The Student Room Group

Y11 GYG - i'm either cooked or cooking...

Hi! I know this is a month late, but here's a GYG to record my journey on the silly bus that's hopefully on the road to all 9s this year. My predicted grades:

- Maths: 9, one of my strongest subjects so fair enough
- Physics: 9 - again, one of my strongest subjects, I did the Olympiad last year and got a Bronze (i'm aiming for silver/gold this year)
- Compsci: 9 - I like to tinker with small coding projects in my free time
- Further maths: 9 (same with maths)
- Bio: 8 (based off grades from end of last year, but my tests have been consistently >90%, but again there's a LOT to remember for bio :sob:smile:
- Chemistry: 8 (again, work in progress, hopefully this becomes a 9)
- Geography: 8 - I need to get my essay technique solidified then it should be fine, my tests are consistently hovering around 22-23/25
- Music: 8 (I FORGOT ALL MY MUSIC THEORY FROM WHEN I DID GRADE 5 AHHHHHH)
- English: 8 (my teacher said i'm "right on the boundary" between an 8 and a 9, my writing's good but my speed really needs work)
- German: 7 - i'm really not a linguist :sob:

Other stuff I do: I have a diploma in cello (how am i cooked in music theory...), and some of my hobbies are swimming (I'm on my school's swimming team), just programming in general and playing Fortnite, Kerbal Space Program and Deltarune. I also have a Level 1 certification in high powered rocketry (i'm a massive space nerd lmao). I also REALLY like Lady Gaga and her music, she's absolutely amazing and I really want to see her in concert one day. I'm also working on 2 research papers - one's just a side project (reformulating a rocket landing algorithm to allow for missile guidance or orbital docking, depending on your moral compass), and the other's a new way of mathematical optimisation based on quantumhydrodynamics.

I'll probably just treat this as a journal of sorts from now until GCSEs, so here it is:

Coming up:
- BPhO Round 0 on the 16th (i'm so cooked lmao)
- My school's concerto competition on the 9th November
- I've got a German trip to Munich over half term, that'll be fun and hopefully my german gets better LMAO

I'll hopefully keep you all updated with what I do, and hopefully I'll walk out of this with all 9s!

Reply 1

Original post
by brentius
Hi! I know this is a month late, but here's a GYG to record my journey on the silly bus that's hopefully on the road to all 9s this year. My predicted grades:
- Maths: 9, one of my strongest subjects so fair enough
- Physics: 9 - again, one of my strongest subjects, I did the Olympiad last year and got a Bronze (i'm aiming for silver/gold this year)
- Compsci: 9 - I like to tinker with small coding projects in my free time
- Further maths: 9 (same with maths)
- Bio: 8 (based off grades from end of last year, but my tests have been consistently >90%, but again there's a LOT to remember for bio :sob:smile:
- Chemistry: 8 (again, work in progress, hopefully this becomes a 9)
- Geography: 8 - I need to get my essay technique solidified then it should be fine, my tests are consistently hovering around 22-23/25
- Music: 8 (I FORGOT ALL MY MUSIC THEORY FROM WHEN I DID GRADE 5 AHHHHHH)
- English: 8 (my teacher said i'm "right on the boundary" between an 8 and a 9, my writing's good but my speed really needs work)
- German: 7 - i'm really not a linguist :sob:
Other stuff I do: I have a diploma in cello (how am i cooked in music theory...), and some of my hobbies are swimming (I'm on my school's swimming team), just programming in general and playing Fortnite, Kerbal Space Program and Deltarune. I also have a Level 1 certification in high powered rocketry (i'm a massive space nerd lmao). I also REALLY like Lady Gaga and her music, she's absolutely amazing and I really want to see her in concert one day. I'm also working on 2 research papers - one's just a side project (reformulating a rocket landing algorithm to allow for missile guidance or orbital docking, depending on your moral compass), and the other's a new way of mathematical optimisation based on quantumhydrodynamics.
I'll probably just treat this as a journal of sorts from now until GCSEs, so here it is:
Coming up:
- BPhO Round 0 on the 16th (i'm so cooked lmao)
- My school's concerto competition on the 9th November
- I've got a German trip to Munich over half term, that'll be fun and hopefully my german gets better LMAO
I'll hopefully keep you all updated with what I do, and hopefully I'll walk out of this with all 9s!

