What was the hardest topic in a level biology and chemistry in your opinion?

Asked by Pigeon

Biology I'd say topic 8 - control of gene expression. This is mainly because I don't think the specification makes what you have to actually learn super clear, and some exam questions require quite a deep understanding of the processes which took me a while to learn. Chemistry I'd say electrode potentials, just because the whole idea of what the electrode potential values actually meant, in terms of whether it meant the species was a good reducing or oxidising agent, was difficult for me to wrap my head around.

Is it fine to use pre made flashcards like stem up .

Asked by Mohamed Ali

I suppose it's 'fine' to use them - students definitely get A*s with premade decks - but we don't really want just 'fine', do we? I always say making your own flashcards is optimal for 2 reasons: 1) The process of making them forces you to understand the content, not just blindly memorise it (which trust me is key) 2) I think it's easier and faster to memorise something you've written yourself, because it'll be written in a way that suits you best. So I'd invest the time now to make your own decks to save yourself time later.

What is the best way to stand out in interviews and how can you prepare for it?

Asked by Tina

I don't know if you want to actually stand out in your interviews. Usually if a student has stood out, it's because they've done something wrong not because they've done something right. Ultimately you just have to be in the top third of students to guarantee getting an offer post-interview. As long as you do enough to guarantee that, that's exactly what you want to aim for. As for how you should prepare for it, I won't go into any details because I don't think that's very beneficial. I'll just say that you should read as much as possible and you should practise speaking about what you've read and what you've learned as much as possible. These are the number one and number two things you can actually do to get better at interviews, because the interviewers can tell whether you truly do have an interest in medicine, whether you are truly knowledgeable about it, or whether you're just rehearsing small bits of information that you gathered in a rush. The way you appear like a student who understands and is interested in medicine is by actually genuinely being interested in it. That is developed through reading about it and getting an actual deep understanding of the different topics that can be discussed at interview.

I’m trying to optimise my revision strategy and am considering two approaches. On the one hand, working through past papers and mock exams immediately forces active recall and highlights any gaps in my knowledge of the specification. However, rushing into papers without a solid foundation can lead to the memorisation of mark schemes rather than a true understanding of the underlying concepts. At what stage of your revision did you shift the balance from primarily learning the content to predominantly doing past papers? Do you think that early, frequent exposure to exam-style questions is ultimately more effective than mastering the content first, or would you recommend reaching a specific threshold of understanding before prioritising past papers heavily?

I definitely lean more towards mastering and understanding the content first because, first of all, you'll have to do that at some point anyway. The reason I think you may as well do it now is because it will make the past papers more beneficial later on. As you said, the past papers are there to identify gaps in your knowledge and test your recall of the different topics. Therefore, I believe it will be more useful to do those past papers once you already have a good understanding of the topic. This is because it will allow you to focus on the trickier parts of the past paper that you dropped marks on, rather than just the whole of the past paper (which is what you'll be dropping marks on if you don't master the content first). Essentially, the learning points you get from the past papers will be more valuable if you answer them after having already understood the content. If you jump into past papers now before mastering the content, a lot of the learning points will simply just be that you need to go back and revise the content, which you know anyway. You'll just be doing the past papers and not actually learning anything that you didn't already know about yourself from them.

I am going to be resitting my A-levels independently. Do you have any advice on how I should be revising during my gap year for bio and chem?

I think you should have a couple of months where you force yourself to not look at any past papers because at the moment you'll be tempted to do those (as they are perhaps the most valuable thing you can do per hour invested). However I think it's a trap to focus too much on them at this point, as you need to make sure you master understanding and memorising the content. Chances are, if you didn't get the grade you want, it's simply because you hadn't learned all of the content. For the next few months focus purely on what it takes to learn that content. I would recommend learning each topic from scratch and making your own flashcard deck on the content. Even if you've already got one that you used last year, I would make a fresh one. Make sure it's very detailed, contains everything you need to know on the topic, and is written in a way so you truly understand it. Use this process to identify any points of misunderstanding and either use your teachers, your smart friends, or AI to fill in these blanks of understanding. Create an Anki deck that you'll stick to keeping up with every single day. Don't let your flashcards pile up. By doing this you should have all of the content memorised well before your exams and then you can focus on the past papers, hopefully having forgotten a lot of the answers so you can truly test whether you have any gaps in your knowledge.

How did you revise the organic synthesis map?

