Does anyone have any organisation tips for Sixth Form? Sorry it's quite long lol

I'm heading into sixth form this year, and I was wondering what advice anyone has for year 12. I really want to get the best grades possible for year 12 mocks as I know that you send them into uni's.
I am going to be doing English Lit, Sociology and Politics, as I am hoping to study Law in the future. I'm not sure whether or not to use an iPad or laptop or even hand write my notes - normally I find it helps me to write notes down as I remember them more, but since I am taking essay subjects I'm not sure if I can keep up.
What were your best ways to stay on top of your subjects and course work, but also the most effective ways to retain and understand what you are being taught?
Also I know that English Lit A level is very different to GCSE so if anyone has any advice on how to structure essays or stay organised etc. please let me know!!

I'm heading into sixth form this year, and I was wondering what advice anyone has for year 12. I really want to get the best grades possible for year 12 mocks as I know that you send them into uni's.

I am going to be doing English Lit, Sociology and Politics, as I am hoping to study Law in the future. I'm not sure whether or not to use an iPad or laptop or even hand write my notes - normally I find it helps me to write notes down as I remember them more, but since I am taking essay subjects I'm not sure if I can keep up.

What were your best ways to stay on top of your subjects and course work, but also the most effective ways to retain and understand what you are being taught?

Also I know that English Lit A level is very different to GCSE so if anyone has any advice on how to structure essays or stay organised etc. please let me know!!

The advice given by my sixth form was to have a laptop if you do essay subjects however you could just use the laptop for essay writing and hand write notes (i think only 2 people across all my classes type notes, one because of preference and one is a typist for exams). If you get an iPad with a keyboard you should be fine if you’d prefer that to a laptop (i use an iPad and keyboard but i am a stem student so dont know a lot about how stuff works for essay subjects).
I think the main tip i would give you is to make sure you make resources from day one. Dont wait until your first test to start doing questions on class content or make flashcards. If you dont understand something in a lesson then review it before your next lesson and make yourself an expert. Reading ahead at the start of the course can be a sensible plan just to get an idea of what youll be learning in the first couple of weeks and you can focus most of your efforts on getting organised. Also be prepared for a massive volume of content in every lesson, it’s an insane jump from gcse in some subjects because of the pace of content covered. My revision is mainly flashcards, blurts and exam style questions which i think will work with any subject (i did politics and English lit GCSEs with these same methods and think they’d work for a level too).
@always-anxious @Daisy._.7777 @Geo Lover 7

I think the best advice I could give is use Year 12 to experiment with different ways of revising and doing revision. It's important to find something that works for you. For example, I used to hate mind maps at GCSE level but I started doing them in RS and I love them now. As for writing on paper or with an iPad I would say do what's best for you. I think if writing helps you memorise stuff you should stick with it. But I think I would say especially as you're doing essay subjects I would probably make sure whatever medium you're using that you use your hand. Otherwise you might struggle when doing timed essays. I think the best way to stay on top of everything is to make revision resources on the go. Don't wait till mocks to do all the revision. But at the same time don't burn yourself working all the time. The best thing is to do a little but very often - that way when it comes to mock season you can spend most of your time doing lots of practice essays instead of using it to revise content. Also make sure all your notes are as organised as possible - if you're using paper make sure you've got books or folders so you can easily access whatever topic you need. Also don't be afraid to switch up the way you organise if you find your current way isn't working. I'm not taking English Lit A level so I don't have a lot I can help you with there. But I do take English Language and one thing I think is pretty similar for both is that while they will give you guidelines on structure they kinda want you to have a bit more freedom and to develop your own way of structuring essays (at least that's how it is at my school it may be different at yours). I wouldn't worry about making A* essays from the beginning - you'll practice loads and you're teachers will help you write better essays. So don't be disheartened if you start with low grades. In RS one of my first essays was a C but now I'm writing A* essays. And Tbh I think the amount of freedom you have in general is a pretty big difference between GCSE and A level English lit in general. With coursework I generally found that the beginning can be kinda hard because it's something quite new and you still have to figure out what you're doing but it gets so much easier once you've spent time on it. The little and often rule also applies here. Trust me you don't want to have to spend hours the night before so try and stay in the deadline you're teachers give you. Also don't be afraid to ask questions. Since you want to do law you might want to start doing some super curricular activities now. You can find books or podcasts and when you get into year 12 you'll probably find there's loads of opportunities to attend webinars or taster lectures for law so you should definitely take advantage of those. And most importantly - make sure you spend time to rest and have fun while you're studying. Sixth Form is hard - the level of work you get it higher than GCSE and you've only got two years. There's gonna be a lot of stress but the fun and the memories you make along the way we'll help you get through it. I hope this incredibly long message helps 😊

