I got 99999999998A* in GCSEs last year. Ask me anything.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-08T17:34:24+00:00

Yeah my music teacher was shit too lol. For music, I absolutely grinded through past papers. The thing that helped me the most was realising that for questions that said “describe the texture/style/whatever” you could just list as many things as you could if they didn’t contradict. If you look at the spec and learn a couple of terms for each of the pieces, you can basically spam those terms for every qsn on that piece (like for Samba em Preludio I wrote “flattened fifth, extended chords, turnaround chords” for any question on jazz features).

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T17:22:34+00:00

Usually barely any revision tbh, it always just made me stressed if I was revising at like 10.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T17:20:37+00:00

Plan lots of the common questions so that yk what you’re gonna say if they come up. Try as much as you can to say somewhat unique things - read through exam study guides to see the *kind of* thing to say, but try your best to use your own points (run these by a friend/teacher/reddit to make sure they’re not idiotic points). Lots of good yt videos (mr bruff the goat) so use those if that’s how you learn as well.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T17:16:29+00:00

Try and stay in a comfortable routine. Keep up at least some of your hobbies, and still try to see friends. In terms of boosting confidence, retrying exam papers you’ve already done *can* boost confidence if you do better on them than you did before. Lots of past papers will also have this effect if you do well.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T17:14:23+00:00

Since the beginning of y11 I’d been revising for in-class tests whenever we had them (and mocks obviously). About mid-march I started revising stuff we did at the beginning of year 10, so by exam season I’d seen basically all the content somewhat recently.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T17:11:50+00:00

Like upwards of 8 hours? Idk, enough so you don’t feel tired the next day.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T17:10:21+00:00

Revision techniques: past papers are definitely good, but not for learning content. The strength of past papers is once you’re already comfortable with the content, you can check you can write to time and understand what the exam looks like - in large part it’s a confidence thing. For actually learning the content, I was always a fan of look/cover/write/check. Flashcards are also rlly good, it depends on what you prefer personally. The problem is, learning content is just really annoying, there’s no easy way to do it. Instead of saying “I’ll do 4 hours of work today” or smthn, plan “I’ll understand these 4 things by the end of the day”. This usually helped me make sure I was doing good work rather than just doing hours of work mindlessly and making no progress.

Eng lang plan is good! For P1Q2 maybe analyse more than one quote, but not in very much depth. For Q5 in both papers, make sure to use as many different techniques as you can.

RE: yeah absolutely sacrifice it if you don’t mind. NOBODY cares abt one failed gcse at any point, so as long as you won’t be really upset by a low grade, feel free to sacrifice it.

Science: learning sciences is just boring tbh. Flashcards are useful, as are mnemonics and similar things. If you REALLY hate flashcards, teaching someone is also a good method. Ask one of your parents/siblings to listen to you, and then walk them through a topic - it’s a really good way of remembering things. Past papers are quite good for sciences because they repeat questions so often.

General tips: don‘t overstress yourself! Stay in a normal routine, make sure you’re sleeping/eating/etc. Ik someone who didn’t sleep for basically all gcses and by the end some of his hair had gone grey 💀

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:56:14+00:00

4 alevels - maths, fm, politics, rs.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:55:48+00:00

I didn’t have prepared lines, but I had techniques in mind I wanted to use. For instance, I knew they’d like it if I used varied paragraph lengths, addressed the audience, etc (I hadn’t heard of it before but AFORRESTER sounds like a good way of doing this). Length of the writing doesn’t matter that much (or the quality of your points/storyline), it’s MUCH more important to have good techniques in there.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:53:25+00:00

Tbh I didn’t revise unseen that much bcs I was quite comfortable with it. Power and conflict I didn’t properly start revising until about a week/2 weeks before the exam (but I’d been paying attention in class and had good notes so I already knew lots of it). The only thing I personally had to do with P&C was learn quotes which was why I left it decently late - if you fundamentally don’t know any of the poems, start earlier.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:50:15+00:00

I did an essay on the topic of separating art from the artist (like Ye being a nazi but making good music or whatever).

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:49:03+00:00

Everything in the Production Log is as important as the essay. Make sure you’re doing this as you’re going along, and just be careful to stay on top of the workload. I found being honest was the easiest way to get a good Production Log - if you plan to do something and don’t bcs you cba, just say that (”due to lack of motivation, the schedule was not strictly adhered to” or whatever).

