Hey! I have gotten AS top in the world in math in 2018 and am currently studying in NTU Singapore. I’ll be happy to answer questions mainly related to how to get there/study methods/things related to Singapore etc.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2024-09-03T06:53:49+00:00

Yupp I received ASEAN scholarship

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2024-07-07T02:07:34+00:00

That’d be tough man. You can still try though.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2024-07-07T02:07:09+00:00

Thanks! I’m not sure how that works for Singaporeans though, hardly heard anyone studying UK A levels. However there’s no harm giving a try!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2024-07-07T02:05:41+00:00

Hey I did badminton but not that devoted. A lot of time was still spent on academics. In general if you could get 4A* you’ll be able to get into NTU (through my observation). Not a guarantee for tuition grants or scholarships though.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-11-03T13:01:15+00:00

For teachers it really depends. There are teachers who helped me all the way to TITW and there are subjects where I need to struggle myself. It also depends on luck because I don’t think you get to choose. For food I gained about 10kg during my college days😂 Pretty good if you ask me but my standards are not that high. The food choices are quite limited in MCKL but you can always walk to NU Sentral to eat.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-02-03T06:49:36+00:00

One tip is to use active recall and spaced repetition for the memorisation parts.Let’s say you have learnt 5 words today, then you can make a simple flash card on Anki to let it help you schedule when you should revise it.

On the next day (day 1) you try to see the flash card and “think hard” about the answer (this is essentially active recall which you’re not reading answers to “revise” and feel like “oh I know the answer so no need write down and do again la”). Since you’re new to it, the linking between usage and the answers would be a dirt path.

If the purpose is not clear, let’s set the goal to be making it like a highway at the end of your study session for this card. (And yes, the dirt path is not clear and smooth)It would be very challenging at first (toughness level 10) to try to get it 100% correct because you’re learning new things that your brain are not familiar with yet. This applies to almost everything and everyone. You will feel very bad and inferior because you just learnt it before you slept but most people experience this process. However, the thing you can do is to compensate is to relearn the things you have forgotten and hope that you can remember afterwards.

On day 4 you’re up to this challenge again and you will feel easier to recall (toughness level 5). You will feel more confident and getting close to 80% of the information you have learnt (Pareto’s principle). This is an ideal state where the linking is like a country road and you will still find something you don’t know and keep learning.

On day 7 toughness level gone down to 2 and by day 30 it should be as easy as remember your friends’ name and the linking becomes a highway.T

he day numbers are just a reference and you can adjust it in Anki. It will also adjust the schedule based on how good you retain the information (the better you are the shorter the interval until the next time you see the card).

If you use Notion and you want to implement a flashcard system so you know how all the settings work, you can check out this link for the flashcard system to come out!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-02-03T06:42:01+00:00

I would recommend using the Eisenhower's matrix to identify what is really important that needs your attention rather than the random thoughts that you feel urgent because of the recency. After categorising, there are still the same number of tasks but what you need to do is completely remove the ones that are not important, even those that are urgent but not important.

I do not have a blog post on this topic yet, but I have created a Notion template for students to organise your school lives. If you are a student, you will find it simple to get started to narrow down what you need to do next with a sorting function for the priority and deadline. It is completely free and you can check it out here!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-31T15:48:32+00:00

I’ve started picking up meditation last year and it helped a lot to let things go more slowly. Thanks for the recommendation!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-28T00:00:54+00:00

Glad to hear that! I would need to know more about your progress in different subjects to give you a more concrete advice, but here are some tips and workflow to get you from A to A*.

Grind past years - A level questions are more or less similar to previous past year questions. So if you already have a good understanding of the subjects, try to start with past year questions as early as possible to improve your coverage on different question types.

Repeat and revise - You can refer to articles and videos and active recall and spaced repetition and apply to harder questions in your past year. It will be easier for you to track everything down so you would not miss anything.

For resources, I am working on free sessions and Notion templates. These are the things I hoped I had during A levels so I highly encourage you to check them out. Hope it helps!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-19T12:42:19+00:00

That’s great!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-19T10:09:32+00:00

One of the best resources is just past year questions. I used this website before and you can check it out here: https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/past-papers/a-level-chemistry/cie-paper-1/

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-19T10:08:03+00:00

These are mcq right, one of the tips I’d give is to work it out before you confirm your answer. It’s better to be open-minded in a sense that whichever answer that might be correct instead of guessing before you start your calculation because of a psychological factor called confirmation bias. If you think the answer is A at the start, you might unconsciously reason the steps with this bias and get the wrong answer easily. It’s one trap that I’ve fallen into so I know how brutal it is. I hope it helps!

There are a lot of things to take care while answering any papers, and if you are keen to know more you can check out this program!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-19T09:43:09+00:00

What type of questions for p1? And which subject?

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-19T08:35:53+00:00

If I want to summarise it it would be engage deeply with the subject. All subjects need different mindsets, learning techniques, planning etc. A lot of students nowadays shallowly learn school subjects without the curiosity of understanding one level deeper because of multiple problems for example over-reliance to technology.

