Your A level Science Exam Explained with Primrose Kitten

You’re A Level science exams can seem confusing because, well, there is a lot there. So I’m going to break things down for you. Trying to simplify everything so you understand what to expect when you go into your A Level Science exams.

Now there are going to be 3 papers that you are going to see and these are pretty long papers. Now the first two paper are going to be divided up by topic, but it is paper three that is the synoptic paper and what synoptic means is basically it can examine anything from the whole course. So paper three is generally the one that people think is the hardest, and it’s the one at the end and paper 3 includes things like multiple choice questions. Which is skill in itself.

So one of the best tips I can give you for revising for your A Level exams is to do a AS papers. Now there are lots of reasons for this. The examiners are always coming out and tell us that AS content isn’t remembered very well. The AS papers have multiple choice questions in them, both papers. So you actually get a lot of practice in the exam technique for doing multiple choice questions which are going to come up in your paper three and the content in the year 12 papers in the AS papers is going to be the foundations for everything that you’ve learned in year 13. But it’s going to come up on the full A Level paper.

So if you don’t properly understand everything in that AS papers, you’re really going to struggle with the A level papers. Now, a few tips I want to give you for the A level papers is highlight the command words. Do not leave any part of the question out. That last sentence in the whole big question could actually be something really important. Especially if it’s hierarchical marking, level response marking is going to expect you to refer to every single bit of information in the question.

If it says use data then please use data, and if it is a “mathsy” question, please show all of your working. So if you make a mistake really early on, the examiner can follow through your working and then give you marks for the error carried forward. The examiners want to give you as many marks as possible, so please make their lives easy for them. Layout your work really clearly. Show the examiners that you know exactly what you’re talking about.

Good luck in your exams, guys. I’m going to be here with you. Oxford’s going to be here with you every single step of the way.