in the year. A lot of people use freesciencelessons on youtube which may be helpful in explaining things.
3) For good technique on 6-markers, look at examiner's reports to see what the examiners are expecting and what answers get the high marks and what answers don't.

*For chemistry specifically, make sure you can answer all the maths questions involving equations correctly and keep practicing these so you can answer any maths question as these are easy marks to pick up.

Closing thoughts: These two subjects will probably take the longest to learn as they are content heavy and there's no way around it. Just go through topic by topic and keep reinforcing your understanding and memorising things that you will have to regurgitate in the exam.


FRENCH (ANY LANGUAGE)

Initial thoughts: I struggled with French the most. For me, you could see it as similar to people saying "me and maths don't go well together" except replace maths with languages. Before I started revising properly I was able to easily get at least 7s in all my subjects, however French I never got above a 4. At the start of year 11, I was at a grade 4 and I knew that I had to do something about it. So I went and figured out exactly what was needed to get top grades in a language. By the end of year 11 I had more than doubled my grade within the space of a year.

How to get a 9:

1) LEARN VOCAB. This is obvious, but if you do this you basically will cover the entire listening and reading part of the exam. Get the vocab list from your specification website and start learning ASAP, the earlier the better. If you cant start learning at the start of year 11 that would be ideal, every week after that and thats a few words that you won't understand in the exam, resulting in more marks lost. I used Quizlet and I did a few words daily to learn the entire vocab list over the course of 1 year. You should be able to find ready made quizlet sets that have all the words on your specification. Make sure they are exam board specific so that you aren't wasting time learning words that will never come up in your exam.
2) Once you've learnt all the vocab, practice listening questions as it can be hard to understand what people are saying. Over time you should be able to understand better.
3) The other thing I did (like English) was memorise phrases. For writing and speaking I memorised advanced, a-level phrases that included less known tenses and used these in my exams. You can make these sentences yourself using a translator (use DeepL not Google translate) so you can make the best sentences. You can also find good words as well as phrases using hard grammar online. I still don’t have any idea what the tenses mean and I basically understood none of the grammar. I had a range of phrases including lots of tenses for every sub-topic that could possibly come up and this covered every possible writing and speaking question. This is another short cut method. Everything I wrote and spoke about was from memory, if I hadn't done this, my grade would have been 1 or 2 levels lower. Whilst my French may not have been as good as someone who ended getting a worse grade than me, I did what I had to do, in order to get the best grade.
4) Some extra things that can help are changing the language on your phone/tablet/computer/PS4/Xbox to the language you are learning. This is good as it's a passive way of learning - you don't need to take time out of your day to be learning, it just happens when you are on these devices. Since you should be familiar with the interface on these devices, you should be able to quikcly recognise translations of words.
Some people will recommend reading French literature/watching French films/listening to French podcasts but this is not an efficient way of getting the top grade. However, if you actually want to learn French or study it further, then you should definitely do this. But if you just want a grade, then there isn't a need.

Closing thoughts: It's not difficult to do well in languages, just do the things I mentioned above and your grade will sky rocket. A lot of people just accept that they aren't going to do well in their language and just give up as it's not related to anything they want to do in future. But if you invest a solid amount of time doing the the things I have said, I promise you can save your grade.


GEOGRAPHY

Initial thoughts: For geography, we were given a huge textbook with so much content that needed to be covered. However, I figured out that 80% of the marks in our exam were from case studies. So, whilst our teachers told us to learn the theory and everyone else did do this, I spent my time on the case studies – memorising facts and figures. However, be careful as this was only for my exam board (OCR) and it may not be the same in your exam board. Take a look at how many marks in your exam are theory based and case study based, then spend your time revising to the same proportion.

How to get a 9:

1) Learn your case studies. Doing less known case studies can also help you as it means the examiner will know less about it, so you can probably get away wiht making up a few facts (if they sound realistic) if you forget but this won't work for case studies that lots of people do (like London) as examiners will know if they are true or not. You just have to memorise the facts and figures through whichever method workd ofor you. Just keep testing yourself so that you know everything you should about a case study.
2) Learn your theory. I didn't spend much time at all doing this simply because I didn't need to for my exam board but make sure you understand the stuff that is on your exam specification.
3) Exam technique is also important, you need to keep developing your points using: therefore, this leads to, this results in, consequently etc. It’s better to make two properly developed points using lots of linkages rather than stating 5 points. For OCR at least, the examiners wanted to see how you developed and linked your points and this was required to get top marks in the longer questions.
4) Know the timings for each question. Allocate a good amount of time for the longer questions and less time for smaller questions. Don't spend 10 minutes on a 4 marker and 20 minutes on a 12 marker as the proportions just aren't right and you aren't being efficient.

Closing thoughts: I managed to save a lot of time by not learning much content and focusing only on what was needed in the exam. Make sure you know how the type of questions that can come up and be confident in yourself that you have prepared well enough to write well.


