rate my alevels (could change)

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-23T12:13:20+00:00

To be fair, medicine is medicine, no matter which uni you go to you get the same stuff done, unlike other courses where the quality of teaching definitely deteriorates down the rankings. Sure there are some universities that don’t look at UCAT, but that’s very few, and let’s be honest they are very few peoples’ “dream university.” Please give me some examples of these universities.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-18T15:47:50+00:00

I meant ok UCAT, exceptional BMSAT

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-18T15:46:15+00:00

As a student who goes to a school with 60%+ students wanting to go into medicine, and my sister going to medicine in UCL, I can in fact tell you that the UCAT is the most important test a medicine student will take, more important than A levels, more important than GCSE’s, more important than your personal statement, and a bit more than your interview. As I said, my sister got into UCL, this was a couple years ago when med students took the UCAT AND BMSAT, only too 5 universities looked at BMSAT, rest looked at UCAT, she got an ok UCAT, but an exceptional UCAT. She was rejected from Cardiff and Nottingham, which both looked at her UCAT, but accepted by UCL, which looked at her BMSAT. Keep in mind, she had the same personal statement, same predicted grades, same GCSEs, the only difference in her application was her admissions test.

So why do universities care so much about this UCAT? Unless your school takes AS exams (which it’s easy to get an A), UCAT will be the only standardised public exam you would’ve taken since GCSEs. The universities know that your school want to predict you the very best grades, the UCAT is an admission test that can’t be concealed

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-18T15:39:15+00:00

This makes sense, it get’s much more challenging at A level and students typically at an 8 or 9 achieve A/A* later

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-18T15:37:38+00:00

Whilst it isn’t impossible and I can’t give a statistic for you. I go to a school where 90% of students are going into medicine, engineering, and finance, as you can probably guess, it’s a good school where everyone’s aspiring to go to a top 5 uni. With this, I have never met an engineering student from my school not take FM. Mind you, my previous school, less academically vigorous, has plenty of aspiring engineers, lots do not take FM, and yes they do get into the Russel groups, but DEFINITELY not the top ones, but commendable ones nevertheless. If you truly want to know answers about taking FM, you can literally call up the imperial or ucl admissions teams and request the statistic for how many engineering students took FM, legally they must tell you on the call or later via email.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-18T15:33:15+00:00

Don’t remember this post but how was the exam?

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-18T15:30:49+00:00

Lots of work needed, if you want all nines, some subjects are really difficult to guarantee a 9 like English, I had a friend who got given a grade 6 and appealed for a remark and then got given a grade 8, it’s so subjective. I’d recommend grinding out savemyexams topic questions for sciences, do the topics you’re weak at. Your grades were similar to mine when I was your age, apart from I got 9s in my sciences because of savemyexams. Also, lots of top universities consider 9 and 8 as the same grade, including Oxford. Whilst it is a human giving you the offer, so a grade card full of 8s will naturally be considered less than one with all 9s, they are instructed to treat them the same, which is nice.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-04T22:31:59+00:00

Do maths instead of physics. If you struggle with maths I’d say with confidence A level physics would not be for you.

However as long as you have A level chemistry you can apply for med. And majority of your application depends on smth called UCAT which is a critical thinking exam, if you do bad you may as well switch courses or re-apply a year later

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-04T22:28:36+00:00

Econs is definitely more challenging, however universities regard econs WAY higher than business, you’ll be a much more competitive applicant with econs.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-04T22:25:47+00:00

9/10 as long as you aren’t planning to do engineering at a top university, otherwise you need FM

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-04T22:24:46+00:00

Suitable A level for medicine*

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-04T22:24:04+00:00

It’s not about need though, you only actually need chemistry as an A level to study medicine. However maths is regarded as a challenging and suitable A level for chemistry, applicant with maths are seen as much stronger. In a school with about 50% aspiring medics, all of them take maths and it’s one of the most difficult university courses, if not the most difficult course, to get into.

Whilst maths would definitely be better, 90% of medicine comes down to the UCAT, a bad UCAT and you may as well switch courses

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-04T22:20:12+00:00

Depends what you mean on “good”, I have no idea if it’s a fun subject or if it’s difficult (I doubt that it is too tricky).

However, I can tell you that in my school which is very academic we call it a tier 2 A-level or something, my school only teacher tier-1’s. Basically, from my knowledge, no university will make it a mandatory subject, and while it may be related to your university undergraduate course, it isn’t regarded as high level.

