Sat my GCSEs last year and ended up with 6 nines and 1 eight, (the other three grades were 776). Tbh I was quite lazy when it came to revising. My worst trait is that I like to do as little as possible to get what I need to get, nothing more, nothing less. If I had put in a slight bit more effort i'm sure all 9s would not have been that difficult. But anyway, this is what I did:
- Any subject that required knowledge e.g. history, english lit, the sciences etc, I made flashcards for them. These were detailed and there were a LOT of them. For example, I had like 500 flash cards in total for history. You want to include everything you know on them, but don't just dump information onto flashcards and hope to memorise them. I put a question on one side of the flash card then the answer on the other side. So it would be like 'what is a pacemaker?' and on the back I would put the answer 'A group of cells located in the right atrium that sends out signals that make the heart muscle contract and that regulates heart rate.' Used space repetition to memorise these. Anki was the biggest help when it came to this (If you're gonna take one thing from this let it be to use or at least research Anki).
- For subjects where you need to use application, as well as memorisation, I did exam questions and past papers. For Sciences I used PMT questions after I had memorised the content to a great degree. I would go through these questions topic by topic, then flag any questions I had got wrong. If I got a question wrong, and it was something that was knowledge based, I would turn the question into another flashcard so I knew that I would get it right the next time. For stuff like calculations in science, I watched videos on how to do the basics then again practiced. If I got it wrong, I would try find a video explanation of how to approach the calculation, or I'd ask one of my teachers. For stuff like english lit and language, I wrote practice essays and handed them into my teachers, then actively worked on what they suggested I could improve on.
- I think the only subjects that you can't use these two methods for is like Maths and art and design subjects. As maths isn't memorisation based you have to strictly focus on exam technique and understanding. I used the GCSE maths tutor on youtube (he explains every topic with exam style questions) and Mathsgenie to understand topics, then I did exam questions and past papers to work on my exam technique. I'd recommend going back on topics after a few weeks to make sure you still understand and can do them. For your creative subjects, I guess the struggle is with the coursework and the only advice i have there is to find out what you get awarded marks for, and using your teachers' advice focus on doing things that will achieve you these grades.
Like i've mentioned: I was lazy. I never went above and beyond for any subject, and for the subjects I got 776 in (Business Studies, Graphics, and Spanish) it was because I didn't revise them. The most difficult part of getting all 9s is giving enough of a crap about 10 different subjects to revise all of them. You don't really need to do any more than an hour or two a day of revision leading up to your exams. I would say revise for every mock and every in class test you may have, because it'll help you know the content off by heart.
All 9s isn't difficult. And I know a girl who got straight 9s in 11 subjects with literally the bare minimum effort (she might've done even less than me), but she was naturally really smart, so it is subjective. Also, you really don't need all 9s to get into any top university. As long as the majority of your grades are 8s and 9s you should be fine. Sorry this was a whole essay by itself haha, but good luck