Hiya!
I've just finished year 12 and I also study Sociology and Politics. In my mocks I got an A* in both.
Politics is quite content heavy, and having examples are quite key to essays. As such, I can't stress enough how important it is to be informed on current affairs and recent history. Particularly, knowledge of the 'Brexit era' will be tremendously helpful to you. Knowledge of PMs, scandals, quotes, political events, statistics or anything of that nature will be useful.
In terms of note-taking and remembering all of the content, flashcards are the way to go for me. I will say though, revision techniques are wildly different person to person. For example, I've never made a flashcard for Economics as I don't see them as the right technique for the subject. My routine for revision involves making digital notes from the textbook so I can literally 'work though' the content, then I make flashcards on my notes.
For sociology, It's the same but I cut out the note-taking. Sociology is full of names to remember, and I find note-taking pointless here. I'd estimate in year 12 there's about 125 ish names to remember, having just looked through and counted my flashcards which amounted to 142.
I will just reiterate what's been said by @Godisgood1234. It took me till Christmas of year 12 to finally land on revision techniques that worked. I jumped around from physical flashcards and notes to mind maps to settling on digital notes and flashcards after being introduced to the app "Obsidian", linked here. It's fantastic as it's all open source, so there's plenty of community plugins for flashcards, notes, highlighters and whatnot. I couldn't recommend it more. Also, as has been said already, don't be disheartened if you aren't creating A* level responses at first. Across the year, I've seen remarkably steady progression with my essays with some anomalies. Since April I've plateaued. Initially, I spent a lot of time planning essays and getting the technique right. Then, once I had this down and was content with the marks I was getting from homework's, I began doing them with very little prep, maybe 10 mins at max. As long as I maintained the marks, I was happy as I was doing them in less and less time. Again, as has been said already, doing recaps and revision bit by bit throughout the year is key. I stopped reviewing content around a month before mocks to just solely do past papers under timed conditions, then hand them into teachers. On that note, don't be hesitant to give teachers past papers or questions to look at that you've done. Drop them an email, go see them in person, ask for advice etc. I was stumped with Economics essays early in the year and frankly began to hate the subject for it. The questions might as well have been written in size 0 font as It would have had no bearing on my answer. So after lessons, I requested advice from my teacher, and it was helpful. So in short, just ask teachers if you have any questions or problems.
NB: I do AQA for both subjects.
I do hope this helps!

Hello- for context I just finished year 13
In terms of organising revision, I found it most useful to organise my notes into flashcards so then I could use them to do active recall. I used digital flashcards because they were easier to store. However, if I was struggling to understand a topic then I'd handwrite out notes for this topic, such as using a mind map.
To stay on top of work, I made sure I updated my flashcards with new content the day that we learnt the new content to make sure I wasn't falling behind. It can be useful to have a checklist of all the topics to hand (such as the specification) so you can tick off when you've covered a topic and label how confident you are in each topic. You can RAG the spec (label each topic as Red for not confident, Amber for somewhat confident and Green for very confident) so you can focus your revision on your weakest areas. To retain information, active recall is key. This can be through flashcards, mind maps, blurting etc. Also regular exam practice is also very important to make sure you're applying the content correctly in the exam to get the marks
If you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer the best I can

I'm heading into sixth form this year, and I was wondering what advice anyone has for year 12. I really want to get the best grades possible for year 12 mocks as I know that you send them into uni's.
I am going to be doing English Lit, Sociology and Politics, as I am hoping to study Law in the future. I'm not sure whether or not to use an iPad or laptop or even hand write my notes - normally I find it helps me to write notes down as I remember them more, but since I am taking essay subjects I'm not sure if I can keep up.
What were your best ways to stay on top of your subjects and course work, but also the most effective ways to retain and understand what you are being taught?
Also I know that English Lit A level is very different to GCSE so if anyone has any advice on how to structure essays or stay organised etc. please let me know!!