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Reply 1
sushhiii
Yo guys, summer's coming up and I really need to work hard at chemistry. Level 7 in chemistry HL seems pretty much impossible at the moment! As a medic hopeful, I feel the need to achieve a 7. Are there any tips and advice you guys could offer?

I have this summer to turn it around, lets hope I can!! Cheers for the help :o:



I shall try and summarise some tips:

1) Understanding before learning. The learning can be done right before the exams-but the understanding takes time. Carefully read through the text books and any notes you made to ensure you are happy with everything.

2) Read around the subject-a lot of text books are far too brief and don't give detail.

3) This summer, obviously make sure you are comfortable with everything you did this year. The topics build on top of each other nicely.

4) Develop your own way of understanding it-sometimes it can be difficult (e.g. acids and bases.) Perhaps picture the molecules/reactions in your head.

5) Don't simplify things. I.e. don't just learn the equation or the rule of thumb, understand it. E.g. in the redox topic actually understand the electron transfer. In acids understand the maths you are doing. In stoichiometry too, understand the maths.

6) In terms of revising for the exam-practice questions loads. There is an IB way of answering questions, especially the longer ones. You have to be thorough especially with periodicity, otherwise you wont get many marks. If it says why does the chlorine ion have a larger radius than the chlorine atom, give a full, 3-4 line explanation which tells a story. These explanations are in the text books. These are things you need to learn. But don't do this until the holiday before the exam otherwise you'll forget it and it makes it rather boring..

7) Finally, don't leave paper 3 till the end. The options aren't hard, but they are full topics and should be treated as such. Don't leave them until the week before the exam. Understand them as much as you would any other topic.

Hope this helps.
Pay attention especially to #7 ^^^
I have a feeling that's what lowered my mark from a 7 to a 6, as I began cramming the night before :p:
Conversely, if you're not a particularly 'strong' chemistry student, P3 can boost your marks immensely as it's mostly memorization and not much understanding/calculations.
Reply 3
I have to add my opinion about P3. I studied it the night before (started at 6pm to 1 am) and probably got 90% on that paper. The way I studied P3 was I read everything again and then did every single past exam since 2002. The options I did was environmental and biochemistry. Although I cannot say I didn't remember some things about it from the mock exam and from last year September when we were studying them, so I wasn't learning everything fresh from the start.

But my ultimate tips for getting a 7 in Chemistry HL. (This is how I studied, didn't learn much from class at all)

1. Read the textbook. I had the Damji and Green one and the IB course guide (I read them simultaneously).
2. After reading one topic, go over the syllabus and take notes for every single point (I used Damji and Green, IB Course Guide and the Study Guide for this).
3. Right before any major exam (mock or IB). Do as many practice exams as you can. It would be the best if you can get hold of the IB question bank and specifically do questions on topics you struggle.
4. Remember to use the study guide as well. When you summarize syllabus points, the study guide is extremely helpful.

Best wishes. If you need more help feel free to PM me or post here.

PS. Use this summer to summarize the syllabus points. I cannot stress how important this is. Everything you are tested are the syllabus points. So if you don't know one, then your probably couldn't answer questions related to that.
Reply 4
Plan early thats all i can say,

this time i didnt have time to revise for organic chemistry in the end, luckily there werent much for me on the exam: the multiple questions of organic chem were easy and i didnt have to do the organic one on P2. However what i want to say is If you study everything, obviously you have more choices!

Study in details: i find this one really useful and important. Some ppl study through the syllabus i think thats a pretty good idea too.

Study options: many ppl dont have time before the final exam to study the options coz there were really so much. especially if you dont study bio and one of your options is bio chemistry. Options are usually not hard, its just memorizing in general... This time if i had prepared well for P3, i really would have done so much better....

Take labs seriously: read the instructions and do prepare especially for a lab involves planning. And keep in mind that you need to do the error, uncertainty and make sure you know how to do it.

Take notes::: I found it soo beneficial!!! especially for revision before exams. I always do that!

Sounds really lots of work but i think thats what u need to do to make a 7... Well, maybe you dont need to do that much if you r smart, or like many ppl chose cramming in the end.. but these advices are just for insurance if you have to get the 7.

OHHH, and revise much before exams!! Coz in the final revision you will find previous memories help alot!!
Don't avoid things you find hard. Revise those topics before you approach the ones you find easy. Also, at this stage, focus on the harder ones more than the easier ones. This might not be a problem for you, but I was often tempted to read over things I found easy.

