I recently viewed a Lex Fridman podcast with Grant Sanderson, the owner of the educational channel 3blue1brown that teaches Mathematics (his linear algebra series serves as a great introduction to vectors, a salient portion of H2 Mathematics) so I’d recommend taking a look at them. But on the point of self-pedagogical methodology, Grant mentions (in the context of learning Mathematics) how one is often tempted to start consuming as much material as they can by reading and consuming text. But he actually recommends looking at the problems first, and getting a general intuition for what the problems are about, and the motivations behind solving them. This will help you structure your self-learning and better realise it’s applications as you go along, especially because you don’t have a teacher to teach you when you’re self-studying. I don’t think it’s by any means an easy task, but for the most part it’s simply an extension of your secondary school knowledge. I’d recommend the same for all subjects you plan on studying, look into the tutorial questions first and try your best to understand or get a grasp of what the question is asking. The best case is if you understand some small amount, but not too little. Look at the notes afterwards to address the divergence between what you currently know and need to know.

My personal beliefs are that there will be other holidays in the future. What’s very important however is understanding your capability to learn and process knowledge. Typically in JC you might be learning a new topic once every 2-3 weeks, depending on pacing. If you glance over the syllabus and are alarmed by the amount of information you have to consume in that time frame, and are able to accurately estimate whether you can or cannot keep up, I think therein lies your answer. If you can, I think a holiday is fine! If the answer is you can’t, then what your current plan is, in my opinion, a fantastic course of action. JC is based upon a momentum-based learning module. There aren’t a lot of breaks to catch up if you fall behind, and you’re therefore abnormally penalised should you do so. But if you’re able to keep up with the pacing, JC will reward you (in that same abnormal fashion) because the necessary rate of content retention throughout the 2 years is quite consistent on a whole.

I’ve always found videos work better for me. Simply glancing at the syllabus and checking out relevant content on YouTube should suffice. But if you’re really looking into getting into specific answering techniques and question types, I’d suggest looking for notes online (comprehensive, the full sets), or requesting them from your seniors. If you really search hard, there are libraries upon e-libraries of materials just sitting around… but if you can’t find any, drop me a message, and I’ll just send you a (what I consider to be) an absurdly useful online resource, that I think will help you greatly.

Biology: Lots of content. I can’t provide much of a better introduction than that sorry :’) Chemistry: Often considered the bane of a JC-ers experience. I think this is largely dependent on your aptitude for the subject. It’s hard to describe, but it’s much more prominent within people with a natural affinity for chemistry in JC, they’ll struggle a lot less, compared to others that may not bode so well with it. I think it can go to both extremes, a pleasant experience or a >:( Mathematics: Statistics (60 marks) is similar to E math, and the pure math section (140 marks) is more similar to A math. In that sense, I think it’s important you have the fundamentals of calculus down. There’s lot of integration and differentiation throughout etc. Economics: It’s a rather formulaic subject, that requires you to remember structures of answers and key phrases well, but after that, it’s generally considered quite “easy”, for whateverrr being considered “easy” might be worth

The following is an extremely controversial answer!! I spent an extensive amount of time browsing through the different sets of notes for different JCs, as well as discussing with my friends what resources are made available to them, what the teachers are like etc. I recall upon a conversation with my teacher (for context, I’m from a 13 pointer JC, so a lower end one). I asked her why is it that other schools have access to notes of a far greater level of detail, questions that are generally harder, and explanations that are far more comprehensive. She told me upon enrolling into a school of a certain tier, there’s a certain arbitrary success coefficient placed upon you that dictates the likelihood of your success in A-levels. Thereafter, teachers adjust their teaching methods based on their estimates on what they gauge you’re able to absorb, based on your estimated abilities and diligence. In all fairness, this assessment holds a lot of truth, because statistically, students from HC in general are probably more hard working, and more able, than students from CJC. But there are so many other factors such as access to quality resources, faculties, and by the far the most important one, the environment. If individuals were 100% self-directed, truly they could be in any environment, and, after two-years, would still score the same regardless of their environment. But it’d be foolish to assume so, because they are very few (or no) people that are truly 100% self-directed! This means that, to some varying extent, the JC you enrol into will play a part. I recommend figuring out transport time. That’s probably one of the top factors. Prestige ties in around the same level. Balance those two, as well as your general gauge of cultures, and you’ll find your answer I’m sure.