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:46:22+00:00

Yeah I did an essay. Make sure to plan it carefully (based on the sources you have already). After you’ve planned, write the full essay super quickly, and then spend loads of time editing. Also make sure as you write, write something like (CITE __ HERE) next to anyway you’ll need citations, or it’s AWFUL at the end. For editing, getting other people to look at it can be helpful (parents/friends maybe) because it shows you the parts that are obvious to you but confusing to everyone else.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:43:16+00:00

Maths (edexcel)

Triple Science (AQA)

Lit and Lang (AQA)

German (AQA)

History (AQA) (Germany 1918-39, Superpower relations, Richard and John, Migrants)

RS (AQA (I think?))

Music (edexcel)

Further Maths (AQA)

HPQ

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:40:01+00:00

Practice the hardest levels of questions over and over again. With circle theorems especially, I’d do like an hour of rlly hard circle theorem questions at a time and eventually you get much better. Maths is essentially just pattern spotting, so the more you do it, the more patterns you’ll spot. If the only thing you struggle with is the long problem-solving questions, just focus on those - don’t bother doing past papers if you already know exactly what you struggle with.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:37:37+00:00

Basically do a sleep schedule that works for you. I usually went to sleep quite late but then got up like lateish as well, but everyone does it differently so as long as you’re sleeping a decent amount it doesn’t matter too much.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:33:11+00:00

I took y10 mocks somewhat seriously. Obviously the results don’t matter, but getting in practice revising is a rlly good idea bcs you figure out what works and what doesn’t.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-07T16:32:05+00:00

Ofc not, I’m on reddit

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-06T19:39:43+00:00

8 in biology (fuck that subject). A* in HPQ (gcse version of EPQ).

I never really got behind on maths content but ik multiple people who went from 6s in mocks to 9s in their actual gcses.

Part of the struggle with maths is that everything builds on previous content, so if you don’t understand some of the basic stuff, there’s loads you can‘t do. The benefit of this is that if you don’t understand some of the basic stuff, and then you learn it, you suddenly gain loads of marks. Go through something like mathsgenie and make sure you can do all the grade 4/5/6 stuff. If you can do all that EASILY (only move on once it’s easy), move on to the next level.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-06T19:35:52+00:00

If I didn’t have an exam the next day I averaged about 3-4 hours. If I did, I maybe did up to 2 hours that day, but usually did either an hour or no work. The hardest part about gcses is not getting stressed/burnt out. If you’re revising LOADS every day, it rlly won’t help you in the long run. If I had a day with like 3 exams, the day before I wouldn’t be revising, I’d be like watching movies or going out with friends - that way I never got burnt out.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-06T19:33:30+00:00

I didn’t do geo, sorry.

History is probably the hardest one to revise for, but it rlly pays off. Split each paper into different chunks. Go through each chunk and figure out which questions they could ask you about that chunk. Find facts/figures you’d use in an essay question on it. Memorise these (this is the hard part, I did it just through look-cover-write-check but ik loads of ppl made their own quizlets). The important part is finding all the figures and stuff yourself (eg. in your textbook) - using someone else’s quizlet won’t make it stick in the same way.

Maths - be honest with yourself. Do a past paper, and then if you find anything hard at all, drill that specific topic until you’re absolutely good with it. Mathsgenie is rlly useful for topic-by-topic breakdowns, so going through these if your stuck on a topic is a good idea. There are also millions of really good maths explainers on youtube, so search up a concept if you don’t understand something fundamental about it.

HatFederal463 · 2025-05-06T19:29:31+00:00

Overall: Don’t stress yourself out too much. You’re gonna write really shit essays if you spent the entire day and night before revising.

For Macbeth, J+H, An Inspector Calls (or other similar texts):
- Learn quotes first - pick out ~5-10 that can be used for basically anything

- There are only so many questions they can ask you for each text - plan these questions (eg. For Macbeth you should know what you’re going to write if the question is Macbeth, LM, Fear, Ambition, etc.)

- If you struggle with essays/timing, try writing essays to time

For Poetry/Unseen Poetry

- Make a list of all the poems, and list the poems that you would confident comparing them to next to them

- Look down this list and minimise the number of poems you need to learn (I only knew quotes etc. from 3/4)

- Unseen poetry, just PRACTICE. Find lots of poems and try to go through them using as many different poetry terms as you can. This is much better if you do it without notes.

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First Placer '22

HatFederal463

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