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belated documentation of y13 ragebait by life itself

i'm VERY late to this but i came across one of these while stressing about my interview, so i thought it'd be a cool idea to also try to do one!

i'm noe, in year 13, i study maths (edexcel) biology (aqa) chemistry (ocr a) & am a latin (ocr) dropout, predicted A*AA in that order! i'm also an international student from china, and i study in the south of england!

gcse grades:

Spoiler

currently, i've handed in my ucas (on oct 9th) and have applied to:
- oxford for experimental psychology at magdalen college
- ucl for psychology and language sciences
- lse for psychology and behavioural sciences
- durham for psychology and anthropology
- st andrew's for psychology and social anthropology.

as of writing, i have an offer from durham (AAA) and am awaiting interview post reallocation at lady margaret hall, oxford. my interview's next tuesday and i am thoroughly stressing!

my various not very good supercurricular items:

Spoiler

aaaand also extracurricular stuff if anyone's interested:

Spoiler

i'm also being diagnosed for adhd. it's not fun. any advice for absolutely anything is hugely appreciated! please witness my descent into madness :smile:

Reply 1

orion_nebula13

hi noe!! congrats on your predicted grades and gcses results, do you have any tips for gcses?

Reply 2

noekden

Original post

by orion_nebula13

hi noe!! congrats on your predicted grades and gcses results, do you have any tips for gcses?

hihi, thank you so much!!! i’ve got some which might be useful but unfortunately back in gcses i wasn’t really locked in and thus please take this with some salt :’)

i think it is, to an extent, impractical to start revising super early. you don’t need to, in my personal opinion, as in my experience by the time i sat my exams i forgot most of the content i’d ‘revised’ already. particularly for science subjects (and languages if you do them, somewhat) however it’s imo very important in your lessons that you ensure you have a proper understanding of the content, not just ‘this is how it is’ but also precisely why. not only will it make content retention easier, but it’ll make your life much easier come a-levels!

only practice what you don’t know / what you find difficult!! also make sure you do leave a bit of time for memorisation / revision of the things you find most difficult closer to the exam, as in my experience it helped my memory much more, but obviously don’t do all your revision the day before the exam c:

very specific piece of advice for literature/rs/history memorise your quotes/dates/etc the day before your retention will be incredible - also specific piece of advice for rs ben wardle on youtube is absolutely amazing!! particularly as he has quote compilations that are vv helpful

if you have any questions about specific subjects feel free to lmk as well bcs then i’d probably be able to give slightly better advice haha

Reply 3

orion_nebula13

Original post

by noekden

hihi, thank you so much!!! i’ve got some which might be useful but unfortunately back in gcses i wasn’t really locked in and thus please take this with some salt :’)
i think it is, to an extent, impractical to start revising super early. you don’t need to, in my personal opinion, as in my experience by the time i sat my exams i forgot most of the content i’d ‘revised’ already. particularly for science subjects (and languages if you do them, somewhat) however it’s imo very important in your lessons that you ensure you have a proper understanding of the content, not just ‘this is how it is’ but also precisely why. not only will it make content retention easier, but it’ll make your life much easier come a-levels!
only practice what you don’t know / what you find difficult!! also make sure you do leave a bit of time for memorisation / revision of the things you find most difficult closer to the exam, as in my experience it helped my memory much more, but obviously don’t do all your revision the day before the exam c:
very specific piece of advice for literature/rs/history memorise your quotes/dates/etc the day before your retention will be incredible - also specific piece of advice for rs ben wardle on youtube is absolutely amazing!! particularly as he has quote compilations that are vv helpful
if you have any questions about specific subjects feel free to lmk as well bcs then i’d probably be able to give slightly better advice haha

tysm for the advice!

Reply 4

DerDracologe

Study Forum Helper

Original post

by noekden

i'm VERY late to this but i came across one of these while stressing about my interview, so i thought it'd be a cool idea to also try to do one!
i'm noe, in year 13, i study maths (edexcel) biology (aqa) chemistry (ocr a) & am a latin (ocr) dropout, predicted A*AA in that order! i'm also an international student from china, and i study in the south of england!
gcse grades:

Spoiler

currently, i've handed in my ucas (on oct 9th) and have applied to:
- oxford for experimental psychology at magdalen college
- ucl for psychology and language sciences
- lse for psychology and behavioural sciences
- durham for psychology and anthropology
- st andrew's for psychology and social anthropology.
as of writing, i have an offer from durham (AAA) and am awaiting interview post reallocation at lady margaret hall, oxford. my interview's next tuesday and i am thoroughly stressing!
my various not very good supercurricular items:

Spoiler

aaaand also extracurricular stuff if anyone's interested:

Spoiler

i'm also being diagnosed for adhd. it's not fun. any advice for absolutely anything is hugely appreciated! please witness my descent into madness :smile:

Im also in year 13 and do bio and maths 🙂
Best of luck with your interview and other offers!

