A Student’s Guide to A Level Exams
Missed Grades
This is a brief guide aimed primarily at A level students (or their parents/guardians) whose AS and/or A2 modules have not gone as well as you might have hoped. The purpose of this guide is to help you work out why the grades did not turn out as you had hoped. It is very important that you are honest with yourself when considering these questions.
Did you make the leap from GCSE to A level?
Many students find their GCSE’s easy – there’s lot to learn but not too much to really challenge smarter students. So many smarter students assume that they can just carry on in exactly the same way – often this is not true – and A levels come as a nasty shock. If your A levels sense as easy (or difficult) as your GCSEs then you probably never really got to grip with what was required for A level.
Did you work hard?
So can you honestly say that you worked as hard as you reasonably could during the course and also for your revision? If you revised for 6 hours a day how much of that time was spent on Facebook, texting friends or on msn, or just staring out of the window? Realistically to actually do 6 hours of solid revision will probably take 8 or even 9 hours out of your day once you factor in breaks, lunch, etc. In spite of what other students might tell you almost all students who do very well work very hard. Recent research shows that to be world class at almost anything roughly 10,000 hours of “practice” are required – that is 1,250 days at 8 hours per days! You don’t need to be world class to do well in your A levels but the point is that you need to do quite a lot of work. For further details on this see Wikipedia or the follow book on Amazon - Outliers: The Story of Success.
How well did you know your syllabus?
If you didn’t have a copy of your syllabus then it will be difficult to know the answer to this. It might be worth getting a copy of your syllabus (see our guide to A level syllabuses) and having a very careful look to see if there were any big gaps in your knowledge. Realistically most students do not cover 100% of their syllabus. However, if there seem to be huge gaps then this may answer the question why things didn’t go well. It is worth bearing in mind that for most science based syllabuses you do need to know almost all of it to get top grades. The arts are a little different – it is possible to pick and mix and still do well.
How good was your exam technique?
It is possible to know everything you need to know but have such poor exam technique that you lose a grade or two. Did you know how much to write? Did you know how much working to include? Did you run out of time? Did you answer the questions in the way the examiner’ wanted? It is very difficult to assess your own exam technique. Unless it is something very basic like running out of time and either not finishing questions or leaving entire questions out. Examiners’ report and examiners’ mark schemes can help but are rather difficult to interpret. For further information on dealing with these please visit the following: examiners’ report guide and examiners’ mark scheme. Also there is a significant delay between the date you sat the exam and the examiner’s reports and mark schemes being available – this can be several months.
Getting your paper(s) returned and/or remarked
It is possible to get your paper(s) returned and/or remarked. Firstly I must point out that it is very unlikely that remarking will result in your grade changing. Secondly the exam boards have deadlines for requesting papers to be return and/or remarked. However, what you should get is your exam paper back and you will be able to see where you lost and gained marks. You will need to ask your school or college to arrange this and there will probably be a fee. Also remember to request your paper, some exam board will not automatically return your paper(s). Seeing your exam paper again can be very revealing. Maybe it was just one question that you completely misunderstood or you failed to complete the correct number of questions.
With science based papers it is usually fairly obvious where your marks have gone – generally questions are right or wrong. What you might see is that in spite of having the right answers you have failed to show your working. Hopefully if you have your marked paper you can see where you went wrong.
With arts based (i.e. essays) papers it is a little more difficult. The most common problem is that candidates often fail to answers the question. A brilliant but irrelevant essay in principle will get you close to zero marks. Conversely a clumsily written but highly relevant essay may do surprisingly well. It is also possible that you have only answered half the question or you have missed out a major issue. If you do have your paper back try to work out where you gained marks and more importantly where you have been penalised or failed to gain marks.
If you are still in the dark then, if possible, ask you teacher or tutor to go through the paper with you. If that is not an option you may have to wait until the examiners’ report is publish. Occasionally it will turn out that certain questions were generally answered badly. Although this is rare, there can be topics or question that almost all candidates tend to misinterpret.
UMS versus the “real” mark
All exam board use some sort of UMS (Uniform Mark Scale). This works as follows: grades are assigned to a particular UMS as illustrate below
MD02 - GCE MATHEMATICS UNIT D02 - January 2010 |
|||||
Grade |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
UMS |
80 |
70 |
60 |
50 |
40 |
However, the actual mark that corresponds to an A will not exactly correlate to the UMS A (unless by a complete fluke). So now consider the following table showing Grade/Raw Mark/UMS. So effectively the grades are rescaled for each exam. So every year the UMS for a grade A will be the same, but the actual mark may vary considerably. The UMS to actual mark is set by the exam board in the light of the exam results. This is why you will never get a true answer to questions like “what percentage do I have to get to get a grade A”.
MD02 - GCE MATHEMATICS UNIT D02 - January 2010 |
|||||
Grade |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
Raw Mark |
76.0% |
65.3% |
55.7% |
45.3% |
36.0% |
UMS |
80 |
70 |
60 |
50 |
40 |
The raw mark is the percentage you actually got. For the same exam, but in June 2011, the raw mark for an A was 85.3% - the raw marks needed were roughly 10% higher for all grade in June 2011 compared to January 2010.
Still a mystery?
If it is still a mystery ask your tutor or teacher to go through the paper with you. They should be able to help you out. If that is not an option then find a local private tutor who can help or contact us.