all 8's and 9's at GCSE, ask me anything!

Which alevels are you taking? :0
(Also congratulations that is amazing!!)

hiya! thanks a bunch
my personal tips for english literature would to plan responses and revise high-level inferences of good quotes for a range of potential themes / character questions. personally, i believe that i got extremely lucky in my english literature exams this year because every question on my literature papers (other than the unseen poetry section) was everything i had previously written essays for / wanted. perhaps that was main reason i achieved that 9, but not everyone will be that lucky this year.
i would definitely advise for you to practise writing responses to past questions to begin with and then give them to your teacher to mark and provide feedback. always try to incorporate their feedback into your next work, as they will always try to look for little things that can send your work up to the next grade / marking level band. as i mentioned previously, planning your quotes for your responses out for a certain theme or character on a flashcard and memorising it might be very beneficial - especially if you're abe to adapt and alter these plans if necessary in the exam. tl;dr: memorising plans for high-level responses will be a good call.
as for english language, as ashamed as i am to admit it, i didn't really revise it much because i didn't know how to. a week or two before each english language exam, i did watch "mr salles teaches english" on youtube to hear his pre-exam advice, but in the end, i'm not too sure if that benefitted me much. (but always feel free to give him a shot and see if his advice benefits you. different things work for everyone)
i think that what i truly needed was to practise writing responses tot he first half of the paper; i found that it wasn't the creative / persuasive writing that cost me marks, but rather the entire reading section of the paper. especially in language paper 2, where you have two extracts to read and subsequently compare in some of the questions, time is a major contributing factor to your exam marks if you don't finish your responses. the entirety of language paper 2 other than Q5, i was dissastisfied with. the ending to my Q4 was rushed, i didn't properly finish Q2 or Q3, and i was 4 marks off of a grade 9. alas, i can't complain, as it was my own fault for not putting in much effort to revise it.
i believe the key thing to do for language is practise writing responses. the examboard will never give you an extract / paragraph that is too difficult to find and dig out inferences. it's just a matter of writing timed responses and handing them into your teachers for feedback. once again, incorporating that feedback into your next practice paper will help increase the number of marks you get on each question.
i hope this helps!

Thank you so much I really appreciate you taking the time to write detailed and helpful answers good luck with a levels!!! 🙂

hi, year 11's! i'm maveline and i got all 8's and 9's at gcse. i'm more than happy to answer any questions regarding revision, how i found each subject, my mental health during y11 as well as offer any advice to those who need it!
here are my examboards / subjects / grades:
AQA English Language: 8
AQA English Literature: 9
OCR Maths: 9
AQA Combined Science: Trilogy: 9-9
AQA Geography: 9
AQA German: 8
Eduqas Sociology: 9
AQA Statistics: 8 (did this in Year 10)
i also took two btec subjects, so if anyone has any questions about them, feel free to ask.

hi, year 11's! i'm maveline and i got all 8's and 9's at gcse. i'm more than happy to answer any questions regarding revision, how i found each subject, my mental health during y11 as well as offer any advice to those who need it!
here are my examboards / subjects / grades:
AQA English Language: 8
AQA English Literature: 9
OCR Maths: 9
AQA Combined Science: Trilogy: 9-9
AQA Geography: 9
AQA German: 8
Eduqas Sociology: 9
AQA Statistics: 8 (did this in Year 10)
i also took two btec subjects, so if anyone has any questions about them, feel free to ask.

Wow congrats!
For English lit and language, what recources did you use? Im using Mr Salles youtube tips and Tilf website for getting a mark and feedback, Anki for flashcards. What do you think of these??? Any other one you think is good to check?

Hi congratulations on your results!! I’m homeschooled and have completed my maths and English language so far. Got a 9 in maths but a 6 in eng language. Any tips on how to boost the grade. Also I’ll be sitting my literature and history gcse next year (AQA). Any tips for aiming for grade 9?

hi, year 11's! i'm maveline and i got all 8's and 9's at gcse. i'm more than happy to answer any questions regarding revision, how i found each subject, my mental health during y11 as well as offer any advice to those who need it!
here are my examboards / subjects / grades:
AQA English Language: 8
AQA English Literature: 9
OCR Maths: 9
AQA Combined Science: Trilogy: 9-9
AQA Geography: 9
AQA German: 8
Eduqas Sociology: 9
AQA Statistics: 8 (did this in Year 10)
i also took two btec subjects, so if anyone has any questions about them, feel free to ask.

