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Growing your economics grades

I studied economics and School and got A*'s at both GCSE and a-level. I've just finished an economics degree. If anyone has any questions about how to improve their grades I'm happy to help.
(edited 2 years ago)
Hi i currently have end of years coming up in 2 weeks and I take economics for alevels. What’s the best way to revise?
(edited 2 years ago)
Original post by BenRyan99
I studied economics and School and got A*'s at both GCSE and a-level. I've just finished an economics degree. If anyone has any questions about how to improve their grades I'm happy to help.


I am 17 in first year of sixth form and want to take a year off school to really find myself and make sure I know what subjects I really want to do at a level before jumping right in again. Then after that year I am gonna prolly do homeschool and then write my exams at a centre cos I wanna switch my subjects and I was thinking of doing sociology finance and either Economics or Psychology because I currently do Maths Economics and Philosophy and dread Maths and Just don’t like Philosophy don’t really find it hard.
Any advice please? Also any revision tips please?
Original post by mxbeenax1
Hi i currently have end of years coming up in 2 weeks and I take economics for alevels. What’s the best way to revise?


Try using uplearn it’s been really helpful for me you can get a 3 day free trial and if you like it you have to pay after but they are doing sale packages because it’s near the end of the academic year
Reply 4
Original post by John Igbodipe
I am 17 in first year of sixth form and want to take a year off school to really find myself and make sure I know what subjects I really want to do at a level before jumping right in again. Then after that year I am gonna prolly do homeschool and then write my exams at a centre cos I wanna switch my subjects and I was thinking of doing sociology finance and either Economics or Psychology because I currently do Maths Economics and Philosophy and dread Maths and Just don’t like Philosophy don’t really find it hard.
Any advice please? Also any revision tips please?


I’m currently having a similar issue as the course I want to study requires physics. I currently study biology, Chemistry and psychology and I’m at the end of my first year of A levels. For my second year I’m thinking of doing two years worth of a physics A level into one year.
Original post by mxbeenax1
Hi i currently have end of years coming up in 2 weeks and I take economics for alevels. What’s the best way to revise?

This is probably the most subjective question, different people revise best in different ways. Without sharing what tends to work best for you then there's not much I can say
Original post by John Igbodipe
I am 17 in first year of sixth form and want to take a year off school to really find myself and make sure I know what subjects I really want to do at a level before jumping right in again. Then after that year I am gonna prolly do homeschool and then write my exams at a centre cos I wanna switch my subjects and I was thinking of doing sociology finance and either Economics or Psychology because I currently do Maths Economics and Philosophy and dread Maths and Just don’t like Philosophy don’t really find it hard.
Any advice please? Also any revision tips please?

What I would say is that if you want to study economics at university level then it's highly likely you'll need maths a-level so personally I wouldn't drop it if you're thinking of wanting to work in Economics or Finance. It's possible to do an economics degree without it but almost all of the decent to very good universities require a-level maths for an economics degree.

I didn't even realise you can do an a-level in finance lol. If you want to do Economics then I wouldn't recommend doing an a-level in Finance, most unis want your subjects to be sufficiently different and can look down upon students that do both business and economics for example so I worry this might occur if you do finance and economics.
Reply 7
I'm going to move this to the Economics Study Help forum
Original post by BenRyan99
I studied economics and School and got A*'s at both GCSE and a-level. I've just finished an economics degree. If anyone has any questions about how to improve their grades I'm happy to help.


I am in year 10 doing AQA GCSE economics can’t find any pass papers or websites would you be able to recommend good website
Original post by Sheffield23
I am in year 10 doing AQA GCSE economics can’t find any pass papers or websites would you be able to recommend good website

I finished my GCSEs six years ago.... I reckon you'll have a better chance at finding past papers than I will haha. You're just lucky you even get past papers, it's not always the case at degree level
Original post by BenRyan99
I studied economics and School and got A*'s at both GCSE and a-level. I've just finished an economics degree. If anyone has any questions about how to improve their grades I'm happy to help.

What were your study techniques for a level economics. Would you say it was hard for you to get an a*
Reply 11
Original post by BenRyan99
I studied economics and School and got A*'s at both GCSE and a-level. I've just finished an economics degree. If anyone has any questions about how to improve their grades I'm happy to help.

How hard is an economics degree? I'm in year 12 and i'm enjoying economics. I want to do it at uni with another subject but what happens if I regret it? Is it possible that I can go from really enjoying it this year to not being able to do it or am I just being paranoid. How hard does it get in Year 13 and also at a degree level?

Also how did you completely decide that economics was what you wanted to do?
Original post by svannah5676
What were your study techniques for a level economics. Would you say it was hard for you to get an a*

Tbh I just read through my notes a lot and then made sure I 100% understood all the graphs and could draw them from memory. Once you understand and can replicate the graphs, explaining them is very easy so it really cut the amount of revision I had to do. Beyond that just essay plans I guess.

I actually thought economics was one of the easiest subjects to get high grades in. Essays tend not to be too complex and there's multiple points and evaluations for each question. Found maths, FM and politics harder than Econ imo
Original post by Hama31
How hard is an economics degree? I'm in year 12 and i'm enjoying economics. I want to do it at uni with another subject but what happens if I regret it? Is it possible that I can go from really enjoying it this year to not being able to do it or am I just being paranoid. How hard does it get in Year 13 and also at a degree level?

Also how did you completely decide that economics was what you wanted to do?

Well I'm sure you can appreciate that the difficulty of an economics degree depends on how smart and hard working you are, it's not like there can be a definitive answer haha. It also depends on lots of other things like the uni you're studying it at, course content differs hugely between unis. For other subjects like engineering or accounting for example the courses are more similar across unis because there's professional qualifications whereas for subjects like Econ, it's completely up to your lecturers what they teach and test so differs across unis.