Also, take any topic tests that they give you in school seriously (as well as the mocks)- what you learn then will stay in your mind (even if you have to dig a bit) and makes the final revision easier.
Reply 6
1) Start early. This allows you to revise stuff more than once and it relieves a lot of pressure. Just don't be lazy! The hardest part for me is sitting down to study, the rest will come.

2) If you don't understand a particular topic very well, then ask your teacher to explain it. Take Notes! They are really helpful. Also, because I prefer to revise from the first chapter to the last, I sometimes spend too much time on the easier chapters. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. If you feel pressured for time, start with the difficult chapters and move to the easier ones. But if you have lots of time, then do them in order.

3) Don't just try to memorize. Chemistry HL is a subject where you will not get a 7 if you do not UNDERSTAND the syllabus. Try and understand the theory. This way, no matter what type of questions come, you have the basic knowledge.

4) DO LOADS AND LOADS OF PAST PAPERS. But I do not recommend doing them before small tests and stuff, because once you arrive at the Mock Exams or the final, you will have been too familiar with the questions (which is not how a real examination is!)

Good Luck!:smile:
Reply 7
Well, I got a 7 in chem HL this session.

What I did

- Buy revision books and carefully read them. (The Oxford companion, and the shortened revision guide; the IBID press book; and finally the OSC revision guides). Make sure you understand everything

- Don't neglect lab work, it's worth 24% of your final grade, so do it well

- But most importantly, do MOST of the past papers available, even if they seem redundant. I did ALL past papers starting from the 2000 session, which was around 15 exams, considering the time zones. And actually do them properly, get a clock out, sit down in silence, and do the exam. At the end, get the mark scheme, and grade yourself. Any question you got wrong, and you still don't understand, CIRCLE it and go to your teacher so that he/she explains it. Finally, before the final exam, look over through the circled questions and make sure you still understand them.

- Like others said, make sure you know the syllabus by heart, I went through every single point on the syllabus, and circled whatever sounded like something I don't really understand. Then I went to the revision books, and learned that topic.


So summarizing, make sure you don't leave out anything you don't understand, make sure to understand before the final exam, or the things that you don't understand and you hope won't come up, they probably will :wink:
Reply 8
Work hard consistently - chem topics are all interrelated so you have to understand earlier stuff to be able to grasp the later stuff. Also there's the 24% lab work over two years - figure out the rubric.

Revision guides - I had the IBID pdf; start collecting them early so there's no mad scramble the night before. Read through it. Don't solely memorise. Understand too.

Do past papers. Lots of past papers. Then go through them with markschemes. If there's anything you don't understand go to your teacher and ask. It also teaches you how to answer questions The IB Way. The day before the exam, go through the question bank and focus on the areas you're still shaky on. The morning of the exam, go through the "summarised points" of each topic (the IBID book has a 1-2 page summary of key points in each chapter).

Choose your Options wisely - for example, if you take Biology then do the Human Biochemistry option. Start studying for them early since it's mostly memory work.

Know the syllabus by heart. Don't study unnecessary fluff.

And a dash of luck that the stuff you hope won't come up doesn't come up :biggrin:
Reply 9
Thank SO much guys for all your useful advice and tips!! I think i better go upstairs and start now =p
Hope you all have a good summer, I'll let you know how I get on :smile:
Reply 10
Original post by radicality
Well, I got a 7 in chem HL this session.

What I did

- Buy revision books and carefully read them. (The Oxford companion, and the shortened revision guide; the IBID press book; and finally the OSC revision guides). Make sure you understand everything

- Don't neglect lab work, it's worth 24% of your final grade, so do it well

- But most importantly, do MOST of the past papers available, even if they seem redundant. I did ALL past papers starting from the 2000 session, which was around 15 exams, considering the time zones. And actually do them properly, get a clock out, sit down in silence, and do the exam. At the end, get the mark scheme, and grade yourself. Any question you got wrong, and you still don't understand, CIRCLE it and go to your teacher so that he/she explains it. Finally, before the final exam, look over through the circled questions and make sure you still understand them.

- Like others said, make sure you know the syllabus by heart, I went through every single point on the syllabus, and circled whatever sounded like something I don't really understand. Then I went to the revision books, and learned that topic.


