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Should I retake year 13 to resit A-level exam or revise by myself?

I want to resit A-level exam next year, but I’m not sure whether I should retake year 13 or prepare for the A-level exam by myself. Actually, I don’t want to go back to school, however, people around me keep telling me to retake year 13. I got ABB this year, and I’m planning to resit all of my A-level subjects.
Original post by Kh177
I want to resit A-level exam next year, but I’m not sure whether I should retake year 13 or prepare for the A-level exam by myself. Actually, I don’t want to go back to school, however, people around me keep telling me to retake year 13. I got ABB this year, and I’m planning to resit all of my A-level subjects.


What subjects did you take and can I ask why you feel the need to retake? ABB is a good set of results! Does it affect your future plans?
Reply 2
Original post by brainzistheword
What subjects did you take and can I ask why you feel the need to retake? ABB is a good set of results! Does it affect your future plans?

I did biology, chemistry, and psychology. It's because I want to get into universities like King's or UCL, and with these grades, I cannot be accepted by those unis
Original post by Kh177
I did biology, chemistry, and psychology. It's because I want to get into universities like King's or UCL, and with these grades, I cannot be accepted by those unis


I see. Do you know if those unis have any requirements on resits for the course you’d like to study? Have you looked into Access Courses as an alternative, if you don’t want to resit year 13? I appreciate they are sometimes considered differently to A-levels.
Reply 4
Original post by Kh177
I want to resit A-level exam next year, but I’m not sure whether I should retake year 13 or prepare for the A-level exam by myself. Actually, I don’t want to go back to school, however, people around me keep telling me to retake year 13. I got ABB this year, and I’m planning to resit all of my A-level subjects.

Could I ask whether you ended up resitting year 13? Currently waiting for my results but not too sure if they'll be good enough, definitely considering resitting but I have the same questions as you did. If you did, how did you find it?
Reply 5
Original post by kiwi_lover
Could I ask whether you ended up resitting year 13? Currently waiting for my results but not too sure if they'll be good enough, definitely considering resitting but I have the same questions as you did. If you did, how did you find it?

Hi, I am in the same boat as you. I didn't get the grades I needed to do dental hygine and therapy so I need to do resits. Are you resisting as well?
Original post by cynth0_0
Hi, I am in the same boat as you. I didn't get the grades I needed to do dental hygine and therapy so I need to do resits. Are you resisting as well?

hey! I retook my levels this year and studied on my own for them. I literally retook all three but managed, this year I got A* in bio, A* in psychology and A in chem. as long as you make a plan and stick to it, it will probably be okay, but I always worked better teaching myself so this might not work for everyone.
I resat my a levels at my old school, which is way easier since they know you and you know the building/where to go, less stress on the day. the first one or two were really embarrassing since I ran into so many people I knew, but I don't regret it now. phone up your school for deadlines to sign up to take the exams, I almost missed mine. I think they were some time before Christmas, but may differ elsewhere. PHONE UP YOUR SCHOOL ASAP and get dates/info. I ended up having to pay around £450 to resit all 9 exams/3 subjects which made me cry. however, I don't know if you would have to pay this if you actually retook the year.
I started revising around 4 months before my exams and also went part time at my job, and at 2 months out I quit my job. everyone is individual, don't use my word (or anyone else's) as gospel, but make a plan dated back form the exams, specific to you. I actually knew the suff fairly well in some areas and not at all in others, it was not linear. I aimed to finish everything a month before the exams but this ended up being closer to days, so start earlier than you think you need to. think about weekly hours/how long each topic takes you. but be honest to yourself, you don't want to waste your time or money. when I tell you this was full on, I mean it, hours daily, it was miserable.
do a lot of past paper questions. make flashcards of the harder ones, as well as topic outlines, such as the processes involved in reabsorption or mechanisms and their conditions. I used Anki which told me when to look at different flashcards depending on how well I knew them (felt organised for the first time in my life). this was especially useful for biology, I was on OCR A and familiarising myself with mark schemes helped predict what random application questions wanted me to say.
also, if you don't have one, get a job, I felt a lot less useless and earned money, which is nice. this was the first time I worked full time, and I really realised how **** school was. it is literally not real, but I did go to a stupid grammar school sixth form (ew, cliquey, superiority complex, wtf) so I asked or it. also, its nice to have coworker friends who you can do things with outside of school friends who are now at uni.
take breaks, weekends off, don't burn out. control your controllable, sleep, food, touch grass etc. sleep is especially important, sounds simple but its literally my number one piece of advice.
lastly (sorry so long), think about not retaking all 3 if possible. i focused on chem and bio initially and only started psychology properly around a month before the exams, big mistake, super stressful, basically ended up learning stuff for for specific exams (how I did well is beyond me). if I hadn't had to focus on later on psychology, I would have done better in chemistry.
if you have any subject specific questions, ask. I have useful resources/advice for my subjects if anyone wants.