these results are so amazing, you must be soo proud! I aspire getting the same, but I feel though as hard as I say I try to work, it's a little unrealistic 😂
Just wanted to ask, what kind of grades were you getting at year 11 in maths, I just did a past paper the other day in class and got a 6a (few marks off a 7), so realistically do you think I could stretch myself to an 8 (Im too scared 9 is unrealistic lol, however much I want it)
How much revision did you do per week? I started yr 11 this month and have started revising now, but I feel like I'm finding it hard to fit all these subjects in ;-; Also I am so happy to hear someone who has done combined science too and got a 9-9! Thats so amazing, and by the by, do you know what the difference between a 9-8 or an 8-9 is for example? 😂
Thank you so much for answering any questions!!!! <3333

hii!! thank you so much!! i believe that with the right methods and amount of focus on each area, you'll be able to achieve great things. i went from roughly 7-6 in science in year 10 to a 9-9 in my gcse's.
at year 11, i did get overall 9's in my mocks, but this was mainly because i went through most of the maths past papers in my year 10 summer holidays, so i had a lot of experience. i would get 9's on two papers, and an 8 on one paper, which is exactly what happened this year! i definitely believe that going from a 6/7 to an 8/9 will be a lot easier with the right mindset and revision strategies.
maths is all about practising a wide range of past papers / exam questions to explore the potential scenarios for certanin topics that your examboard could include when creating the current year's papers. it is crucial to become familiar with the phrasing and formatting of worded problems so that the language doesn't stump you during your mocks / gcse's. i would always practice a past paper, mark it afterwards, and then look up a walkthrough on youtube for the exact paper to see how to complete any questions that i got wrong. i would further advise watching videos and practising quesitons on the topics themselves so that it becomes a more familiar, comfortable concept in your mind.
personally, i believe that the differnece between those who get 6's - 7's and those who get 8's - 9's is the amount of practice they do of worded exam questions as well as the ability to adapt and remain calm when seeing an unfamiliar question. students can be extremely prone to exam stress, not just during the spring / start of summer, but throughout the entire year. learning to control these emotions can be very useful; especially in an exam. during my second gcse maths paper, there was a 7 marker - 7 markers hadn't appeared in ocr for a few years - so, naturally, i was quite stumped, however, remaining calm and level-headed really helped me work with the information i had been given and eventually get to the right answer. i believe that if i hadn't followed my own advice and allowed myself to panic during my exams, i would have gotten an overall 8 (which is obviously still amazing, but i just wanted a 9).
my personal advice would be going into the exam knowing that there'll be a few questions that seem odd, or are worded strangely at first - it can be very daunting if you try to convince yourself that you know what to expect based off of teacher's predictions or past papers only to realise that there's a 5 marker that looks completely different to any other question you've completed before. keep calm and look at what you've been given, as well as look at what the question is asking for. are there any shapes you know certain formulae of? is it possible to work out any missing lengths? can trigonometry be used? what potential topics could be relevant to the method needed to work out the answer?
tl;dr: yes, i do believe you can stretch to get 8's / 9's with the right amount of practice and familiarity with the topics in your examboard.
maths channels i recommend would be The GCSE Maths Tutor, 1st Class Maths and CorbettMaths. there are many other amazing channels for gcse maths too though, so feel free to check them out!
i was pretty all over the place with my revision. i would usually try to fit in an hour of revision per day on at least one subject, whether that be making resources, practising past papers or going through my flashcards. i recall in one month - perhaps april - i did around 60+ hours of revision after the whole month, so roughly around 15 hours per week (however, my time was very unbalanced; i did procrastinate for quite a while at some point, so i ended up doing more revision at home on some days than others). it was definitely quite a struggle to fit all these subjects in... i didn't revise physics 2 until the week of the exam! but i think making a revision timetable would make it easier for yourself.
an 8-9 / 9-8 is the same thing im combined science - they just write the higher grade first. if it helps, this year, the difference between an 8-8 and a 9-8 this year was 19 marks (251 to 270). bear in mind that it's roughly 70% in each paper for a grade 9 (roughly 49 marks, give or take), however, there may be cases where grade boundaries are lower / higher in some papers (e.g. it was 44/70 for a grade 9 in chem 1 this year, and 51/70 for a grade 9 in physics 1).
i hope this helps!!

Thank you so much for replying in so much detail 🥺💖 I will definetely come back to this post for reminders and whenever I feel stuck with anything, you've cleared my worries a little bit now! I do agree, gcse maths tutor in particular is very good, I use it myself, I should defo get stuck in my past papers soon before the mocks hopefully, I really wish I could reply to all your advice but I should really be doing RE rev rn 😂💀 so I'll settle with a big THANK YOU, this was so helpfulllllll omg <333 you must be so relieved with your gcses done, i cannot imagine