Well, just had English Lit and IT exams, but I think I did pretty well on those. I'm shitting myself now though, 'cos I've got a Geography and Biology (under Combined Science) exam tomorrow, and those are both subjects which I know absolutely nothing about!

To the peeps here who already have GCSE's in these subjects, how were they?
Do you think a guy can learn what's needed in about 4 hours!?

Oh and finally, post some revision techniques and shit here, I really need help!

Edit: I also wanted to know what kind of shit "boosts" your performance/concentration in exams, like Red Bull or whatever.

Oh shit, I forgot about exams.

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Don't bring your notes to the queue of the exam, it'll make you feel less confident... just remember key things like formulae etc, geography just remember key dates of eruptions etc.

For revision techniques, firstly, get your materials, then throw them on the floor and pick up your guitar My reasoning is that if you don't already know it, you'll struggle to pick up much more, although a quick skim of a book never did any harm.

Biology shouldn't give you too much hassle, just chill dude!

Rock on and good luck! \m/

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Nah, I'm not sleeping tonight, and am aided by an endless supply of red bull. You can pick up a a lot in 4 hours of revision per subject!

Cheers Sqol

Oh yea, something i did a lot which was really helpful, was if you put down the very vital things you can't remember on a piece of paper, and keep looking at it outside until the very last second, then as soon as you get in (before you forget), write it all down how it looked on the piece of paper. Then you don't have to worry about it That was more useful for physics (although you only need V=IR for that )

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SLEEP! Suffering from insomnia at the time did not help me concentrate at all, but thank fuck I came out with decent results, except in art, maths & RE.

Geogoraphy wasn't that bad 5 years ago, biology aswell, but then again...that was five years ago.

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Red Bull is awesome. Geography andj Biology are perfect subjects for cramming since it's largely memorization and no serious mental reshaping is required. Just make sure you shave and shower and listen to some death metal right before the exam. Good luck!

Eh, well things didn't go too well only got around to 30 mins of Geo revision! I have to leave in 45 mins for the Geography exam, I'll take a shower now and get back to last minute cramming. Meh, Geography's not important anyway.

For biology I have about 1hr 15 mins before the exam, so I'll do some revision then. I can afford to do badly in Biology, as long as I ace Physics and Chemistry. Oh well,those are in a week, so I'll have plenty of time to do that.

Damn my fucking laziness! It's only just hit me that I need to do well in these exams, so I'll actual start real revision after today.

Methamphetamines. It's not even drug abuse because you're doing it for school.

DISCLAIMER: Say no to drugs.

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Meh, I think I did reasonably OK in the exams, but I have to actually revise a lot more(duh!)for the other science and geography paper(s) if I want to get a decent grade. What pisses me off is I did about 1 1/2 hours revision on biology and nothing came up under what I revised! Same story with Geography.



Haha, there was a kid last year who took them before he sat his history exam, and he was sitting there writing about 8 pages over the same 2 pages, "finished" the exam in half an hour. Got kicked right out.

Don't revise for longer than two hours at a time - anything after that won't sink in so take regular 15-30 minute breaks. When you have your breaks, try not to watch television: lie down or listen to some music. You should also eat regularly during revision sessions - your brain requires a lot of energy to function! I think this last tip applies more to extended periods of revision (ie, A-level, degree) but if you find it helpful then all the better.

The best thing you can do before an exam is have a good nights' sleep. Try to get at the very least 7 or 8 hours. Also, don't forget to eat breakfast beforehand - if you get hungry during the exam your mind will be in McDonalds when it should be on the exam in hand.

I hardly did any revision for my GCSEs. I think the most I did was about two days of maths revision directly before the exam. For all the others I just skimmed over the revision notes the night before for about an hour. GCSEs don't require that much technical knowledge and they certainly don't test for application (just regurgitation of formulae or knowledge) so I felt that this level of revision was sufficient. Of course, it's going to be different for different people.

Now to the exam itself. One of the biggest problems people have with exams is not finishing them. If you're stuck, move on to the next question and return to the troublesome one at the end. There's no point in labouring over one stubborn question when there are easier marks available if you move on. A lot of people panic as soon as they get to a question that they can't answer - remember, you don't need 100% to pass!

Try to allocate time to each question. For example, for a three hour exam with 100 marks available you should allocate 1 minute 48 seconds to each mark. If you work to 1 minute 30 seconds per question then you'll finish ahead of schedule and have time to check through your paper. You should know beforehand how many marks are available and the time you have to complete the exam so work it out before you enter the exam hall.

I hope this helps! Best of luck!

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Cheers John, that did help.

I've got a maths non-calculator exam in around 6 hours, I'll start revising for it soon.

