Is it possible for me to get AAA?

Original post by Yaluquin

I’m at DBB for maths, bio and chem respectively, I think that’s what if my exams started today probably a high D for maths. In these next 3 weeks I’m going to try and commit the whole of biology and chemistry to memory in its entirety, whilst doing maths exam questions and honing in where I’m terrible. Then I plan to do exam paper after exam paper until my first exam roles around. I think that’s a solid plan to try and scrape AAA but I’m not so sure, I thought I’d ask to check. Any thoughts on adjustments would be appreciated a lot.
Good luck to everyone!

The problem with this is that its a very loose plan. I assume you probably have a more specific plan with what you plan to cover in the next 3 weeks as this will be far more useful.
Seeing that that the D is in maths, it should be your area of focus, and I would highly recommend asking your teachers to give you an individual mock exam for just you to do to test how you're doing in a couple weeks time as doing an exam paper at home isn't always the most useful especially if you're easily distracted. Teachers can also find exam papers that arent available online so you have more of a surprise aspect.
Personally I would recommend drawing up a more detailed plan, for example what topics are you planning to focus on for each day in the next 3 weeks so that you make sure you get everything done, and how much time are you dedicating to each subject each day as you need to give more love and care to the subject you're struggling the most in.

Reply 2

justlearning1469

21

Original post by Yaluquin

I’m at DBB for maths, bio and chem respectively, I think that’s what if my exams started today probably a high D for maths. In these next 3 weeks I’m going to try and commit the whole of biology and chemistry to memory in its entirety, whilst doing maths exam questions and honing in where I’m terrible. Then I plan to do exam paper after exam paper until my first exam roles around. I think that’s a solid plan to try and scrape AAA but I’m not so sure, I thought I’d ask to check. Any thoughts on adjustments would be appreciated a lot.
Good luck to everyone!

P.S. I don’t have a med offer but I just want AAA just so
I can finish this on a high, I might reapply but Ik not sure.

Focus on math. Math takes practice and a foundation, and if you practice enough, and your foundation is good, you'd get a good grade.

Reply 3

OP

Original post by Carrotsroom

The problem with this is that its a very loose plan. I assume you probably have a more specific plan with what you plan to cover in the next 3 weeks as this will be far more useful.
Seeing that that the D is in maths, it should be your area of focus, and I would highly recommend asking your teachers to give you an individual mock exam for just you to do to test how you're doing in a couple weeks time as doing an exam paper at home isn't always the most useful especially if you're easily distracted. Teachers can also find exam papers that arent available online so you have more of a surprise aspect.
Personally I would recommend drawing up a more detailed plan, for example what topics are you planning to focus on for each day in the next 3 weeks so that you make sure you get everything done, and how much time are you dedicating to each subject each day as you need to give more love and care to the subject you're struggling the most in.

thank you so much for your response! for biology and chemistry I have flash cards topic for topic in each subject. If I commit all of those to memory in the next 3 weeks this would leave me with another 3 weeks to do exam practice, would you say that’s long enough give that I’m going to have 8 hour days with 4 hours on chemistry and biology and 4 hours on maths. I plan to take your advice and try and be more specific with my topic areas and focus where I’m lacking. I understand that maths needs focus but I would you say my plan for the sciences are OK?

Reply 4

OP

For maths, for the last 3 weeks I’m going to do every exam paper from 2018. Would you say that will put me in good stead? As of now I have access to some exams that I haven’t done so I’m going to listen to Carrotsroom and ask my teacher to let me do a mock in school. Now you did point out that I have to just practice and practice if I kept at it and just did question after question would I be sorted for June to get an A? Of course I have my other subjects as well that aren’t quite there as well but upon typing this I think this should work right?

Original post by justlearning1469

Focus on math. Math takes practice and a foundation, and if you practice enough, and your foundation is good, you'd get a good grade.

Reply 5

justlearning1469

21

Original post by Yaluquin

For maths, for the last 3 weeks I’m going to do every exam paper from 2018. Would you say that will put me in good stead? As of now I have access to some exams that I haven’t done so I’m going to listen to Carrotsroom and ask my teacher to let me do a mock in school. Now you did point out that I have to just practice and practice if I kept at it and just did question after question would I be sorted for June to get an A? Of course I have my other subjects as well that aren’t quite there as well but upon typing this I think this should work right?

