what are year 12 mocks like?

just wondering what the content is like as i've seen many people say these mocks are extremely important especially if i want to apply to oxbridge (i do). are the exams just the as papers or are they a-level papers or is it different for each sixth form where they make up their own exam papers? i would've thought it would be as level as i'm pretty sure theres still a-level content learnt in year 13. any explanation would be very helpful, thanks

Reply 1

bibachu

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by evsurfer

Different schools have different procedures and the way mocks are organised can vary from subject to subject. In my school, they gave us A level past papers because we don’t do AS levels or learn AS content for the first year - we go straight into A level content. In psychology, I had paper 1 topics from a mix of past papers. In politics I had a mix of paper 1 and 2 topics from past papers. In philosophy, I had a mix of paper 1 and 2 topics from past papers, but they told us in advance what our two 25 mark essay questions were going to be. In some subjects, people had more than one paper for their end of year mocks (e.g. maths). It really depends on the school’s individual procedure and how the subject choose to organise the mock paper(s). If you’re school state that you will take AS levels at the end of Year 12, those will be exams set by the exam board for that year, as AS levels are an official qualification. Your mocks are important, particularly if you want to apply for in time for the Oxbridge, medicine, veterinary medicine and dentistry deadline in October. They tend to be used to determine your predicted grades. You may have opportunities to raise your predicted grades in Year 13, but the policy again will vary from school to school and from subject to subject. If you want more information, you’d have to email the school you plan on attending to ask what their procedure is. They may not necessarily have an answer if it’s something they tend to change regularly.