So summarizing, make sure you don't leave out anything you don't understand, make sure to understand before the final exam, or the things that you don't understand and you hope won't come up, they probably will :wink:


What were your options? Which would you say are the easiest options? :smile:
Reply 11
Original post by moneyfaery
Pay attention especially to #7 ^^^
I have a feeling that's what lowered my mark from a 7 to a 6, as I began cramming the night before :p:
Conversely, if you're not a particularly 'strong' chemistry student, P3 can boost your marks immensely as it's mostly memorization and not much understanding/calculations.


So enviro and biochem aren't that hard? I wanted to self study those options (I take Higher bio) because my teacher is teaching further organic and I just really don't like organic. So those options aren't that hard?
Reply 12
Original post by moneyfaery
Pay attention especially to #7 ^^^
I have a feeling that's what lowered my mark from a 7 to a 6, as I began cramming the night before :p:
Conversely, if you're not a particularly 'strong' chemistry student, P3 can boost your marks immensely as it's mostly memorization and not much understanding/calculations.



what is P3???
Original post by katr905
what is P3???



physics module 3....by the way this thread is from 2009:smile:
Two words: Richard Thornley

Through out my IB years I have not read a single course companion in chemistry, nor have I looked at any of my notes. I studied solely through the youtube channel of one "Richard Thornely"

http://www.youtube.com/user/richthornley/playlists

This is coming from a guy who has just got his results and has obtained a 7 in chemistry, and quite frankly I think what brought my grade down from a high seven was my internal which had nothing to do with Richard Thornely.

My exam revision technique is literally just me sitting in front of my computer watching his videos, I didn't even bother answering past papers.

You may have your doubts but I still invite you to try it, study of his videos for your school exams, those that you deem unimportant or insignificant to your grades. See if it works for you.

In summary I have ended up watching all his videos no less than 20 times, before each exam and have managed to be the top in my class and have achieved a 7. So try it.

(btw, this user has no association what so ever with the magnificent Richard Thornely; I only bear him all the respect and gratitude for his hard work)
Reply 15
Alright so I achieved a 7 in HL Chemistry after a lot of late nights and frustrating mock papers.

1) I agree 100% with Zaidmatalka's advice. I honestly can't describe how helpful these videos are! I'd always look at these videos while reading over new chapters in the book after a lesson but before making my notes.

2) I think its really important to do past paper questions before you make your notes on a chapter so that you know a) that you fully understand the topic and b) what the IB is looking for.

3)Finally, please please please put as much as you can into your IA's but remember to keep them simple. Make it easy for the examiners to give you marks. Lay out your report neatly and use clear language. Also, even though some of your classmates are your friends, please don't share ideas about IA's, especially on the CE. Your brilliant improvement on a method isn't so brilliant if 3 other people in your class have the same idea down and you won't get the mark. It sounds harsh but you need to look out for number 1 sometimes.

4) I'd also recommend having your notes on A4 sheets of paper that you can organize into a ring binder as opposed to writing them into hard back books. This allows you to add to these notes as you progress through the IB as you learn more about what type of answer the IB gives marks for.

5) POST ITS. I had these all over my room and in strategic points in my house for the weeks leading up to exams. Little tips I kept missing in answers or organic chemistry pathways.

GOOD LUCK
Reply 16
I know that the OP was 2009 but I'm sure people will still find the tips on this thread useful so I'll post anyway. (*coughs* Not to mention I typed it up before realising the original date.) After getting a 5 in my Easter mock, I slaved away at Chemistry and got a 7. Here's what I did.
First of all, go through all of your old notes and try and rewrite them in a shortened format. This will refresh your memory of everything that you've learnt in the past year.

Having done that, get out the IB chemistry syllabus and go through all of the points (for the topics you've covered already). Get out a fresh piece of paper for each topic. The syllabus will say things like 'define what a lewis acid and base are' and at the top of each paper, write down all of the definitions for that topic. Then, by working through your shortened notes and the textbook, make sure you write down information on each point of the syllabus. This means you'll have a set of papers for each topic, with definitions, and by checking the syllabus, you can also see what you may have forgotten or not learnt over the past year.