If you take it and then regret it, won't it just be like any other subject that one regrets taking? I'm not really sure of the question you're asking here?

It's completely possible you could go from liking it at a-level to finding it difficult and potentially less interesting as a result. This is perhaps more the case for Econ than it is for other subjects as a-level content is very different from degree content. At degree level there's a lot lot more maths, at least 1/3 of your first year content is normally maths which is why basically all unis ask for a-level maths however I found it interesting and enjoyable but it is different to a-level.

Year 13 content isn't hard, I struggle to even remember the difference in what was studied in each year of a-level tbh. I think you do market structures at the start of yr13 which some struggle with because there's a lot of graphs but if you understand them then it's not difficult at all. Obviously degree level can be hard but again it depends on the uni you go to and how good you are. But most struggle with degrees a lot more than a-level but you also have more free time to work and socialize so I enjoyed it a lot more.

I wanted to do economics since I started GCSEs, it was always what I had in mind. I thought it would study it at university and then go into banking but deviated from that when I realized how boring banking is and how long the hours are (very low pay per hour, you just work a lot of hours, 80+ PW often). I've just finished my degree and am interning as an economic analyst at an economic consultancy this summer. Then I'll be doing my master's next year and have a grad job as a macroeconomist lined up after that so I've definitely gone down the Econ route.
Reply 14
Original post by BenRyan99
Well I'm sure you can appreciate that the difficulty of an economics degree depends on how smart and hard working you are, it's not like there can be a definitive answer haha. It also depends on lots of other things like the uni you're studying it at, course content differs hugely between unis. For other subjects like engineering or accounting for example the courses are more similar across unis because there's professional qualifications whereas for subjects like Econ, it's completely up to your lecturers what they teach and test so differs across unis.

If you take it and then regret it, won't it just be like any other subject that one regrets taking? I'm not really sure of the question you're asking here?

It's completely possible you could go from liking it at a-level to finding it difficult and potentially less interesting as a result. This is perhaps more the case for Econ than it is for other subjects as a-level content is very different from degree content. At degree level there's a lot lot more maths, at least 1/3 of your first year content is normally maths which is why basically all unis ask for a-level maths however I found it interesting and enjoyable but it is different to a-level.

Year 13 content isn't hard, I struggle to even remember the difference in what was studied in each year of a-level tbh. I think you do market structures at the start of yr13 which some struggle with because there's a lot of graphs but if you understand them then it's not difficult at all. Obviously degree level can be hard but again it depends on the uni you go to and how good you are. But most struggle with degrees a lot more than a-level but you also have more free time to work and socialize so I enjoyed it a lot more.

I wanted to do economics since I started GCSEs, it was always what I had in mind. I thought it would study it at university and then go into banking but deviated from that when I realized how boring banking is and how long the hours are (very low pay per hour, you just work a lot of hours, 80+ PW often). I've just finished my degree and am interning as an economic analyst at an economic consultancy this summer. Then I'll be doing my master's next year and have a grad job as a macroeconomist lined up after that so I've definitely gone down the Econ route.

Thank you for your help, and also good for you that you're doing something you enjoy. I wish you the best!
Original post by Hama31
Thank you for your help, and also good for you that you're doing something you enjoy. I wish you the best!

Cheers and good luck for your A-levels. I'd recommend trying to find some YouTube videos/textbooks on first year degree level micro and macro to get an idea of what it'll be like before applying. It's a good subject to do though, very strong career prospects, especially if you go to a top 10 university.
Reply 16
Original post by BenRyan99
Cheers and good luck for your A-levels. I'd recommend trying to find some YouTube videos/textbooks on first year degree level micro and macro to get an idea of what it'll be like before applying. It's a good subject to do though, very strong career prospects, especially if you go to a top 10 university.

Yeah, the only problem for me is that I want to drop maths because I'm really bad at it (like really really bad). But I have found some courses of economics and Italian that don't require maths. I think that I'll just keep looking for courses over the summer.
Original post by Hama31
Yeah, the only problem for me is that I want to drop maths because I'm really bad at it (like really really bad). But I have found some courses of economics and Italian that don't require maths. I think that I'll just keep looking for courses over the summer.

Yeah the maths requirement often plagues applicants. The top tier target unis (Oxbridge, LSE, UCL and Warwick) all require maths with some requiring FM. The second tier ones mostly ask for maths (Bristol, Durham, Bath with Nottingham being the only that doesn't ask for maths). Then in the third tier some ask for it some don't and these are typically unis like Manchester, Edinburgh, Exeter, St Andrews, Leeds, etc.

So you can drop it and still get into some solid places like Nottingham, Edinburgh with AS maths, Manchester's BA course and some others. But you wouldn't be able to go to any top tier or most of the tier 2&3 unis which is a shame because a lot of Economic and Financial firms do genuinely care about the prestige of the university you study at which is unfortunate.
(edited 2 years ago)
Reply 18
Original post by BenRyan99
Yeah the maths requirement often plagues applicants. The top tier target unis (Oxbridge, LSE, UCL and Warwick) all require maths with some requiring FM. The second tier ones mostly ask for maths (Bristol, Durham, Bath with Nottingham being the only that doesn't ask for maths). Then in the third tier some ask for it some don't and these are typically unis like Manchester, Edinburgh, Exeter, St Andrews, Leeds, etc.

So you can drop it and still get into some solid places like Nottingham, Edinburgh with AS maths, Manchester's BA course and some others. But you wouldn't be able to go to any top tier or most of the tier 2&3 unis which is a shame because a lot of Economic and Financial firms do genuinely care about the prestige of the university you study at which is unfortunate.

Thank you for your help it means a lot :smile:

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