*Sweats nervously*

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Haha, the exam was an intermediate paper, I only got around to one hour's revision, but I think I did reasonably ok. It was out of 100, and I counted up all the marks I was even a bit slightly unsure of, and that totalled to 45.

So that's 55%, or around 60-70% if I'm lucky.

My plan is to basically ace my non-calculator exam, which will give me a good chance of getting a B (highest you can get in intermediate). Which is basically my plan for my Chemistry/Physics/2nd Geography papers. And the aforementioned is all from 1-2 1/2 weeks away, so I've get plenty of time to revise for 'em. Now I just need to get off my lazy ass!

I've got an English media text paper tomorrow, and the first paper of history (3 papers!) on Thursday.

That's good.

Do you know what percentage you need to get certain grades? I read that last year 47% was sufficient to get an A in maths. In my day (yeah, I know - getting old now!) we needed something like 85-90% in the higher maths paper to get an A and 90-95% to get an A*. At A-level it was 80% to get the top grade (A).

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Here's a thread I can contribute nothing to other than some goofyass comment about my horrible Florida public school education and my high school diploma that serves no purpose other than taking up some space in a box somewhere.



sorry....heh heh

Holy shit! That's a lot. I hear that for the higher maths paper you need at least 75% (around that figure) to get an A. For intermediate I think it's 60% to get a B.

I haven't taken my degree certificate out of my drawer in two years! I got my current job without even having a proper interview! How lucky am I?

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Phew! Just got my exam results today, what a weight off my shoulders. I did pretty well, considering I fucked about the whole school year and didn't really revise:

English Language - A
English Literature - B
I.T - B
History - C
Maths - C
Geography - C
Double Science - C

congratulations. 8 passes is pretty good

your school actually let you take I.T. gcse?

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Thanks.

Yep, why wouldn't they?

i dunno, my school wouldn't offer it.
i even offered to study in my spare time if they entered me for the exam, but they still said no. they forced me to do architectural drawing instead! bastards.

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Congrats dude, better than my results were all those years ago

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Nicely done. Are you going to do A levels?

Yep for sure. I'll probably do English lang., Music, History and IT as an AS.

good combo

Congratulations, young Beast of the Blizzard!

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Haha cheers man.

On the subject of A-Levels, I changed my mind as to what I'll study:
Music, ICT, Physics and Psychology as an AS. Physics would be pushing it, but as long as I actually revise, I don't think it'll be too hard.

I did the physics A-Level. The maths isn't as intensive as a maths A-Level (obviously) but the experiments did my head in, although this follows logically seeing that I'm much more interested in the theoretical side of physics than the experimentation.

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I did Physics at AS, dropped it cause i got an E, found it pretty difficult, cause im not that great at maths

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Hmm..what kind of maths was involved? Purely algebra or what? I was told by my Physics teacher that the maths aspect of it wasn't much harder than just rearranging equations. Do you think if I got a C in GCSE maths without any revision, I would be alright for the A Level physics maths!?

I think its possible dude, but you'll have to work really hard (in my opinion, i got a B at maths and still found it tough). A lot of is re-arranging, but when you start getting into stuff like coefficients and specific latent heat capacities, it gets beyond a joke I'm the opposite of john (mansley) though, i was more interested in the experimentation and the 'hands on' approach as opposed to the theory Electronics A Level i really enjoyed, the theory is really interesting behind it all too

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I didn't actually do physics Alevel, but I would imagine maths would make life easier. I did maths and some further maths (P1-6, S1-2, M1, D1), A level maths is not hard as long as you pay attention, I found further maths was more intense (we didn't get extra lessons, we just had to burn through it).

I would imagine the maths involved in physics A level will be pure maths and mechanics.

One other thing to think about is how those subjects will compliment each other if you are planning on university, and which subject you think you might like to study there. I think your previous choice of subjects complimented each other more. Although, at the end of the day, don't do anything you are going to hate doing.

It's mostly re-arranging and simple derivations (well, they seemed simple looking back after my degree!). Application of formulae is very prominant but less prominant is calculus - in fact there were only a few instances of me needing differentiation and I didn't need integration at all (if I remember correctly). I beleive that manipulation of logs and the exponential function popped up now and again, particularly in radioactivity and thermal physics.

Your teachers have to assume that everybody who takes physics isn't doing maths as well so the maths side is somewhat diminished. Having said that, maths and physics go hand in hand and are a perfect combination of subjects so I would always recommend that anybody doing physics to do maths as well. In fact, you can say that the mathematics of physics is a subset of mathematics as a whole.

You should be OK with the maths, but you'll probably have to put more work into understanding the mathematical processes than somebody who is also doing the maths A-level. It's just a case of practise makes perfect - the pupils doing A-level maths will just be getting more practise. The decision's down to you, but I would consider talking it over with your physics teacher as he will have undoubtedly had to advise many students in a similar situation to you over the years.

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