Is it too late to lock in and achive minimum A*AA

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giving my phone to my parents - screen times never worked for me, the phone had to LEAVE for good

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calling friends who shared subjects/didn't and silently studied with them, taking 5 minute breaks and having a chat over what we did - this helped to keep me focused, also works if you wanna meet up in person but I get sometimes its not do-able

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stop aiming for perfectionism - when i did notes i always needed them to look perfect. instead i've just been finding notes other people have made e.g mindmaps (Quizlet/SaveMyExams/eq.) and blurting them so i dont waste time making the materials and just use them instead. same goes for flashcards etc. - this was a huge timesaver.

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be realistic with your goals. to avoid burnout, aim for 20 minutes a day per subject. likely once you sit down you'll be able to do way longer but aim for 20 minutes at a time and see where it takes you. if you only do 20mins, it's better than nothing and you can always do some more in an hour or so.

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in general remove as many distractions as you can - oh my god this is so important!! i have such a bad attention span lol.

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when you aren't revising or can't quite get yourself to do it, do other productive things. i found if i cleaned my room for 20 minutes i felt productive enough to sit down and study for a good amount of time. routines are really useful for this e.g clean your study space before you study, so everytime you clean you'll start feeling more productive.

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fuel yourself!!!! drink enough water, eat enough, if you aren't focusing then get up and walk around for a bit - fresh air is so important too, aim for one walk a day even if its literally 5 minutes in your back garden or outside your house.

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how quickly you retain information - if you can memorise things quickly, you'll spend less time learning in-depth content so you can revise more content overall in that A* depth. on the flip side, if you don't, that's going to eat into your time, and getting those high grades is entirely dependent on how much you can do to a good quality and depth in however much time you've got.

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how much time you've got - i'm gonna be honest if you've only got a couple of days, settle for however much you can. keep you expectations realistic. if you've got a couple of weeks or months, that's much more time to play with if you are efficient with your time and scheduling. Say you've got two weeks - you can spend the first week blurting/using/gathering revision resources, then the second week spamming through as many past papers as you can using those notes and seeing what you're missing, adding them and continuing. the more time you have in total, the more you can repeat that process = probably higher grades. Equally if you work fast, you can do more in those two weeks than if you work a bit slower, you know? Also depends on when are your exams? Personally I've got around 2 weeks so I've got some time to play with and I'm gonna do that 2 week plan. If you've got more than 2 weeks, you're probably fine 🙂 Even if you don't, you can work with it!

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how much do you need to do? if you've done a little, that's better than nothing and it means that particular topic won't eat into your total time.

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grade boundaries - what's the gap between an A and a A*? To be fair, unis may ask for A*s but depending on what subject you're going into they will maybe let you in even if you don't achieve that. If it's like med school/eq. probably not because they're a bit stricter or any Russell Group/eq. uni, but anything else and you could get away with like, an A*AA if you needed A*A*A, you know? I mean, my friend got into her dream uni last year with CDD and needed ABB - without an unconditional offer! So, even if you don't meet your grade criteria, getting as close as you can is more valuable than you may think, you know? Give it your best shot. If you don't get it, you don't get it. But you'll get close and that's still pretty good. Plus, you'll have set yourself up for some really good progress!