Reply 5

noekden

Original post

by DerDracologe

Im also in year 13 and do bio and maths 🙂
Best of luck with your interview and other offers!

thank you sm, best of luck to you too for any offers/interviews!

Reply 6

noekden

weekly update :smile:

•

had some mini exams that went okay, got revision material for christmas holidays (yes we start early)

•

revised some integration and differentiation that went particularly horrible

•

i tried to work on vectors but it wasn't very successful, but tbf i've never been good at them </3

•

went home, reread sacks' the man who mistook his wife as a hat and some other articles in prep for interview (ie the ones mentioned on my personal statement)

•

...i hate to admit this but slept and played genshin impact (lol)

•

had my first interview at lmh just now, i worry i bombed it but realistically i think it went okay? i don't really know how to feel about it, it's just 'a thing that happened' now

Reply 7

DerDracologe

Study Forum Helper

Original post

by noekden

weekly update :smile:

•

had some mini exams that went okay, got revision material for christmas holidays (yes we start early)

•

revised some integration and differentiation that went particularly horrible

•

i tried to work on vectors but it wasn't very successful, but tbf i've never been good at them </3

•

went home, reread sacks' the man who mistook his wife as a hat and some other articles in prep for interview (ie the ones mentioned on my personal statement)

•

...i hate to admit this but slept and played genshin impact (lol)

•

had my first interview at lmh just now, i worry i bombed it but realistically i think it went okay? i don't really know how to feel about it, it's just 'a thing that happened' now

Great work on the tests and interview 🙂
Hope your revision goes well! When do you have mocks?

Reply 8

noekden

Original post

by DerDracologe

Great work on the tests and interview 🙂
Hope your revision goes well! When do you have mocks?

my mocks aren't actually for a while (they're in feb)! but i've struggled with quite a bit of the content in chemistry and a bit in maths as well so it's probably a good shout to start revision early even though i'm usually not the kind of person to haha

Reply 9

noekden

w2/3 updates squished in one post - my family aren’t very nice people and studying was not much of a priority it was mostly surviving my damn christmas :’)

•

i did get money though!! and some fancy chocolates :smile: if anyone sees this with relevant experience can someone advise on whether or not airpods max are worth purchasing LOL i’m considering buying some with said christmas money

•

went back over flashcards for as content + photosynthesis and respiration from september mocks because i’m gonna be honest i forgot most of that content and olympiads are coming up

•

made notes and more flashcards on ochem topic 6 particularly aromatics

•

i’m slightly neglecting maths. i need a better structure for it aside from ‘do the booklets and textbook practice questions’ because i fear the y2 pure stuff is cooking me a bit too much for that to be enough

Reply 10

holy_moly

i don’t usually follow gygs but ur academic profile is similar to mine and i’m also being HEAVILY fiddled with by pure 2. we even got the same gcse grades except i didn’t do further maths. i applied to the big O too and did interviews, but for PPE so i think we both did the TSA too? anyway twin i hope it all works out for us in the end. watching this thread and hoping we both make it out of here 🦧

Reply 11

noekden

Original post

by holy_moly

omg that’s such a coincidence especially with the gcses (which tbh i thought was pretty niche but guess not)!! yes we’ll have both done TSA but i didn’t do section 2 thankfully because i fear i would’ve flopped it 😭 best of luck to you as well!! we GOT this

Reply 12

noekden

i keep forgetting to update here :’) may need to set a reminder to myself hah
weeks 3/4 update

•

truthfully i am not doing that well mentally with oxford day coming up.. i still feel like i flopped the interview but i guess there’s only one way to find out, 4 days to go!

•

working through some holiday work that i didn’t realise was compulsory unfortunately 💔 i’ve finished the 6 maths papers so far and am working on the bio papers

•

did a chem pag writeup that was due in the middle of the holidays for some reason??

•

this is the 7th time i’ve had to independently go through the krebs cycle. the krebs cycle seems to be i learn the krebs cycle -> i forget the krebs cycle

•

also revised some year 1 mechanics (though i think it’s strictly year 2 we learnt it in year 12) about resolving forces as i think we’re moving back to mechanics next week when term starts back up