Question: How did you revise for chemistry alevels

Matthew Wadge answered on 11 Mar 2025:

I will be honest here, when I moved from GCSE to A Level, I didn’t do very well in my mocks… I found GCSEs easy as I was good at memorising facts and didn’t really revise much for them (also, the CGP books were incredible!). However, when I started my A levels, I thought I could do the same approach and just memorise stuff – this didn’t go well for me, and I achieved a U on my mocks… After this, I realised I needed to work hard and not only learn and memorise the content, but also apply what I know to different situations. What I mean by this is, knowing all the elements of the periodic table is good, but more importantly you need to know what those elements do, how do they behave, do they react with other elements, what state are they in, what type of bonding do they have, etc. etc. Chemistry is a really cool subject, but can be difficult. The best thing to do is listen and take notes as much as you can in lesson, when you get home and it’s fresh go back over those notes and make fresh notes so it sticks with you (flash cards are also great). There are great videos online that help if you’re a visual learner (periodic videos). Finally, practice makes perfect, and once you have gone through your notes a couple of times, worked out which bits are more difficult and focus on these, then you are ready to do as many past papers as you can get your hands on! Best of luck with your exams and remember, don’t panic, stay calm and do your best, as that’s the best you can do!