**check your specification has not changed. mine did, but only a little, and the new stuff did come up in the exams.
Reply 7
Original post by cynth0_0
Hi, I am in the same boat as you. I didn't get the grades I needed to do dental hygine and therapy so I need to do resits. Are you resisting as well?

Hi, I hope you don’t mind me asking but what grades did you get and what did you need for dental hygiene and therapy. Also, what university did you apply for? Thanks
Reply 8
Original post by derber
hey! I retook my levels this year and studied on my own for them. I literally retook all three but managed, this year I got A* in bio, A* in psychology and A in chem. as long as you make a plan and stick to it, it will probably be okay, but I always worked better teaching myself so this might not work for everyone.
I resat my a levels at my old school, which is way easier since they know you and you know the building/where to go, less stress on the day. the first one or two were really embarrassing since I ran into so many people I knew, but I don't regret it now. phone up your school for deadlines to sign up to take the exams, I almost missed mine. I think they were some time before Christmas, but may differ elsewhere. PHONE UP YOUR SCHOOL ASAP and get dates/info. I ended up having to pay around £450 to resit all 9 exams/3 subjects which made me cry. however, I don't know if you would have to pay this if you actually retook the year.
I started revising around 4 months before my exams and also went part time at my job, and at 2 months out I quit my job. everyone is individual, don't use my word (or anyone else's) as gospel, but make a plan dated back form the exams, specific to you. I actually knew the suff fairly well in some areas and not at all in others, it was not linear. I aimed to finish everything a month before the exams but this ended up being closer to days, so start earlier than you think you need to. think about weekly hours/how long each topic takes you. but be honest to yourself, you don't want to waste your time or money. when I tell you this was full on, I mean it, hours daily, it was miserable.
do a lot of past paper questions. make flashcards of the harder ones, as well as topic outlines, such as the processes involved in reabsorption or mechanisms and their conditions. I used Anki which told me when to look at different flashcards depending on how well I knew them (felt organised for the first time in my life). this was especially useful for biology, I was on OCR A and familiarising myself with mark schemes helped predict what random application questions wanted me to say.
also, if you don't have one, get a job, I felt a lot less useless and earned money, which is nice. this was the first time I worked full time, and I really realised how **** school was. it is literally not real, but I did go to a stupid grammar school sixth form (ew, cliquey, superiority complex, wtf) so I asked or it. also, its nice to have coworker friends who you can do things with outside of school friends who are now at uni.
take breaks, weekends off, don't burn out. control your controllable, sleep, food, touch grass etc. sleep is especially important, sounds simple but its literally my number one piece of advice.
lastly (sorry so long), think about not retaking all 3 if possible. i focused on chem and bio initially and only started psychology properly around a month before the exams, big mistake, super stressful, basically ended up learning stuff for for specific exams (how I did well is beyond me). if I hadn't had to focus on later on psychology, I would have done better in chemistry.
if you have any subject specific questions, ask. I have useful resources/advice for my subjects if anyone wants.
**check your specification has not changed. mine did, but only a little, and the new stuff did come up in the exams.

Hiii, just was wondering what your initial A-level grades were before resitting. Also, did you apply for university this year? If you did was it for the same course you had applied for before? And was the reapplying process on ucas difficult? For example getting predicted grades and references?
Original post by Sumo6689
Hiii, just was wondering what your initial A-level grades were before resitting. Also, did you apply for university this year? If you did was it for the same course you had applied for before? And was the reapplying process on ucas difficult? For example getting predicted grades and references?