So honestly I never had to actually learn the organic synthesis map. I already knew all of the mechanisms and could essentially work out the map from my prior knowledge by the time we got to that topic in class. I think this is the point you should aim to be at. You should know the mechanism so well that you can essentially work out how to get from any molecule to another molecule by yourself without having to memorise the given sheet. However if you do have mechanisms to memorise or you just want to memorise the whole sheet, then I don't think there's any special process for doing this. I think it's the same as memorising anything else, which is going to be to use some form of active recall. If you're trying to memorise a big sheet, simply look at the sheet, cover it, then write down as much of it as possible. Essentially find a way to force yourself to recall what you're trying to memorise. Repeat that as many times as it takes for you to be able to recall it perfectly and do that over increasing time periods. At first do it every day, then start doing it every other day, and then every other week, until you can recall everything weeks after the last time you recalled it.

whats the best and fastest way to learn all of year 13 chemistry by self teaching?

Take it topic by topic, starting, of course, at the beginning. You don't want to move on to the next topic until you fully understand the last one. How to actually learn the topics is up to you. I would say you can't go wrong with a good CGP textbook, Chem Revise, although maybe that doesn't cover everything you need to know. Save my exams are good and of course always check with the specification to see if you've got everything covered. Once you think you've learnt and made your flashcards on a topic, do some past paper questions to reinforce what you've just learnt and identify any gaps in your knowledge. If you're confident on a topic and you've got the flashcards made, move on to the next one. Just keep going through all the topics, keeping up with the flashcards that you've made on the previous topics, not letting your Anki flashcards pile up, and then that should be all that you need to do.

I got a B in AQA A level bio (4 marks off an A) and B in chem. I’m wondering what the best way to improve is

If you're getting a B in a subject, chances are there's quite a bit of content that you didn't understand or didn't have memorised. The priority, in my opinion, will be going back through the specification and identifying exactly what you didn't know, then relearning that from scratch. Go back to the resources that you used originally, could be: - textbooks - chem revise - save my exams Also testing out some new resources. If those don't suffice, ideally ask your teachers about anything you don't understand. From then, once you think you've relearned a lot of the content and you find a way to memorise it (which is probably going to be making your own Anki flashcard deck and memorising that deck), you can move on to doing the past papers and testing your knowledge. Hopefully by that point you should be getting As and A*s.

How would you start interview prep if you had to do it all again?

If I had to do interview prep again, I would just do a lot more of what I already was doing, which is reading and practising speaking about what I've just read. I did a bit of this and that's why I think I did well enough in most of the interviews to get an offer. However I should have read a lot more books, a lot more articles, and generally a lot more about medicine in general. If I'm being honest I went into the interviews not knowing a lot about medicine, not being particularly interested in the subject, and I think that probably shone through to a certain extent. Now I did do enough but I think you can always do more. I think the more reading and the more practice of speaking you get in, the better you'll do. That's what I would have done and that's what I recommend you do -- no matter how much you're doing, I think you could always benefit from doing a bit more.

How do I memorise the mechanisms in Chemistry?

I think generally the way you memorise mechanisms should be the way you memorise anything else.First, understand it. Understand why the curly arrows go where they do, what causes electron density to shift from the carbon to the halogens, and how electronegativity actually works. Once you understand the content it will be a lot easier to memorise. Then, the actual process of memorization is the same as it is for anything else. You need to be incorporating active recall and spaced repetition. If you're unfamiliar with these terms then look them up, but to summarise active recall is basically where you force yourself to try to recall something without having it directly in front of you. The most basic form of this is a flashcard, where you're given a question that prompts you to recall a piece of information and you have to recall it and check whether you recalled it correctly. Spaced repetition is basically spacing this out over longer and longer periods. First you try to recall something every day or multiple times per day. The more you do that, the longer the gap should get in between sessions of active recall and you should still be able to retain the ability to recall it as well as possible.

How’s to start revising effectively for biology from year 12 and what resources should u use ?

What I sort of did at the start of Year 12, but what I wish I did more of, was make sure I made flashcards on each lesson as soon as possible after the lesson. This is because: - It's going to save you from having to make them later, meaning you can just focus on the past paper questions and do more of those. - It's going to make sure you're making the flashcards at a point where you properly understand the content. This is going to mean that the quality of the flashcards is going to be a lot better, which is going to help you, obviously, in the long run. - It will highlight any points that you don't understand. If you're unable to make good flashcards and rewrite what you've just learnt in your own words, then that's an indication that you need to go back to the topic. It's better to do that just after the lesson than 2 to 3 months later, when chances are you will have forgotten most of it already. Basically it's better to only have to memorise the content in the future instead of relearn it from scratch. The way you do that is to keep your resources up to date.