If you're working at a D, you probably have huge gaps, whether it's because of exam technique or careless mistakes or forgetting the content.

Figure where it is and go from there.
Exam technique: consult teacher, more exam paper question.
Careless mistake: please double check, triple check, especially if you have ADHD or stuff affecting attention. You can lose many marks in a question for one single mistake, so be careful with that.
Foundation: Exam Solutions, tutorials

You can use the old exam papers as practice, to bridge between tutorials and the real exam papers.

Reply 6

StudyMind

8

Original post by Yaluquin

I’m at DBB for maths, bio and chem respectively, I think that’s what if my exams started today probably a high D for maths. In these next 3 weeks I’m going to try and commit the whole of biology and chemistry to memory in its entirety, whilst doing maths exam questions and honing in where I’m terrible. Then I plan to do exam paper after exam paper until my first exam roles around. I think that’s a solid plan to try and scrape AAA but I’m not so sure, I thought I’d ask to check. Any thoughts on adjustments would be appreciated a lot.
Good luck to everyone!

P.S. I don’t have a med offer but I just want AAA just so
I can finish this on a high, I might reapply but Ik not sure.

Heya!
There is a big gap between a D and an A, so you need to make sure you work hard and do lots of practice, but also don't forget your other 2 alvls :h:

If it helps, Study Mind has lots of free past papers you can use to help with your revision.

I hope this helps!
Milena
UCL PFE
Study Mind

Reply 7

Original post by Yaluquin

thank you so much for your response! for biology and chemistry I have flash cards topic for topic in each subject. If I commit all of those to memory in the next 3 weeks this would leave me with another 3 weeks to do exam practice, would you say that’s long enough give that I’m going to have 8 hour days with 4 hours on chemistry and biology and 4 hours on maths. I plan to take your advice and try and be more specific with my topic areas and focus where I’m lacking. I understand that maths needs focus but I would you say my plan for the sciences are OK?

It's not a bad plan and I wouldn't say it wouldn't help you at all. Amongst your flashcards, I recommend using another revision technique such as a mindmap or blurting where you don't need a question to prompt your answer. If you're aiming for memorisation, then this method will work better as it is directly testing you what you can remember without any kind of prompt. You also need to consider the fact that not all your papers are on the same day so you may need to shift some of your study techniques a few days before a paper so you can focus on the topics for that paper instead of revising a topic that would be on the paper a week after.
Having 3 weeks for exam practice is good if you're not easily bored of the same technique. I wouldn't imagine myself just doing exam questions everyday for 8 hours a day for 3 weeks, I think I would burnout before I reach my exams! I also think you may run out of exam questions/papers...
Realistically, it would work better if you shuffled things around a bit which is why I recommend drawing up a more specific plan so that your set and ready to go.
8 hours isn't little time, and in this case quality of revision > time spent revising. You could realistically spend 8 hours doing exam questions each day but maybe by the end of the fifth week you would've forgotten things you memorised in the first week as they never showed up in the exam questions you practised.
Something a bit more useful is possible doing your flashcards/blurting/mindmaps for the first few weeks just to get your knowledge in check then when you go to do your exam papers/questions, you may find it useful to start with some flashcards/blurting beforehand and then do the exam questions. This means you will test your knowledge in increments and not just a massive block where you are prone to forget once you stop testing yourself.
It's also best to fit the maths in your daily schedule too, maybe cut down the 4 hours for exam qs by 1 hr so you do 6 hours for chem/bio then 2-3 hours for maths- that is if you can handle an 8+ hrs of revision especially if you're not already in the habit. Just doing a few maths exam practice questions each day can push you up many grades but you need to persevere with it- and you also need to be confident you can do another question like the one you try and not just skip the topic bc its hard! Just remember that you can overestimate your ability to do things now which may knock your confidence in the next couple of weeks which is why having a little back up (eg if flashcards don't work, use blurting as i said above) to change things around and make it more interesting can help you stay interested.