I got feedback on my English coursework (creative writing)!

"This is excellent. To make it really superb you could make your narrator a little more distinctive with personal details. Right now, he feels relatable but somewhat generic. A few personality anchors will help. Lean into his unreliable memory; show us a misremembered moment in vivid detail, then pull the rug out by contradicting it later.

Vary your sentence length. A long, winding sentence to evoke creeping dread, for example. There are punctuation errors to address.

Trim repetitive entries about undone chores. Each new day should feel like an escalation, not a rerun.

Consider ending some days with cliff-hanger images rather than direct revelations (“My reflection smiled at me”).

Instead of an abrupt final entry, build to that moment: let the handwriting warp over several pages, voices overlapping with the narrator’s perhaps."

Pretty proud of that if i'd say so myself LMAO

Reply 2

Original post
by brentius
Hi! I know this is a month late, but here's a GYG to record my journey on the silly bus that's hopefully on the road to all 9s this year. My predicted grades:
- Maths: 9, one of my strongest subjects so fair enough
- Physics: 9 - again, one of my strongest subjects, I did the Olympiad last year and got a Bronze (i'm aiming for silver/gold this year)
- Compsci: 9 - I like to tinker with small coding projects in my free time
- Further maths: 9 (same with maths)
- Bio: 8 (based off grades from end of last year, but my tests have been consistently >90%, but again there's a LOT to remember for bio :sob:smile:
- Chemistry: 8 (again, work in progress, hopefully this becomes a 9)
- Geography: 8 - I need to get my essay technique solidified then it should be fine, my tests are consistently hovering around 22-23/25
- Music: 8 (I FORGOT ALL MY MUSIC THEORY FROM WHEN I DID GRADE 5 AHHHHHH)
- English: 8 (my teacher said i'm "right on the boundary" between an 8 and a 9, my writing's good but my speed really needs work)
- German: 7 - i'm really not a linguist :sob:
Other stuff I do: I have a diploma in cello (how am i cooked in music theory...), and some of my hobbies are swimming (I'm on my school's swimming team), just programming in general and playing Fortnite, Kerbal Space Program and Deltarune. I also have a Level 1 certification in high powered rocketry (i'm a massive space nerd lmao). I also REALLY like Lady Gaga and her music, she's absolutely amazing and I really want to see her in concert one day. I'm also working on 2 research papers - one's just a side project (reformulating a rocket landing algorithm to allow for missile guidance or orbital docking, depending on your moral compass), and the other's a new way of mathematical optimisation based on quantumhydrodynamics.
I'll probably just treat this as a journal of sorts from now until GCSEs, so here it is:
Coming up:
- BPhO Round 0 on the 16th (i'm so cooked lmao)
- My school's concerto competition on the 9th November
- I've got a German trip to Munich over half term, that'll be fun and hopefully my german gets better LMAO
I'll hopefully keep you all updated with what I do, and hopefully I'll walk out of this with all 9s!

DAYUMMMMMM ur one of those ace students that like to think theyre cooked but really arent 😭
anyhow slay and i'll stalk you, good luck!
if ur interestedddd ahem- heres my gyg 👉👈

Reply 3

heyy nice to meet yall, i have all nines predicted but our school is get to give us an english lit mock which is my least fav subject so there’s that. out of interest what exam board are you for comp sci? small coding projects sound like something i could get behind what website do you use?

Reply 4

Original post
by yangoya
heyy nice to meet yall, i have all nines predicted but our school is get to give us an english lit mock which is my least fav subject so there’s that. out of interest what exam board are you for comp sci? small coding projects sound like something i could get behind what website do you use?

