Acing AS: The Ultimate Guide to Preparing for Exams
Just got my AS level results last week, and I gotta say, they were pretty great. For those that don’t know, AS levels are sort of Part 1 of the full Cambridge A-Level. I took 5 subjects—Math, Chemistry, Physics, Economics, and English—and scored high A’s for the first four subjects and a low A for English.
I thought I’d share with you guys the things I did throughout the year that helped me achieve those grades (and stay sane while doing so :p):
Classes
Don’t wait until the week before the exam to really start studying. Make sure you study for your topical tests and revise during your term and semester breaks. Ask your teachers whenever you don’t understand something in class. Ask your friends to help you with your homework if you really need help. Leaving things till the last minute will just increase your workload before your exams, meaning you won’t have time to fill in gaps (because there are too many) and do as many past papers as you should.
Of course, some of you might be tired and lazy after a long day of school. I follow these tips to maintain productivity so that I’ll get more things done!
Organization
Starting from the very beginning of the year, keep all your classwork, homework, and tests in a 2-inch binder. As you start to practice and complete past papers, include these in your binder as well. Having everything compiled together just makes it easier to study—you won’t be spending hours looking for your last couple of notes the night before the exam. You should also keep a printout of the syllabus and arrange all your papers according to the order in which the topics appear the syllabus.
Another binder/folder you could have is for your notes, which will probably be smaller than your binder for worksheets and past papers. You can carry this wherever you go and revise whenever you have free time. In addition, you might want to check out my Guide to Note-Taking to help you out with the note-taking and studying process.
Coffee cup vector credits
Create a Revision Schedule
I recommend starting your revision in January if your exams are May. Take it one step at a time and make sure you have no gaps in your understanding of the subject. This means you might want to allocate 2-3 hours of study per day to re-digest the topics covered in the syllabus.
Make sure you know when each of your exams are and how many days you have to study. By creating a study plan, you’ll prevent yourself from being idle or too busy to do anything else. You’ll also be able to study at the right times. For example, I had all my structured questions papers the week after my study break, so during my study break, the structured questions papers were all I studied. I didn’t waste precious time by studying for my practical exams, which were, in fact, more than a week after my last structured questions papers.
You could create an even more specific revision timetable by scheduling your study days. Here’s a link to my post on How to Create an Efficient Study Schedule.
Practice Past Exam Papers
There’s no point in going over your notes a billion times. Just because you comprehensively understand every single bullet point in the syllabus doesn’t mean you can get a high A.
Past papers, in my opinion, are the main distinguishing factor between B students and A students, or low A students and high A students. By doing past papers, you’re wiring your brain to think the way the examiners think, allowing you to score higher marks. This is because the points your brain tells you to write in the exam script are concurrent with the answers in the marking scheme, such as stating explicitly the points you think are already obvious (like the fact that higher bond energy means that you need more energy to break the bond).
For science papers, practicing from past papers mainly helps in definition and explanation questions, e.g. “Define gravitational potential energy”. Chances are, if you understand these questions, you’ll end up writing a lot more than you need to. For example, for the physics question above, you might write something like “gravitational potential energy at a point is the force per unit mass acting on a small mass placed at that point” when really all you need is “force per unit mass”. This saves time both during and before the exam since it’s easier to memorize (which is extremely helpful if you’re not great at memorizing like me).
Practicing from past papers will engrave the answers (or at the very least the structures of the answers) to recycled/repeated questions in your brain. By doing a lot of past papers, the answers to these types of questions will come to you almost instinctively.
Doing past papers will also help you reduce careless mistakes, especially since you’ll be able to spot the common ways in which the examiners will try to trick you, such as providing the value for the object’s diameter instead of its radius.
After you’ve completed several past papers, you might want to summarize your mistakes as well as the answers to any theory (as opposed to calculation) questions. I answered all my physics past papers in a notebook, and I used sticky notes to summarize them. Here are some of the points I jotted down:
Write “resistance changes with voltage” instead of writing V=IR
When describing moments, always provide an explanation and an equation
Greater! Lost!! Volts!!!
When describing the composition of an atom, always mention in the nucleus
Mention if a graph passes through the origin
These notes can then be studied so that you don’t make the same mistakes again.
In addition, I recommend doing topical questions as you revise each section of the syllabus as this will ensure you understand that part before moving onto other parts. This will enable you to identify misinterpreted concepts and common mistakes.
Finally, it is important to set a target grade when doing your past papers so that you aren’t doing them just for the sake of doing them, but rather to improve your exam skills.
Get the Examiner’s Reports
This is crucial for essay subjects like English or Economics as they tell you what the examiners are looking for and what they don’t want to see. I like to print English examiner reports and highlight key points for commentaries, or print Economics examiner reports and make a brief outline on how to answer similar essay prompts.
Examiner’s reports generally prevent the problem of not knowing what points to include in your essay. For example, an essay on economic efficiency will require an explanation of allocative efficiency and productive efficiency including their respective diagrams. You’ll also need to provide a diagram for economic efficiency. Aside from that, you’ll usually need to explain the types of market failure and how they prevent economic efficiency, making sure to include diagrams in your answer. When you have an overall structure of your essay, it’ll be a lot easier to start writing.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF
Just because your exams are coming up, doesn’t mean you should neglect your own health.
Take a break every once in a while, or even a whole day if you have to
Get enough sleep
Eat proper meals
Get out of the house, whether it’s to study or to clear your head
Talk to your friends!
Exercise regularly or at least go for a walk
Reduce anxiety by taking micro-breaks such as meditating, playing music, or doing art
So there you go, some of my tips and strategies for preparing for examinations, particularly Cambridge examinations. Hope you guys take these tips into consideration whenever you’re preparing for an exam. Best of luck in your studies!
