Oxbridge Admissions: STEM subjects
First-hand insight from a Cambridge graduate and experienced tutor Admissions to STEM based subjects at Oxbridge are undoubtedly competitive. Added to the high academic barrier to entry, is the perceived
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~ as written by Christian B, a private tutor with 2000+ hours of experience over the last 5 years, both in person and online. Christian has helped young people obtain places at some of the most elite schools in the UK, such as Eton and Harrow, at 11+ and 13+. He has also helped students achieve top grades at GCSE and A level and helped prospective students to gain places at Oxford in Biological Sciences through interview practice and personal statement support. Email: emma@bespoketuition.com to request his full profile.
Revising can be daunting. With so much information to organise and learn, and questions to do across many different subjects, it can all seem a bit overwhelming. Especially if, like me, you have Special Educational Needs (SENs). So where do you start? This is the number one question I’ve been asked over the 6 years i’ve been tutoring.
The good news is the process can be very simple. With a bit of organisation and forethought, revising needn’t take all your time. With my dyspraxia, I find it very hard to understand exactly what I need to know, find what I don’t know and then go about learning this information. The method below really helps remove the stress from revising, and allows me to spend time doing the important work necessary to achieve my goals, without wasting time repeating myself or working out what I need to revise.
I discovered the process below through my own trial and error, and the SEN help I received at school and university. The following process can be both physical or digital, but for the sake of simplicity I will talk about the physical side of note taking and organisation.
The Process
Notes/Flashcards
Now. Notes. It’s completely unnecessary to write out the book word for word. It’s boring and not effective. It’s not even necessary to write out extensive notes. It’s not a good way for the information to stay in your head. Instead, I would recommend using Flashcards, something I’m sure you’ve heard of before. With Flashcards, the trick is to make them as you read long bit by bit, so you’re not doing all of them in one big go. “What can I make into flashcards?” I hear you cry. Well here are some suggestions:
But make it simple! You should be able to read out the back of the flashcard in a few seconds. It’s not a novel. The whole point of flashcards is to put information into easy to remember chunks. If the back is full of text, it might as well have been written down on an A4 page. If you find yourself doing this, it may be worth separating the information into separate cards.
Also, only make cards on information you don’t know. If you think you know something, then realise later that you don’t, you can always come back and make a card. That’s the beauty of it. it’s flexible and forgiving.
By the end of reading through the subtopic, you should fully understand everything, and have a nice pile of flashcards on any information you don’t know. Now store those away using a rubber band in your folder in a plastic sheet. Whenever you need to revise this topic again, you have your cards.
Using Flashcards
It’s one thing to make a nice pile of flashcards, but it’s another to actually use them. Here’s how I go about using them.
This whole process takes a matter of minutes, and is a highly effective way of revising. In theory, these cards only contain information you don’t know, so you’re not wasting time on the stuff you do know. The process above also means you’re not repeating cards you’ve already got right, so you can focus on the ones you find hard.
Do a bit every day, and the information will begin to move from your “Short Term Memory” to your “Long Term Memory”. The more you do it, the more it’ll stay there.
Returning to the Process
It may seem like a long process, but once you break it down it is by far the most efficient system I have seen. You will never wonder what you need to work on as your index will tell you. You will always have your notes in one place, but you haven’t spent half your life copying down unnecessary information. And you’ll know what past papers you’ve already done.
I hope this is useful to you. It has certainly served me very well through two degrees, and beyond!
Finally, the last bit of revision advice is the obvious (but necessary): sleep, drink water, sleep, eat well, relax and sleep.
Happy revising!
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Written by Issac F, a secondary school Physics teacher at a distinguished London Grammar School and experienced Civil Engineer (BEng University of Bath). Please contact info@bespoketuition.com to view his full profile and request his