COMPUTER SCIENCE

Initial thoughts: A bit like chemistry and biology, you will just have to learn the content although there’s not as much, so do learn the content inside out. I assume most people do OCR, the grade boundaries are quite high so if you don’t know your theory inside out, you cannot get the top grade.

How to get a 9:

1) Learn all the theory though something like a CGP revision guide (make sure it's exam board specific). You should learn all the things on your specification and you can't miss anything out as the margin for error is so low if you want a top grade.
2) Understant how to write code/pseudocode and this needs to be practiced early on as it’s a skill you build over time, you can’t just learn this last minute. Learn the structures such as loops and practice coding on a language on your computer (such as python) to improve your coding skills.

Closing thoughts: If you know your theory and know how to write code, you are all set for your exam. This is one of the least time pressured exams as the coding questions have a lot of marks but can be quick to write, so the exam will test your skills and knowledge rather than how fast you can write unlike English.


DESIGN TECHNOLOGY (ANY COURSEWORK SUBJECT)

Initial thoughts: Coursework subjects take a lot of time and can be mentally and physically draining, if possible I would recommend just not doing a coursework subject as for one GCSE, the time needed is just not worth it.

How to get a 9:

1) There’s not really much to say here other than work hard for your coursework and try to keep on top of things as it will get stressful when you have to focus on coursework that takes up a huge chunk of your time, whilst you should be revising for 7 or more other subjects. Looking at exemplars really helps in guiding you through your coursework. Make sure that in your coursework, you have covered all the things on your specification - you shuold be able to tick off everything where you can get marks from, before submitting it. This means you won't miss out on easy marks.
2) Prepare for your exam! A lot of people get so focussed on coursework they forget they have an exam that's worth the same amount as their coursework. I've mentioned spending time efficiently a lot on this guide, so spending 100 hours on coursework, then revising the week before your exam just doesn't add up if they each part makes up 50% of your final grade.
3) If you've done well in your coursework, then you should be confident when going into the exam, as you already have some solid marks backing you up. If you haven't done well in your coursework, then view the exam as a chance to redeem your grade - other people may have spent a long time on their coursework but the exam is a chance for you to make up some of those marks.

Closing thoughts: Coursework subjects are stressful and may result in many after school days to work on your project but you have to pull yourself through it. Remember that if you are in year 11, this time next year you will be free from coursework (unless you decide to do it for A-Level...). Keep going and make sure you are meeting your deadlines and are staying on track with your work. If you get behind deadlines it will be hard to get back up to speed and the stress will really start to weigh on your shoulders.


In the run up to exams (after Feb half term)

Do not do more than 3.5 hours revision on weekdays and 6 hours on weekends - this itself is a lot, I only did about 2 on weekdays and 4/5 on weekends. Whilst revising, make sure you are motivated and taking in information. If you ever feel like you're not learning or not in the mood to revise take a 30-60 minute break and do something you enjoy to get your mind of it, like watching an episode of a tv series/reading a book/playing a video game. Then come back with motivation and dive into revision. You can afford to relax for a whole day as well if you need, to completely reset and take your mind off of work if this will make you more productive in the long run

*Motivation*

Don't give up now - now is the perfect time to start as you can build momentum into the run up to exams without burning out. 4 months of solid work and you can enjoy the most amazing summer of your life. A way to motivate yourself is imagining yourself on results day, opening your results and thinking about what you want your reaction to be. Do you wnt to top off your holdiays with well-earned results? Or do you want to see your results and be put in a bad mood before you start year 12. Don't let yourself down on that day and put in the work now!
The time to start revising is now. Work hard in the run up to exams and you will put yourself in a great position for the future whether it be for A-levels or otherwise.

On the day/week before each exam remember to revise as much as you can, after you sit the exam you can forget literally everything you've learnt in the past 2 or 3 years, so really go for it.

Conclusion

So, that’s about it then.

If you read most of what I wrote, you'll probably figure that I did a lot of simple things too up my grade just by knowing what I had to do for each inidividual exam and question. I spent a lot of time doing research about how to achieve top marks then I went and did what needed doing. Make sure you do you’re research for each exam early in the year so you can prepare accordingly, and you can plan what you need to revise. For subjects you don’t like, just push through with it: you don’t want it to look bad amongst your other results and its only for a year, then you can forget about the subject.
Remember, its about how you revise for each individual subject, not how many hours you revise per week. Don’t think that if someone is doing double the number of hours you’re doing, you need to do the same because they’re probably doing inefficient revision. I know people who got similar grades to me and probably did about 3x as much work as me. You have to be strategical and clinical in your revision.

Hopefully this has been helpful, I’ll happily answer any questions you may have. Thanks for reading!

Good luck with your GCSEs, I'm sure you will do great!