I'm on OCR for compsci - one of my projects (not that small lmao) is to make a bot to trade stocks. I basically spent half my summer developing it (it's on https://github.com/brentius/warren-botfett) - you can use the code, but be warned the strategy is a placeholder, i spent MONTHS working on that, and if you do take it live like this then you'll probably lose a lot of money. The real strategy is a really really complicated stack involving hierarchical dirichlet process hidden markov models and gaussian process regression and stuff like that to basically calculate the exact probabilities of a stock going up/down/sideways to (hopefully) make a profit, and it's actually live trading my money LMAO - i'm REALLY proud of it, it's like a child to me

Reply 5

Original post
by ibelieve-icanfly
DAYUMMMMMM ur one of those ace students that like to think theyre cooked but really arent 😭
anyhow slay and i'll stalk you, good luck!
if ur interestedddd ahem- heres my gyg 👉👈

thanks, i'll see you around! :smile:

Reply 6

OMG i just had a brilliant idea on how to get an easy 9 in my Geo coursework.

Basically our question is "To what extent does Chichester conform to the Core - Frame model's expectation of a CBD with a clear inner core?" We're basically comparing our data against different models (e.g. core-frame, bid-rent, etc.) Basically I had the idea to write the bid-rent model as a PDE (partial differential equation) with the ring road around Chichester as our space boundary conditions, and rent BCs are infinite. I can solve this to yield a surface, which I'll just compare against my existing data for the analysis. A big step up from what school makes us do (just describe trends and whatnot) LMAO

Reply 7

Original post
by brentius
Hi! I know this is a month late, but here's a GYG to record my journey on the silly bus that's hopefully on the road to all 9s this year. My predicted grades:
- Maths: 9, one of my strongest subjects so fair enough
- Physics: 9 - again, one of my strongest subjects, I did the Olympiad last year and got a Bronze (i'm aiming for silver/gold this year)
- Compsci: 9 - I like to tinker with small coding projects in my free time
- Further maths: 9 (same with maths)
- Bio: 8 (based off grades from end of last year, but my tests have been consistently >90%, but again there's a LOT to remember for bio :sob:smile:
- Chemistry: 8 (again, work in progress, hopefully this becomes a 9)
- Geography: 8 - I need to get my essay technique solidified then it should be fine, my tests are consistently hovering around 22-23/25
- Music: 8 (I FORGOT ALL MY MUSIC THEORY FROM WHEN I DID GRADE 5 AHHHHHH)
- English: 8 (my teacher said i'm "right on the boundary" between an 8 and a 9, my writing's good but my speed really needs work)
- German: 7 - i'm really not a linguist :sob:
Other stuff I do: I have a diploma in cello (how am i cooked in music theory...), and some of my hobbies are swimming (I'm on my school's swimming team), just programming in general and playing Fortnite, Kerbal Space Program and Deltarune. I also have a Level 1 certification in high powered rocketry (i'm a massive space nerd lmao). I also REALLY like Lady Gaga and her music, she's absolutely amazing and I really want to see her in concert one day. I'm also working on 2 research papers - one's just a side project (reformulating a rocket landing algorithm to allow for missile guidance or orbital docking, depending on your moral compass), and the other's a new way of mathematical optimisation based on quantumhydrodynamics.
I'll probably just treat this as a journal of sorts from now until GCSEs, so here it is:
Coming up:
- BPhO Round 0 on the 16th (i'm so cooked lmao)
- My school's concerto competition on the 9th November
- I've got a German trip to Munich over half term, that'll be fun and hopefully my german gets better LMAO
I'll hopefully keep you all updated with what I do, and hopefully I'll walk out of this with all 9s!

Hello! I also started my GYG really late like a few days ago and love Fortnite. Woww your predicted grades are so good. Do you have any tips on revision techniques?

Reply 8

Original post
by abzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Hello! I also started my GYG really late like a few days ago and love Fortnite. Woww your predicted grades are so good. Do you have any tips on revision techniques?

