Revision advice

Thanks @Hassan Bajwa for the compliment :). Hassan gave loads of useful tips there and he definitely has underplayed his grades - he is a really smart guy (as can be seen from his blog posts).

As for my advice, I want to stress that anyone get a grade 9. Like seriously - anyone. I am no genius; I went to a really bad school that struggled to even get 4s let alone 9s. The reason I stood out was because I adopted a mindset. This might sound quite weird but let me explain.

You see, every school gives their students target or predicted grades. You may have already been given some. Your teachers may have told you that you are a grade 5 student, for example. But this is a load of rubbish. GCSEs don't test how naturally good you are at something, they test how hard you work.

There is a formula on how to get a grade 7-9. It will work 99% of the time and it doesn't have many steps. It goes as follows:

1 - Pay attention and take notes in every single lesson.

2 - Complete all your homework to the best of your ability (no slacking)

3 - Revise for EVERY end-of-unit test and mock like it counts to the real

thing.

4 - Keep recapping on revision and increase your work load leading up to

exams by doing past papers in timed conditions.

5 - Work on ways to stay calm during exams and other exam techniques.

And bam! You can achieve all 7s, 8s, and 9s in your GCSEs. The reason why people don't achieve these grades is because they don't work hard enough. This isn't easy but it's doable. You have to really want it.

Students often don't take end-of-unit tests or even mock exams seriously as they don't contribute to your final grade, but they do. You see the lessons and knowledge that you learn from those tests is absolutely key. How can you know whether or not your timing is good in an exam if you haven't properly tried in a mock?

Trust me, I tried my hardest in every school test like it was my actual GCSE exam. By the time I sat my exams, I had done so many practice questions that it sometimes felt like I had already done the GCSE paper in front of me (obviously, I hadn't but you get the point).

Maintain a balance. Come home from school and have a light snack. Revise for 2 hours or so and the rest of the day is yours. You don't need to say goodbye to your friends but just get your balance right. I used to go on Snapchat for hours but decided to limit my time to about 20-30 minutes - this massively helped.

I was getting 5s and 6s in some subjects and got those to 9s using my tips. My number one tip however is the following.

Make a Grade 9 your target grade for every subject. So revise as if you are chasing for 9 and nothing less. Then take a lower grade, say a 7, to be your minimum grade. Anything below a 7 will be unacceptable and a 7 will be ok - only ok. Whenever you do a chapter or unit test, or even a mock, note down how close you are to a 7. Once you get that 7, and you will if you work hard, aim for the 9. If you stop at the 7, chances are that you may get a 6 in the exam or you will risk not getting an 8/9.

Hope that this has helped :)