Wait a few days then look back at this new set of notes. What are the difficult, hard to learn or easy to forget points within each topic? Is there a definition you know you'll struggle with or are you bad at remembering some examples of catalysts used in industrial work? Write down questions and make an answer sheet. For example, 'Name three radioisotopes and their uses' or 'what are the stages in a mass spectrometer?'. Try every day, or every other day, to answer, say, 5-10 of these questions and then check them. If you get one wrong, write down the correct answer and redo it with the next set of questions. Once you start getting the hang of them, answer the questions every week instead, or every fortnight. You'll still be refreshing your memory but it won't feel quite as repetitive.

Exam technique and past papers: At first, I didn't have the right exam techniques for how I answered questions. The papers we did within class whenever we finished a topic were used for A-Level as well so the way we answered questions was slightly different to what the IB wanted. It's harder when you've only covered half of the syllabus so far but find an old exam paper with an answer booklet and find a long question from a topic which you know you've covered already. Answer it without using your notes then look at the answer booklet and see exactly what it is you did wrong. Is your understanding of the theory wrong, are you missing out key points in your explanation or is it that you aren't answering them in the specific way that IB wants? An example of one I tended to mess up every time: 'which, out of X and Y, has a higher ionisation energy and why?' I had a habit of writing 'X has one more shell than Y so it...' instead of 'X has 3 shells and Y has two shells so...' and the answer booklet wanted me to be specific.

Don't do all of the exam papers you find, however. Your school may want to use the most recent ones for your mock exams and it's a bad idea to have covered them already because you will get an unrealistic idea of what you know and how you work under exam conditions if you've done the paper beforehand. You will also want to leave some exam papers for youself (idk, don't do any November papers or something) so that, when it gets to your revision period before the final exams, you also have some untouched papers you can do under timed conditions. When it reaches that point, practise doing the full exam. Time yourself doing all of Section A and two questions from Section B. Mark it and see what you've got. Then you should do the other two questions in the Section B, even if you hate the topics and mark those. You don't know what might turn up in your final paper so you need to cover all your bases. Similar questions will pop up again and again over the years. Sometimes when I practised, I found that I got higher marks in the topics I disliked than the ones I made a beeline for. I learnt how to look at the questions and really think about how much I knew I could answer instead of think about which question I simply had a personal preference for.

When it comes to the final exam, take deep breaths and try to remain calm. If you don't know a question in Section A, don't panic. Just leave it and do the rest of the paper. Then go back through the paper and cover the bits you left blank. This way you've answered all the bits you knew and you may have remembered it in answering another part.

Good luck to everyone!
Original post by radicality
Well, I got a 7 in chem HL this session.

What I did

- Buy revision books and carefully read them. (The Oxford companion, and the shortened revision guide; the IBID press book; and finally the OSC revision guides). Make sure you understand everything

- Don't neglect lab work, it's worth 24% of your final grade, so do it well

- But most importantly, do MOST of the past papers available, even if they seem redundant. I did ALL past papers starting from the 2000 session, which was around 15 exams, considering the time zones. And actually do them properly, get a clock out, sit down in silence, and do the exam. At the end, get the mark scheme, and grade yourself. Any question you got wrong, and you still don't understand, CIRCLE it and go to your teacher so that he/she explains it. Finally, before the final exam, look over through the circled questions and make sure you still understand them.

- Like others said, make sure you know the syllabus by heart, I went through every single point on the syllabus, and circled whatever sounded like something I don't really understand. Then I went to the revision books, and learned that topic.


So summarizing, make sure you don't leave out anything you don't understand, make sure to understand before the final exam, or the things that you don't understand and you hope won't come up, they probably will :wink:


Is it even possible to get a 7 in HL chemistry our school said NEVER EVEN TRY
Original post by NancyRoseC
Is it even possible to get a 7 in HL chemistry our school said NEVER EVEN TRY

It's definitely possible, but it does depend on the schools my school didn't handle the IB well at all. I should have gotten a 7 in both HL chem and Bio but ended up getting 6s because my coursework was moderated down by 13 marks for both subjects.
I get asked so many of these types of questions at my school as an alumni, and it's like, I feel the need to answer with: "Simple, be better than 92.5% of the world at Chemistry." But in truth, focusing on your studies and learning how to learn and then applying it to your regular schoolwork is how you do this. Then once exam time comes around, review review review, and try to find the holes in your knowledge.

But most importantly, do past exams so that you know these questions like you know a person. Really get to know them you know? Eventually, you'll learn to love them. If not, you'll figure out how to destroy it.