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 8

OP

Original post by Carrotsroom

It's not a bad plan and I wouldn't say it wouldn't help you at all. Amongst your flashcards, I recommend using another revision technique such as a mindmap or blurting where you don't need a question to prompt your answer. If you're aiming for memorisation, then this method will work better as it is directly testing you what you can remember without any kind of prompt. You also need to consider the fact that not all your papers are on the same day so you may need to shift some of your study techniques a few days before a paper so you can focus on the topics for that paper instead of revising a topic that would be on the paper a week after.
Having 3 weeks for exam practice is good if you're not easily bored of the same technique. I wouldn't imagine myself just doing exam questions everyday for 8 hours a day for 3 weeks, I think I would burnout before I reach my exams! I also think you may run out of exam questions/papers...
Realistically, it would work better if you shuffled things around a bit which is why I recommend drawing up a more specific plan so that your set and ready to go.
8 hours isn't little time, and in this case quality of revision > time spent revising. You could realistically spend 8 hours doing exam questions each day but maybe by the end of the fifth week you would've forgotten things you memorised in the first week as they never showed up in the exam questions you practised.
Something a bit more useful is possible doing your flashcards/blurting/mindmaps for the first few weeks just to get your knowledge in check then when you go to do your exam papers/questions, you may find it useful to start with some flashcards/blurting beforehand and then do the exam questions. This means you will test your knowledge in increments and not just a massive block where you are prone to forget once you stop testing yourself.
It's also best to fit the maths in your daily schedule too, maybe cut down the 4 hours for exam qs by 1 hr so you do 6 hours for chem/bio then 2-3 hours for maths- that is if you can handle an 8+ hrs of revision especially if you're not already in the habit. Just doing a few maths exam practice questions each day can push you up many grades but you need to persevere with it- and you also need to be confident you can do another question like the one you try and not just skip the topic bc its hard! Just remember that you can overestimate your ability to do things now which may knock your confidence in the next couple of weeks which is why having a little back up (eg if flashcards don't work, use blurting as i said above) to change things around and make it more interesting can help you stay interested.

Thank you so much, this is genuinely so useful. I think the main thing that stuck out to me is the aspect of integrating the reviewing of the content and the exam questions. As for blurting and mind maps, I don’t quite understand how to do them effectively, these
methods mean that you have to cite everything out of thin air and that isn’t very representative of the exam wouldn’t you say? Maybe I’m just lazy.

Reply 9

Original post by Yaluquin

Thank you so much, this is genuinely so useful. I think the main thing that stuck out to me is the aspect of integrating the reviewing of the content and the exam questions. As for blurting and mind maps, I don’t quite understand how to do them effectively, these
methods mean that you have to cite everything out of thin air and that isn’t very representative of the exam wouldn’t you say? Maybe I’m just lazy.

I don't personally use mindmaps, I've been making what I call summary sheets since I started A-levels. They're basically just A4 sheets with 2 or 3 topics summarised and its super helpful in terms of minimising what I need to learn- these arent made for memory, their sole purpose is to make it easier for you to find information instead of looking through textbooks. Mindmaps are just a quicker version in my opinion as you don't really need to make them pretty lmao.
Blurting is a great way to revise and its not that you're not completely left to the air, you basically pick a topic you want to learn, lets say types of cells (this is what I remember from GCSE biology lmao). So you then would literally just learn things about cells using your flashcards or your notes, then you put everything aside when you're done, pull up a blank piece of paper and literally scribble everything you can remember. After, I usually take a different coloured pen and just write in an empty space/post it note what I didn't get down and usually it will help you remember the things you forgot even better. Its super quick and takes you 20 mins max!

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 10

OP

Original post by Carrotsroom

I don't personally use mindmaps, I've been making what I call summary sheets since I started A-levels. They're basically just A4 sheets with 2 or 3 topics summarised and its super helpful in terms of minimising what I need to learn- these arent made for memory, their sole purpose is to make it easier for you to find information instead of looking through textbooks. Mindmaps are just a quicker version in my opinion as you don't really need to make them pretty lmao.
Blurting is a great way to revise and its not that you're not completely left to the air, you basically pick a topic you want to learn, lets say types of cells (this is what I remember from GCSE biology lmao). So you then would literally just learn things about cells using your flashcards or your notes, then you put everything aside when you're done, pull up a blank piece of paper and literally scribble everything you can remember. After, I usually take a different coloured pen and just write in an empty space/post it note what I didn't get down and usually it will help you remember the things you forgot even better. Its super quick and takes you 20 mins max!

20 mins max???
I’ll give that a go then, should I officially make it a part of my revision or should I just do it if I find myself some unexpected spare time?

Reply 11