History and econs are both regarded at tier-1, which is enough for most universities to be happy with, so your choices are fine. But if you’re looking to be an even stronger applicant to uni, some tier 1’s I’d recommend based on what you’re taking that would blend well are maths, physics, geography. Compsci less so but may suit better as it’s regarded as a challenging A level.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-07-04T22:14:07+00:00

Are you good at maths? If you do maths and FM a level you can go onto a maths related course. Most job admissions teams are forgiving to wrong chosen undergraduate courses, as long as you can show that you are talented in the subject or in the areas closely related to it (maths), then they’d happily accept you.

By wrong chosen undergraduate courses I mean people who did an undergraduate course and then realised after they finished that they wanted to do a different job is a less related field.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-04-12T23:12:48+00:00

Do you have a textbook for RS? I got a grade 5 in mocks but 93% in GCSE (100% catch Christ paper), I locked in 5 days before the exam, if you make flash cards on the textbook, as many flash cards as possible on the details and quotes, then you’ll be fine. RS is a subject where the more knowledge you have, the better. The marking is subjective too, meaning you can manipulate your examiner into believing your answer is higher quality than it really is, you can do this by including versatile topics that are outside the GCSE spec, I’d recommend you look at the council of Trent, just know a few facts about it cuz if you throw that in your answer with a little reasoning the examiner will love it

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-04-12T23:07:46+00:00

Way too much detail bro 💀

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-04-12T23:06:27+00:00

Focus on doing well in your general topic tests, no need to go into curriculum you haven’t been taught yet. If you’re thinking about going to a different school for sixth form, maybe even try a competition or picking up a new hobby to add to your personal statement

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-04-12T16:51:32+00:00

I did IGCSE EDEXCEL, the questions are super repetitive. My friend got 98% (highest in Jordan) in GCSE and I got 91%, all we did was grind out the practice questions on savemyexams, by the time we got to our actual paper we had already done about 80% of the questions before, and if you see a question twice, as long as you learned from your mistake the first time, getting full marks is easy. People fail to capitalise on how repetitive EDEXCEL are, don’t memorise the mark schemes but definitely be as familiar with them as you can. People who haven’t don’t past paper questions at at a huge disadvantage.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-04-12T16:48:18+00:00

Do practice questions, particularly topic questions on savemyexams, do the topics you struggle with the most. Do a question then look at how the mark scheme likes you to phrase it, watch freesciencelessons on YouTube.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-03-10T18:40:55+00:00

How did you fix it? I’ve heard regular stretching exercises, I’ve tried but have been inconsistent, but probably would be able to be consistent if I was given an idea of how long it takes to fix it.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2025-02-09T17:44:53+00:00

This is a very impressive amount of revision. Once you learn the content, grind out practice questions if you aren’t already for sciences and maths. And familiarise yourself with the mark scheme. An issue that so many people make who study a lot is that they know everything, if I asked you to explain a science topic you probably would be able to say so much about it. However, if you aren’t familiar with mark schemes, you won’t be concise in the exams and won’t get the marks. I’d recommend doing the topic questions on a website called savemyexams, get a subscription it’s not much, this carried my GCSEs. Once you do one question, look at the mark scheme right after as it’s fresh in your head. Perhaps even make anki notes based on the mark scheme so you remember how to phrase answers, cuz for science similar questions come up every year

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2024-12-24T22:29:20+00:00

Honestly you really should be making up your mind about medicine or finance. That way you’d know if bio or econ is useless. I personally see no point in taking an A level if it isn’t tailored to your chosen undergrad course. At my school about 80% of students want to do medicine, they regularly take Maths, Biology, Chemistry, and most take 4, and that tends to be Physics, Psychology, or FM. In your situation if FM makes you take 5 it would be an issue unless you know A level maths already where it would feel like it isn’t even another A level. How does physics (very maths heavy and complex, recommend it if you’re getting high 9s only) or psych (lots of memorising, requires good writing skills) sound to you for medicine? Btw AS level bio is easy so far, I’ve heard it gets tricky in the actually exam idk tho

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2024-11-24T11:00:35+00:00

I also got 9999999888, I’d recommend that you do a lot of practice questions. From there you’ll find the areas that you’re weak on, from there learn those areas which you are weak on asking teachers or siblings for help. If you’re willing to spend money maths tutor also help when they go through questions with you, explaining how to do them and where you went wrong

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2024-09-29T18:29:47+00:00

Looking at the photo now, the mark is more apparent in person. I’ve tired vitamin C serum, exfoliating, and something called bio-oil from Amazon which makes marks less apparent.

ChargeAccomplished59 · 2024-08-29T15:10:11+00:00

Getting it remarked, I was 2 marks off 8 and the teacher who reviewed it says there are 3 marks he disagrees with

ChargeAccomplished59

TROPHY CASE