Okay so in general:

Geo, bio and chemi: make revision notes, lose them, make them again, and do past paper questions - make your revision notes 1 page per topic, forces you to think about the material and what's important

Maths, FM and physics are just practice and intuition

English - "if this was a script for a youtube video would i want to watch it?" if the answer's a yes, it's probably good writing

Also just force yourself to do 1 hour / subject when revising, no more no less, same with 1 page / topic

Compsci, just write some code in your free time, it's all intuitive


Hope this helps!

Reply 9

Original post
by brentius
Okay so in general:

Geo, bio and chemi: make revision notes, lose them, make them again, and do past paper questions - make your revision notes 1 page per topic, forces you to think about the material and what's important

Maths, FM and physics are just practice and intuition

English - "if this was a script for a youtube video would i want to watch it?" if the answer's a yes, it's probably good writing

Also just force yourself to do 1 hour / subject when revising, no more no less, same with 1 page / topic

Compsci, just write some code in your free time, it's all intuitive


Hope this helps!

:ta:
That really helps!

Reply 10

Original post
by brentius
I'm on OCR for compsci - one of my projects (not that small lmao) is to make a bot to trade stocks. I basically spent half my summer developing it (it's on https://github.com/brentius/warren-botfett) - you can use the code, but be warned the strategy is a placeholder, i spent MONTHS working on that, and if you do take it live like this then you'll probably lose a lot of money. The real strategy is a really really complicated stack involving hierarchical dirichlet process hidden markov models and gaussian process regression and stuff like that to basically calculate the exact probabilities of a stock going up/down/sideways to (hopefully) make a profit, and it's actually live trading my money LMAO - i'm REALLY proud of it, it's like a child to me


woah that actually insane considering the limited coding spec for ocr comp sci! are you considering pursuing jt at uni ?

Reply 11

Original post
by yangoya
woah that actually insane considering the limited coding spec for ocr comp sci! are you considering pursuing jt at uni ?

Nope, i'm planning to do maths or physics at uni - this is just a side project, and the bot isn't for the gcse at all lmao it's just something i whipped up over the summer because i was broke and i wanted to go from well broke to less broke, it's actually crazy considering how far it's come (the latest version of the strategy is literally based on a probability model developed IN LATE 2024, afaik i'm the first person to apply it to stock trading - and this all sits under a LOT of stochastic differential equations that I made for each market regime) so yeah LMAO it's really really really bloody complicated, it took me forever to work this out
(edited 1 month ago)
Hey! How are things going? Hope you're getting on ok! Any updates? :smile:

Reply 13

Original post
by StrawberryDreams
Hey! How are things going? Hope you're getting on ok! Any updates? :smile:

Thanks for checking in! Things are going quite well- I managed to qualify for BPhO Round 1 (i got 13 which put me top 1000 in the country) Round 1's on Sunday, it's my #1 source of stress now lmao. Apart from that life's actually going really well- I aced most of my tests at school bar a chemistry test that frankly I totally forgot about and ended up having to cram for 15 mins before the actual thing, and I also qualified for my school's concerto competition. So yeah - life's going pretty good, but i'm reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly busy LMAO

Reply 14

Original post
by abzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Hello! I also started my GYG really late like a few days ago and love Fortnite. Woww your predicted grades are so good. Do you have any tips on revision techniques?

hii!! i did my gcses last year and they went really well (all 9s); id recommend doing the pmt resources on repeat, just again and again to perfect the technique. but lowk i also went tutoring just to really nail down exam technique by these older ppl in my school, i can pass details iyw?
Original post
by brentius
Thanks for checking in! Things are going quite well- I managed to qualify for BPhO Round 1 (i got 13 which put me top 1000 in the country) Round 1's on Sunday, it's my #1 source of stress now lmao. Apart from that life's actually going really well- I aced most of my tests at school bar a chemistry test that frankly I totally forgot about and ended up having to cram for 15 mins before the actual thing, and I also qualified for my school's concerto competition. So yeah - life's going pretty good, but i'm reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly busy LMAO

Woah that's great! Congratulations :biggrin: I totally feel you - the busy-ness is stressful isn't it! Hope you're taking some time for yourself?

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