How To Get An A* In A-Level Psychology
So I feel like this is something a lot of people doing Psychology will ask me when I tell them I got an A*. Some people have told me “You’re so smart, of course you got an A*”, but really I did so much revision for Psychology, and so I’m going to give you guys some tips on how to do the same. So, to give you guys some background I studied AQA A-Level Psychology on the new reformed A-Level. At AS I got a B, and at A2 I got an A*. So while this blog will mainly be for people on the AQA specification the advice I give can help people on other exam boards too! So the specification is split into three papers in A2, each each paper as a different set of topics that are examined on.
Paper One: Social Influence, Memory, Attachment and Psychopathology.
Paper Two: Biopsychology, Research Methods and Approaches.
Paper Three: Issues and Debates, (Three options which will be chosen by your school mine were: Gender, Schizophrenia, Aggression).
No matter what topics your teachers choose the advice I give you will be relevant to all. So let’s get started
The CGP revision guides are a no go for an A*. They are far too basic, and barely have any evaluation. The text book I mainly used was the Oxford text book with the cat on the AS and dog on the A2. These text books are incredible, they have so much information, and lots of practice questions. Alongside that the Illuminate Publishing ‘green haired girl’ and ‘pink haired girl’ revision guides were good for some areas. For example, the green haired girl book had AO3 for the ‘role of the father’ which were not in the Oxford text book. However, with the Illuminate books their AO1 and AO3 are in nowhere near enough detail to be able to achieve an A*, and therefore should be added to when you do your revision from the Oxford text book. The links for these text books will be below:
Oxford - AS and Year 1 Textbook
Oxford - A2 and Year 2 Textbook
Illuminate - Year 1 Green Haired Girl Book
Illuminate - Year 2 Pink Haired Girl Book
Firstly, within exam technique I will share what I did in each exam in terms of timings and order of answering questions. In every paper I did all the shorter marks first, and when I encountered any question with eight + marks I would do a quick bullet pointed plan on it and then move onto the next shorter mark question. Then at the end I would go back and do the essay questions. This is a clever technique for a number of reasons, most people usually do the shorter mark questions in a very quick time and therefore by doing all of those first you can see how long you have left to write the essays. For example, in one paper you may have two sixteen mark essays and an eight mark essay, and you may have thirty forty five minutes left in the exam, that way you can allocate fifteen minutes for each question, which even that may be excessive. Having as much time as possible for essays is extremely important as these are the biggest chunk of your marks, and you get more marks for quality over quantity.
Make sure when you answer essays you follow this structure:
A small AO1 section - do not go over the top with the amount of AO1 as this is only six of sixteen marks in a big essay.
For AO3 always signpost with statements such as ‘A strength of...’, ‘A weakness of...’ and ‘A limitation of...’.
For AO3, follow the same structure of each paragraph
Signpost: Introduce the point and clearly state whether it is a strength, weakness or discussion point.
Make relevant evidence or explanation: use a study or explanation to evidence your point.
Explain in relevance to the question focus: link the evidence back by explaining how it shows a strength or weakness of the theory.
You should aim for each essay to have around four paragraphs of AO3, however if you do not have the time to do this DO NOT try and squeeze a small paragraph in that is unexplained properly. The mark scheme emphasises the quality of evaluation and therefore having two very well written and relevant AO3 is much better than having four tiny and generic evaluation points.
In terms of revision for Psychology I did mind maps from the Oxford books, and I did these once in lots of detail in different colours. I then wrote the essay for that topic. For example, if I had just done the mind map for ‘Types of Long Term Memory’ I would then write the essay for that, with AO1 written in one colour, AO3 strengths in another, weaknesses in another and discussion in another. Then I would condense these down into essay plans with bullet points to summarise each paragraph. I did this for every single topic.
I also made posters for the studies, on these I would very simply state the participants, the procedure, and the findings of the study. This made it so much easier to memorise the exact statistics for the studies.
4. Past Papers/ Specimen Papers
Now once the learning has finished this is when you start doing past papers or specimen papers. It is vital to do ALL of them as similar questions can come up each year. And to make it less daunting having done all the essays already you can just test that you know the info by making an essay plan for it but then not writing the essay if you don’t want to. However do have at least one attempt of each paper in timed conditions, as timing is what most people struggle with.
You should aim to mark your own work as well and try and work out what the mark scheme asks of you. And be a harsh marker. Don’t do the “Yeah, I was gonna put that” be harsh and be honest.
5. Learn Research Methods
Research Methods is 40% of your marks. This means that even though it has its own section in Paper 2, it comes up on every paper... In my Paper 1 that I did in 2017, the entire Social Influence section bar two shorter marks were research methods! And one that I would definitely revise loads is statistical tests, make sure you learn when to use them, I did this through posters and flashcards.
On the day of my exams I went onto YouTube. I never do intense revision on the day of exams, I try to chill out, I might test myself a little bit and discuss things with my friends but I very rarely did any note taking or anything intense. Instead I watched videos on Tutor2U, their videos on last years AS papers examiners reports were so informative as were their revision videos. I’ll link them here but watch them at any stage of your revision because they are a good way vary how you revise. I’ll also link some other channels which are good for watching if you want to revise in a different way, but make sure you don’t just watch the videos, take notes or repeat what they say. Make sure it sinks in.
So, the most important thing to remember is that as long as you put in the work you will get the grade you deserve. Whether that’s an A* or a C, if you worked hard then well done!
I hope this helps everyone and if you have any questions that I haven’t answered please don’t hesitate to send me a message!
