any a-level advice?

basically, as it says in the title. i start year 12 next week, and i'm just wondering if any current or ex a-level students had any advice! i'm studying maths, chemistry, and physics, and HOPING to be able to apply for oxford, although i am being realistic and trying to take care of myself too.

thank you!

Reply 1

AhsokaTano-

Maths - keep practicing daily, even if its 5 mins a day
Chem - go over content a lot
Phy - revise, its hard af (apparently)
tho, im not qualified for chem and phy, but maths you really do need to revise a lot. If u want, watch some TL Maths and Bicen maths before you start.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iLarThCLOQFHDcZc6i1uHHvMmMyG0VvM?usp=drive_link here are some resources

Reply 2

planets-&-stars

Original post by AhsokaTano-

thank you so much!! i will definitely give that a look

Reply 3

snowblob

Hey there - I do all of these and enjoy my subjects immensely, so here are a couple of tips to succeed at A Level!
For maths, you want to be practising little but often - maybe go over this at the weekend, and do a load of questions. Good resources are PMT, maths genie, and if you have a textbook, definitely use that! Biggest tip would be not to ignore applied maths (statistics and mechanics) as, even if you got every single pure question in your A level exams correct, if you got no marks for applied, that still wouldn't be enough for an A* !
For chemistry, notes and questions are the way to go! Check out some videos on YouTube to help you understand the content.
Rather controversially, I don't think physics is the hardest science - if you're mathematically able, you've already got loads of marks in the bag! Yes, there is some theory, but much less than the other sciences in my opinion. Do loads of questions for this one, and, again, YouTube videos will save you, especially for those difficult concepts.
Best of luck!

Reply 4

TheUniversii

I’ve done chemistry and physics! Chemistry is about 1/3 memorisation so go over all of the synthetic routes each time you learn new reactions so you stay on top of it (literally be able to draw out the route map from memory) and all of the oxidation state colours necessary of the transition metal ions. Inorganic chemistry focuses more on equations, but pretty much all of them come to a ratio of moles, so don’t overthink it when a question ends up taking up the whole page (redox titration questions in particular!). Keep on top of new definitions you learn like a disproportionation reaction and periodicity and such as it is an easy way to pick up marks. Some papers have sneaky 1 markers where you need to know the characteristics of elements, generally the first 20, so it’s not too demanding. Trends in groups is also a big focus in AS but less in A2 (bond enthalpies, reactivity, solubility etc).

For physics, definitely also learn all the textbook definitions as there are many where you can pick up easy marks. Also use this time in year 12 wisely!! Your year 13 physics classes may be stressful if you don’t have a good grasp on the basics so drill all the AS content into your head as soon as you can. The most important areas i’d say are energy changes (like in a falling object or a spring), all the laws you learn ever (often need to recite them, at least in OCR A), and practical work- including equipment lists, working with graphs, gradient, Y-intercept etc, and percentage discrepancy.

Regular revision using flash cards or past paper questions will also help so much.