this ^^ In the middle of my GCSE's now, got 3 left to do and imo they're a joke. I revised at most half an hour and thats for the subjects I struggle on and like Rotcrack I am predicted a few A*'s and I found most of them easy, a lot of the questions that come up seem to be pretty unrelated to the subject that they are in the paper for so generally it is just good exam technique and general knowledge Revision just makes you feel less confident about yourself and makes you panic for the exam, or at least thats the basis I work on when my parents ask.
Just to let you all know, A levels are a HUGE HUGE step up, and though I'd agree, you don't have to do too much revision for GCSEs you can't get away without doing a ton for A-levels (unless you are some kind of genius). I can't state enough how much harder A Levels were (I did Chemisty, History, Biology and Psychology for the record). Please please please work your ass off in A-Levels so you can get into a good uni.. Quavr mate, your going to need to develop good revision techniques for Alevels and Uni, so remember that.
Trust me, you won't get away with zero hours revision even if you're very good at exams and very good at the subject and I speak from experience, for example: I thought that I wouldn't need to revise much for my FP3 exam since it's maths and there's not much to revise so I just spent 20 mins going over the formula and making sure I didn't go wrong anywhere, in the exam I then failed to complete a 7 mark question and an 8 mark question which I surely would have if I'd done a few quick practice papers beforehand. Fortunately for me the only result of that is the shame of getting a poor mark in the paper (I'll see how poor in August) but if you did that at AS level it could mean the difference between getting a place or not. I'm all for doing the amount of revision you feel comfortable with (personally I do very little because I have a great memory even if it only lasts two weeks) but I'm telling you, doing none at all is not something you can get away with. +1. I did badly in my GCSEs through lack of effort, even while I'm doing all my best subjects and putting a resonable amount of effort in A-levels are still difficult and I wouldn't have done nearly as well if I'd done as litttle work as I did for GCSE. Make sure you can say "I got X, X, X and X" rather than "I got Y, Y, Y and Y but I should have got X, X, X and X", it's so much easier to explain that way.
Exams suck... I remember my GCSE's Coursework netted me solid A's at the time, but my Exams dragged that down. I mean why the hell do you do exams anyway? "Lets select alot of random questions from things you have learnt in an enviroment that will never be used anyway." Either way... not academic. [spam] EC you can't say anything anyway, you shot me TWENTY THREE times on left4dead2 last night! Therefor you're an idiot! [/spam]
Don't worry I will work very hard for my A levels to make up for it. Thanks to my sister I know how hard A levels are so I'm going to make sure I do as much work as I can for them, and I'm doing chemistry, physics, maths and further maths so loads of work, but I really want to do well in them. A levels I need for a good uni, GCSE's on the other hand are only good until I get into college (assuming all goes well) and after that they are fairly worthless really.
Sage advice indeed. Was quite a while ago for me but GCSEs were ridiculously easy. Went on to A-Levels (this was before AS) and gave them about the same amount of attention (1/10) and pretty much failed them all.
Me neither. Revision actually doesn't help me. it also doesn't work when you suffer from memory loss.
To everyone who says gcse/a-levels are easy, just wait until uni exams - I didn't realise it was possible to need to do as much work as I did this term to get a good mark (doesn't help that everyone else also puts in loads of work and what class you get is purely comparative to others in your year). That might just be cambridge natsci though trying to cram ~3 1st year courses into one course. I wouldn't say a-levels are a "huge" step up from gcse, as you can drop all the subjects you don't like (which for me required all the work - there's not really any easy way to learn a latin set text) and things like a-level maths don't require that much work outside of lessons, and it's also not so bad revising subjects you're more interested in so doesn't feel like so much.
A-levels aren't a "huge" step up but it's the difference between gliding through effortlessly and having to put in a decent amount of work which catches a lot of people out (my sister included it seems). But yes I can imagine university exams are a lot harder. I complain about STEP being hard and thats a pre-uni exam. (Incidently I had STEP II today. It went OK, I probably managed to scrape a 1 although hopefully a 2 and a 1 will be enough given my other grades. Damn you Bufo with your EE offer and non STEP subject; if I just needed the A-levels then I'd be resting easy)
You shouldn't even be considering uni unless you've got a specific career in mind for after graduation. Uni is a career path, not the default path. Don't go unless you know exactly why you're going. Sources: I just graduated and it was a total waste of time and money.
Even compared to uni exams step is a hard exam, but I'm sure it'll be fine (there are a couple of mathmos in my year who got a 1 and a 2 so the grade boundary can sometimes be a bit flexible as well).
had to take one when i was adopted at 9, tested at 147 according to that, but now im 25 and feel dumb as hell, but still, math etc that im studying in college comes easy to me, so maybe thats just part of growing up, is not feeling so superior to everyone lolz