Am I in a good spot for Cambridge/imperial/kcl/ucl with 7A* and 2As As being in biology and chemistry. I know I’ll have to lock in for alevels and UCAT but will these grades put me to a disadvantage. Note: I gave International GCSEs so the grading system is different

With the question of GCSEs for Oxbridge, the answer is going to be that better GCSEs will always be better but very rarely will they ever limit you from applying. As long as they're not very bad and as long as your other stats are good, GCSEs shouldn't hold you back. Also say you do apply and don't get an interview: you've only lost one of your possible applications, which, at the end of the day, isn't really that bad. The worst-case scenario of applying is you don't get an interview. The best-case scenario of not applying is that you don't get an interview. I would always say go for it if you're in doubt, and in this case those grades are more than good enough.

how do I go about paper 3 in biology, the 25 mark question

Asked by Marwa Syed

I don't think the essay is really something you have to worry too much about. If you know the content in a lot of detail, then there's really not much more to it other than just making sure you get the structure right, which really isn't too hard. All you need to be able to do is describe the process or system you're talking about in a lot of detail, which, again, shouldn't be too hard if you have memorised all of the content, and then explain the importance of that by describing a different system or process. Really most of it is just regurgitating the content and then the final 10% is linking it in the structure that they want, which isn't something that's too difficult.

Have you ever ran out of exam resources , e.g. past paper questions and if so , what did you do ? Did you redo them multiple times because I feel like I will start memorising the questions instead of the method

I never ran out of past papers and I feel like you may be going through them too quickly if you are running out. There are 3 A-level papers and 2 AS papers per year for the last 10 years so that's almost 50 past papers. If you're able to get through all of them, then you must be doing an absolute tonne of revision. I would say focus more time on reviewing the past papers if that's the case, because I don't really see how doing more and more past papers beyond a certain point is going to be that useful. Ultimately their main point is to identify gaps in your knowledge and by the 40th past paper ideally you should have no gaps in your knowledge.

What did a full school day plus revision look like for you? How did you complete your revisions without feeling tired and burnt out ?

On most school days I would spend very little time actually revising at home, if any. I believe it's much smarter to just use your free periods wisely. I think it's fine to spend free periods with friends but please don't be wasting them scrolling on your phone when you could be revising (not to sound like too much like your teachers). I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the free time at home instead of at school. I didn't revise much at home because I didn't really need to. Of course if I did, then I would have got into a daily routine of revising at a certain point each day. I think that's the best way to stick to consistent revision. When I was revising for my GCSEs, I would wake up before school and revise for 1 to 2 hours every day before I went to school. This is unnecessary - I could have done it after school but I think getting into a consistent routine where you're doing it at the same time each day is the best way to actually stick to revision. But, if you use your free periods wisely, then this may not even be necessary.

How would you approach relearning maths as a year 13 who started the course late?

I think the biggest mistake you could make would be moving past a topic before you fully understand it. A lot of A-level maths builds on things you learnt earlier in the course, so verify you can answer questions on a topic (e.g. Year 1 differentiation) before moving on. Practically, this means learning the topic in whichever way suits you best (could be textbooks, YouTube tutorials, AI explanations), then answering a broad range of practice questions on it (Mr. Modoni maths is an underrated website) and immediately addressing any weak points this highlights. Either revisit the materials you used to initially learn the topic, try a different resource, or ideally ask your teacher for help.

What resources should I use to revise Chemistry?

The best resource is a knowledgeable teacher, if you have one. Don't be too embarrassed to ask them to explain something again if you didn't understand it the first time - it's more embarrassing to get a bad grade. If you don't have a good teacher, I liked ChemRevise and the CGP textbooks.

How did you revise Biology at the start of Year 13?

I didn't stick to this perfectly, but I recommend making flashcards on everything you cover in lesson as soon as possible. This makes sure you commit what you've learnt to memory before you lose understanding of the concepts. I think it's good to make your own flashcards, because it checks you actually understand the content and it also leads to easier memorisation in my experience.

How do I learn the nucleophilic substitution mechanism?

You should prioritise understanding WHY everything happens in each mechanism you learn, instead of trying to just blindly memorise where each arrow goes. For example, with nucleophilic substitution, you should understand why an arrow goes from the Carbon-Halogen bond to the halogen (it's because the halogen is very electronegative so strongly attracts the pair of electrons in the covalent bond). This has two benefits: first, it makes the mechanism easier to memorise (I can't really prove this, but you can try it for yourself. Imagine trying to memorise a random string of 10 words vs. a 10 word long sentence - the sentence is going to be easier because understanding helps memory). Second, it means you can apply the same logic to application questions where you have to draw curly arrows on unfamiliar mechanisms, which is a question type students often struggle on.