I recently finished my A Level exams, but I’m becoming less confident in my results. I’m quite an anxious person so I feel like the pressure of exams really impacts the quality of my essays (all my subjects are essay based). I know this could just be exam stress but this did happen to me during GCSEs (I achieved ok grades but I’m very aware that I could’ve done better) I also know that I have attempted to fix this through exam practice and that outside of exams i am very capable when writing essays. I just feel like I’m becoming paranoid.
At the start of year 13, i was predicted all As, but in my mocks I achieved BBC. Realistically I know that my mock exams weren’t representative of the entire subject because of how the papers were structured when I was taking them. Additionally I was focused on my English coursework because my teachers messed up with our schedule, so we had to prioritise it over revision. I was two marks off of an A for English but I don’t even know if that matters because of how high grade boundaries are for OCR eng lit. I achieved an a on my coursework (35/40) but that Hamlet passage question really messed me up and I feel like I rushed the third part of my comparative essays. I also feel like I messed up my world of the hero paper for classical civilisations because I misread the 30 marker. I also do psychology which is my most difficult subject but ironically it’s not as concerning for me since I was aiming for a b and I was a few marks off of it in the mocks.
My firm offer is ABB with an A in English but I feel like that’s insanely unrealistic with how awfully I write in exams (I hate this because I did like the questions and passages and I had all the knowledge for the questions) I also find that it is the world of the hero paper in classical civilisations which get me from an A* to a B even though I’ve done so much practice on it with an incredibly competent teacher. My insurance offer is BBC which is the grades I recently achieved but I genuinely feel incredible anxiety that I may not achieved this. I feel like exams are unpredictable for me no matter what efforts I have put in. I feel like I’m going crazy, and this might just be a post a-level stress relief rant, but I felt the same way about GCSEs and other exams and I tend to be right about things like this. Idk I’m also in the August reconsideration pool for Cambridge but I feel hopeless about that (I feel like it was interview pressure which messed me up for that too 💀💀💀)
I think I just want advice on what to do in case my worries become true. I want to study English literature at university, and I study eng literature, classical civilisations and psychology. I know clearing is an option but I don’t really know how it works. I was also curious as to how my grades would impact my CV and future career (I’m interested in teaching, publishing or even a law conversion course).
I was also hoping to hear other perspectives about this because even if everything is fine I feel like this has been a continuous academic struggle for me, where I am the perfect student and I have all the knowledge but this is never reflected in my grades. I feel a bit sick thinking about the effort I put into my studies that hasn’t been reflected in my grades because of exam stress. I also want to get rid of this stress and enjoy my holiday but I honestly can’t stop thinking about how disappointing my performance was in those exams.
I also wanted to include that I did take some of my exams in more ‘relaxed’ settings because of other students in the cohort with accessibility requirements, but this really changed nothing for me and even led to mild disruptions for me.