I didn't actually sit them at all the first time around because I was in hospital. but honestly if I had I think they would have been around BBB, I was predicted AAB. I did reapply for university, and for the same course, they didn't mind. reapplying through ucas was the same as before, a little quicker since I had already done it all once. I strongly advise familiarising yourself with deadline dates etc since I literally almost missed the deadlines for doing basically everything, it's weird when there is no one around you doing the same thing/to remind you and time passes fast.
my predicted grades were the same as previously, but this was because it is my schools policy, it might differ elsewhere. same for references, except my school put at the bottom an extra bit on my specific circumstances. i'm not sure if this is normal but my school gets its students to check our references for mistakes, although i think that was because they were a very copy and paste format, I literally had to correct the way my name was spelt and I was there from year 7 to13, plus its not difficult to spell. all contact was through email with my school, which started in September. however, I think I had to make my school aware I was retaking earlier/ASAP because our original school emails were terminated (might be different for you idk). the school held my hand through the technical things though, like what I put my education status as (I can't remember much it was ages ago, but I know I couldn't have done it on my own).
one university that interviewed me asked me if I was doing retakes, but technically I wasn't because I didn't sit them at all, but most didn't care anyway, even ones that said they did online (don't trust me on that, they may have just not noticed/saw I had no original results).
also, check for yourself elsewhere but I really didn't change my personal statement that much and no one cared, I was worried I would be asked about plagiarism if they realised it was similar to a previous one on record (my own). again this may just be for the universities I applied for though.

if you want to know anything else, just ask
(edited 5 months ago)
Reply 10
Original post by derber
hey! I retook my levels this year and studied on my own for them. I literally retook all three but managed, this year I got A* in bio, A* in psychology and A in chem. as long as you make a plan and stick to it, it will probably be okay, but I always worked better teaching myself so this might not work for everyone.
I resat my a levels at my old school, which is way easier since they know you and you know the building/where to go, less stress on the day. the first one or two were really embarrassing since I ran into so many people I knew, but I don't regret it now. phone up your school for deadlines to sign up to take the exams, I almost missed mine. I think they were some time before Christmas, but may differ elsewhere. PHONE UP YOUR SCHOOL ASAP and get dates/info. I ended up having to pay around £450 to resit all 9 exams/3 subjects which made me cry. however, I don't know if you would have to pay this if you actually retook the year.
I started revising around 4 months before my exams and also went part time at my job, and at 2 months out I quit my job. everyone is individual, don't use my word (or anyone else's) as gospel, but make a plan dated back form the exams, specific to you. I actually knew the suff fairly well in some areas and not at all in others, it was not linear. I aimed to finish everything a month before the exams but this ended up being closer to days, so start earlier than you think you need to. think about weekly hours/how long each topic takes you. but be honest to yourself, you don't want to waste your time or money. when I tell you this was full on, I mean it, hours daily, it was miserable.
do a lot of past paper questions. make flashcards of the harder ones, as well as topic outlines, such as the processes involved in reabsorption or mechanisms and their conditions. I used Anki which told me when to look at different flashcards depending on how well I knew them (felt organised for the first time in my life). this was especially useful for biology, I was on OCR A and familiarising myself with mark schemes helped predict what random application questions wanted me to say.
also, if you don't have one, get a job, I felt a lot less useless and earned money, which is nice. this was the first time I worked full time, and I really realised how **** school was. it is literally not real, but I did go to a stupid grammar school sixth form (ew, cliquey, superiority complex, wtf) so I asked or it. also, its nice to have coworker friends who you can do things with outside of school friends who are now at uni.
take breaks, weekends off, don't burn out. control your controllable, sleep, food, touch grass etc. sleep is especially important, sounds simple but its literally my number one piece of advice.
lastly (sorry so long), think about not retaking all 3 if possible. i focused on chem and bio initially and only started psychology properly around a month before the exams, big mistake, super stressful, basically ended up learning stuff for for specific exams (how I did well is beyond me). if I hadn't had to focus on later on psychology, I would have done better in chemistry.
if you have any subject specific questions, ask. I have useful resources/advice for my subjects if anyone wants.
**check your specification has not changed. mine did, but only a little, and the new stuff did come up in the exams.

