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Failing A levels

It’s 3 weeks until A level exams and I just got an E and a D in 2 of the subjects. I revised for both and I genuinely do put a lot of effort in. However I didn’t revise much in year 12 which I’m so annoyed at because now I can’t keep up. There’s so much content I need to go over and not enough time. What can I do to cram or revise effectively in the next few weeks. I study psychology , sociology and maths

Reply 1

111mimi

I fee like for me the best thing right now is just exam papers and watching videos on exam techniques is helping a lot right. I'm currently working on a D/C and doing past papers is increasing my score. Let's hope it actually works tho lol

Original post by kerry.woollands

Reply 2

psychstudent2625

hey so i take socio and psych and might be able to help u there.
so firstly, in order to catch up, you first need to know the basic knowledge/content, so get a textbook or your trs ppt or your friends notes and read it thoroughly and try to absorb the information by pausing and recalling everything you read, pretend you know that shi and teach it to yourself. if you have the energy to, either do blurting at the end of a chapter and see what you remember or make mindmaps of a page or two summarising the connecting the points to a common theme.

next, now you know what content atleast that is coming, you need to get it to stick in your head. so you will look at those mindmaps youve mde or the sheets youve blurted on and will stick that on some wall where you see it everyday. as for revision techniques make flashcrds. it may seem like it would be ineffiecent especially since exams are so close, however they can take only up to like 20 minutes to make per set for a chapter which isnt lot if you compaare it to the rest of the day. cut out your time on social media and imagine spending that time on flashcards. use the pomodoro method to make them with constant breaks.

another way to get stuff stuck in your long term memory is teaching someoe, so whatever stuff you know teach a friend to teach your family and this forces you to firstly explain the cocepts in the most simplest terms and secodly, if someone asks you questions, it forces you to come up with an answer, annd if you cant answer it, you know where youre lacking thus more likely to stick in your head once youve learnt it.

lastly if you think youve got the hag of most of the subject, so as many past papers as you can, then refer w the mrk scheme. for socio, personally when i go through a past paper, id plan my answer then check the marking scheme, then if i feel i wouldnt be able to repliate this answer according to the markig scheme i make a flashcard out of that exam question and later going over it every other day, cus for socio, all the topics re intertwined because you can combine them together.

just general tips,
for psych, make sure yk the marking structure (same w socio) it ensures you know what they want from you. second a problem with most psych students is tht they dont expand on their answers, so for example you say a strength of a theory (which is 2 marks for example ) is that 'it is supported by pavlov thus it has credibility' you might not get ay marks at all despite giving an example of a study and then using the word 'credibility' - instead you wanna talk about what Pavlov did such as 'conditioning dogs in the same procedure using classical conditioning which thus supports the theory giving it credibility.'

for socio, make a list of sociologists, studies, statistics and stick them in ur room. ask ur tr or friend which ones are most used such as anne oakleys study into role of housewives can be used for structured interviews, for the feminist argument, for gender inequaility etc. so use the studies that are applicable in most places and stick them somewhere you will see everyday so it just automatically goes into ur brainn without u putting in ay effort. and lastly MODERN SOCIETY, talk about it, if u read news and think sm u saw the other day related to society being patriarchal, throw it in there. if they ask you about something about media, bring in tiktok and how that effects people. Also literally make up statistics if you cant remember any, be like 'The guardian reported that 59% of teens on tiktok expeirience suicudl thoughts' theyre prob never gonna actually check.

hope this was helpful!