A-Level Guide

~ scarletskater

First, read this earlier post for study techniques to make the most efficient use of your time.

Now, you’re ready to start practicing for your A-levels. This isn’t a ‘revision guide’, rather things you should start doing immediately from the start of Year 12.

General Concepts

First, regarding textbooks:

  1. Read the textbook, make notes (to briefly summarise the main points).
  2. Close the textbook, and recall the general ideas. Go back and re-learn what you forgot or didn’t fully understand.

Now, the best things you can do:

Use mnemonics to help you remember. This will speed up your learning, and help remember things better. Use the post above for some ideas.

Practice past paper style questions (you should start straight away – and no, you don’t have to do the whole paper, because there are resources online where the questions from past papers are organised by topic, making it easier to do past paper questions as you learn your subject).

Past papers are the best source of revision, because questions often repeat themselves, just worded differently. Plus, you need to understand this:

  • The examiner will have a mark scheme, and will have to get through hundreds of papers a day. They’re looking to give you marks for what is written in their markscheme.
  • By doing past papers, you recognise how to structure your writing and how to answer questions (for example, in science, they’ll mark answers correct when there are few key sentences written – everything else is a waste to write about).

Use spaced repetition. This is in conjunction with past paper questions. With A-levels now being sat at the end of two years, you need to do a past paper each week (ideally) for each unit. What this means is you will not need to cram, or feel stressed out, because you would have been practising over the two years at a consistent rate, meaning by the time the exams come, you will be confident in achieving your best grade.

Go back and re-learn the harder concepts. Don’t waste your time after you mastered a concept. For example, do you still need to practice adding 2 and 2 together? No, because you’ve done simple addition for all your life, it’s practically second nature to do it in your head and not using your fingers. This also highlights the benefit of spaced repetition – since you have used addition in most maths lessons since nursery, you do not struggle with basic addition Instead, use your time wisely, and find out where your weaknesses lie.

Finally, teach! You can talk to yourself, by pretending you are teaching a fellow classmate. For example, in ice skating: you know whether you are confident in your understanding, because in order to teach someone an upright spin, you’ll need to convey to the curious skater: “keep your knee straight on the spin, enter from a backwards crossover or forward three turn, bring your arms in”.

Likewise, you can teach someone in your subject. What this does is it forces you to make sure you understand what you’re talking about, and can convey it in writing (or for unversity interviews!!!)

Everybody is ambitious

There are many ambitious sixth formers who think that they are that special 1% who will do more than the necessary 4 AS and 3 A-levels, in their thinking that universities will look favourably on their rigour.

Truth is, you don’t want to sacrifice your grades by spreading your time thinly between 5 or more A-levels, or other projects. All universities will want just 3 A-levels, anything more is not at all necessary, and will not make you stand out as much as you’d hope.

From colleagues at Oxbridge and other Russell Groups, the advice is that your time is better spent:

  • Getting the best possible grades for your 3 A-levels (and 1 AS level).
  • Reading beyond your curriculum. This is so cruicial, because depending on what subject you wish to study at university, it is far better to make use of your spare time to read about your subject beyond the syllabus. This means incorporating harder and real-life examples for the sciences and maths. You need to expand and broaden your comprehension of the subject. This will also make you more confident in your tests and university interviews, because you’ll actually be able to distinguish yourself from other applicants, since you will know more about your subjects, which leads to:
  • Research the subject you want to study at university. If you want to study Maths, it’s a good idea to read maths books (look online for Maths reading list for university applicants), and read the news regarding maths development, do harder maths questions that are beyond A-level challenge (for example STEP or AEA). This is far better than doing a fourth A-level, because if you do Biology as a 4th A-level, but you’re applying for Maths – what’s the point? Instead, use your time you would have spent on the 4th A-level on actually researching the subject you want to study at university. If you don’t know what you want to study, now’s a good time to research about that instead! Look online on the subjects that interest you, and start to wittle it down to 1 or 2 choices.

UCAS points only matter so far as entry requirements. Remember, universities will give you a conditional offer to achieve say ‘AAB’, and if you are doing a 4th A-level or something else, then it won’t even matter, and will mean less revision time for your 3 A-levels, and therefore less chance of getting that ‘AAB’.

That means, concentrate on your 3 A-levels, and do further reading about the subject you wish to study at university (or even the subjects you are doing now at A-level).

For example, at an interview for Biological Sciences at Oxford, a prospective applicant was given a cactus and asked to talk about it!

Resources

Those of you into your natural sciences, the best resource is THIS.
Those into social sciences, you can start here, but I would look beyond.

I would recommend doing the following:

  • Look for notes compiled by others on the subjects you are doing. [For example, I’d print out the ‘Maths Core 1 Notes’].
  • Print out past questions by topic. This means you can start practicing exam questions straight away!!!
  • Once you have completed your unit at school, print out past papers.
  • Remember, if you have exhausted your board’s past papers, do other boards’! Sometimes, questions are styled differently, forcing you to be flexible in your knowledge.

For printing: either see if there are free options at school, or buy a laser printer since they are cheaper than inkjet printers, and print double-sided! You’ll want at least 80gsm or 90gsm A4 paper (buy in bulk, I use this). My setup costs about 3p a page, and most papers are around 25 pages, which results in 75p per past paper. You can see how a lot of practice papers can add up in price, but practicing as closely to match exam conditions (full-size A4 pages, at a desk, in a quiet room) can improve your test taking. Alternatively, you may wish to just read the questions off an electronic device, which is much cheaper and more environmentally friendly, but not the same feeling as doing an exam-condition paper.

Push Yourself Beyond Past Papers

Maths

Physics

Chemistry

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