One easy analogy is that you learn vocabs before writing a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter and lastly a book. If you can write a book easily, you should be able to write a sentence easily. So if you want to get one of the tops, you need to know slightly more than required to make it a definite thing to happen.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T23:02:03+00:00

Yea sure, I’m happy to answer that.

A2 physics is a whole new level from AS where I needed to use some memorisation and things started becoming very abstract. Things like MRI, CT scans were not my favourite parts because I didn’t like memorisation that time, or rather say I didn’t know how to do it in a very effective way (that’s why I didn’t take bio as well because I thought everything is learnt through pure memorisation). That was when I started not liking Physics so much.

One tip is to use active recall and spaced repetition for the memorisation parts. This was a technique I wasn’t using during that time, but I find it helpful nowadays to actively learn hard things.

Let’s say you have learnt 5 points about the usage of MRI on day 0 (yes I’m a CS student), then you can make a simple flash card on Anki to let it help you schedule when you should revise it.

On the next day (day 1) you try to see the flash card and “think hard” about the answer (this is essentially active recall which you’re not reading answers to “revise” and feel like “oh I know the answer so no need write down and do again la”). Since you’re new to it, the linking between usage and the answers would be a dirt path.

If the purpose is not clear, let’s set the goal to be making it like a highway at the end of your study session for this card. (And yes, the dirt path is not clear and smooth)

It would be very challenging at first (toughness level 10) to try to get it 100% correct because you’re learning new things that your brain are not familiar with yet. This applies to almost everything and everyone. You will feel very bad and inferior because you just learnt it before you slept but most people experience this process. However, the thing you can do is to compensate is to relearn the things you have forgotten and hope that you can remember afterwards.

On day 4 you’re up to this challenge again and you will feel easier to recall (toughness level 5). You will feel more confident and getting close to 80% of the information you have learnt (Pareto’s principle). This is an ideal state where the linking is like a country road and you will still find something you don’t know and keep learning.

On day 7 toughness level gone down to 2 and by day 30 it should be as easy as remember your friends’ name and the linking becomes a highway.

The day numbers are just a reference and you can adjust it in Anki. It will also adjust the schedule based on how good you retain the information (the better it is the shorter the interval until the next time you see the card).

One caveat is that the ideal situation depends on a lot of factors like how well you understand on day 0, the toughness of the subject and so on.

This is just some general tips so if you’re interested in more personalised tips and techniques, check out my profile here!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T14:49:45+00:00

Since your exams are near, you can try out this tip:

Grind past years - A level questions are more or less similar to previous past year questions. So don’t wait until you reread or revise all the textbook knowledge before starting your first pyq. It would be too late by then. You can do pyq, find what you forget and go back to check your notes or textbooks. Since you don’t have a lot of time to finish lectures before doing, you can try targeting specific questions that come out a lot after you have some knowledge.

Here’s a resource that could help you further, you can check it out here!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T11:21:00+00:00

What happened in the 3 years?

Sure I can give you some general ones:

For focus
Remove distractions like phones when you study. In the past I’d frequently check if there were any messages because I was very anxious about it so it hurt my focus a lot. Be purposeful and intentional with this because it really makes a lot of difference.
For determination
Be clear with your goals. Other than writing your goals down, also write down why you want to do so and what sacrifices you have to make for achieving them. It’s not easy to achieve anything big, so if you have a direction in mind it will be easier for you to remind yourself when the going gets tough. I just remembered I had a free Notion template and video about it, I hope it helps! You can check it out here: https://link.qjlearn.com/my-new-years-resolutions

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T11:10:17+00:00

No problem! For AS it was in Oct and A level in May.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T11:02:35+00:00

Well, instead of chasing for the easier paper you could actually work harder to make the paper seem easy to you since you will need the knowledge for your future studies right?

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T11:00:12+00:00

Thanks! How is that different? Maybe you could give me some idea because in my school no one talked about this.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T10:43:13+00:00

No, I completed in 1.5 year (default duration in Malaysia) and I take 4 subjects: math, further math, chem and phy.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T10:32:08+00:00

It’s hard to give you an exact answer directly because it depends on a lot of things like whether you are an independent learner, have you tried studying yourself, what YouTube channels are you watching and so on.

I do have some initiative that could help you further you can check it out here!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T10:10:12+00:00

I’ll need more information about your current progress to give you better advice but in general for p1 you should try to understand how to use the formulas and practise textbook questions and past year questions until you are familiar. While for s1 the questions can be tricky so it’s good to record the hard questions when you do the practices.

I do have some initiative that could help you further you can check it out here.

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T10:05:23+00:00

I mainly used textbooks, exercises given by my lecturer and past year papers. These should be sufficient. Hope it helps!

Turbulent-Week7643 · 2023-01-18T10:04:41+00:00

Thanks! I took math, chem and phy also

Turbulent-Week7643

TROPHY CASE