Hey how did you go about revising psychology independently , I unfortunately didn’t get the grades required this year , my sixth form is unwilling to help me and told me to find somewhere else to resit even though they allowed resits before , so I’m going to have to resit privately - the money is a lot - so it is a difficult time for me any advice is appreciated

Thanks
Original post by Flo0-
Hey how did you go about revising psychology independently , I unfortunately didn’t get the grades required this year , my sixth form is unwilling to help me and told me to find somewhere else to resit even though they allowed resits before , so I’m going to have to resit privately - the money is a lot - so it is a difficult time for me any advice is appreciated
Thanks
okay, so I really didn't plan my time well for psychology, I ended up leaving it wayyy too late because I hated the subject. however I would recommend making a (realistic) schedule so you finish going over everything around 2 weeks before the exams. be honest with yourself, you don't want to get burnout or realise too late you have run out of time. you have to be motivated to follow this through, I was sat at a desk for hours multiple times a week (and daily in the last weeks).

the main thing I did was go over each topics subtopics (anything that could be used as a 8/16 marker) and write a 16 markers worth of AO1(1/3 to 1/2 A4 page) and AO3 (x3-4 paragraphs). I based a lot of these from the topic outlines (first online resource below). these were my revision resources, I stapled full topics together to make topic booklets. I also made researcher name banks with outlines of their studies briefly (including those named on the spec and those I used for evaluation). for research methods I did similar, but shorter. I also made Anki flashcards for the AO1 and AO3 stuff, just bullet pointing them. (highly recommend Anki, basically quizlet, i just preferred it).
then I just revised off these for the exams they were needed for specifically, basically just memorising the 16 marker essay plans. PSYCHOLOGY IS ALL ABOUT MEMORISATION AND ACTIVE RECALL!!! recall recall recall (basically blurting), spoke out loud, used a whiteboard, in the shower/car/bed/at work. I would just go through the spec and make sure I could write a 16 marker for anything mentioned. my psychology exams were all at least a week apart so that gave a week to focus on those topic's essay plans for that exam specifically essay. generally this information covered most question that could be asked. make sure to use key terminology in evaluations like temporal or ecological validity etc... (year 2 stuff from research methods). do practice questions, I used Physics and Maths tutor, its a topic by topic past paper question bank (free). also look through whole past papers to get used to the size of each set of questions (shorter than you think), I didn't write out full answers (too much time) then checked with the mark schemes. do a mind map once in a while.
for application questions, remember to embed parts of the stem into your answer; the answer has to be specific to what you are answering and not generalisable knowledge. this includes the names, situation and wording in the actual question stem.

here are some of the online resources I found useful for AQA psychology (when making 16 marker essay plans)

https://www.alevelpsychologytutor.co.uk/topics --- I didn't buy their products but if you go to the (free) topics section they give key names, studies, terms and bits of evaluation. made it easier to think out possible 16 markers and make sure I didn't miss anything, although they didn't include all my optional paper 3 topics. (what I made the 16 marker essay plan from).

https://learndojo.org/a-level/ --- I liked this one a lot , it was free but incomplete when I used it, hope its still free now. gives AO1 and AO3 material, pretty concise too. this was my main online resource. (although I think some things, like dates and specific figures may have been inaccurate).

https://www.psychologyhub.co.uk/student-resources/ --- lots of ads, use a VPN if you have one, gives way too much information for some things but some decent PEELs. difficult to navigate.

SMCartledge --- YouTube, very useful, highly recommend!! (although PEELs are too short and have to application or link at the end)

also don't stress about getting perfect marks, you only need to average 70% to get an A, that's 11/16 or 5-6/8 (overall 17/24 per section). I read a lot online about having to write 5 PEELs for AO3, but in my exams I only wrote 3 or 4 PEELs for 16 markers and 2 for 8 markers (personally recommend writing 3 (or 4 if you can) good, longer, fully explained peels than 5 shorter ones since you have to remember less info and it allows you to demonstrate you actually understand what you are writing).
this is what worked for me, it might not for everyone. but overall, I think psychology is basically a memory game and not about being 'intelligent/clever', I know a lot of straight A* students who struggled or had to drop it because of how much it valued recall of random names, events, figures and facts.

**PEEL= point, example, evaluation (of the example), link (back to question/topic), for AO3 (evaluation). different people have different acronyms, but this is what I used
(edited 5 months ago)

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