Who has their General Studies AS/A2 on Monday?

Soldato
Joined
10 Apr 2004
Posts
13,496
I do, and I have nooo idea what to revise for it (if you can revise!?) and only a basic idea of what I should be doing. :(

Anyone have any tips for that A or any tips for it what so ever!?? :eek: :o

Oh and its compulsory for AS at my school, so I didn't do it by choice ;)

:)
 
It was compulsory at my school as well.

It depends on what exam you are doing but the best plan is to read up on the news (we were asked questions about the health service and our ideas to fix it).

Simple mathematical problems as well as simple biology (cell makup), physics (machines, energy equations I think).

The exams were pretty easy and it would be hard to fail. I wrote about how wales was rubbish in my exams (despite it having nothing to do with the questions), as it was my little rebellion, and got a B.
 
I did the General Studies AS last year, voluntarily (it wasn't compulsory).

Out of 3 modules I got 2 As and a U. I requested to have the U paper back to have a look at where I'd gone wrong and to both me and my teachers it looked like they'd been ridiculously harsh. Anyway, I retook that module and got an A. :confused: :p

But yeah, if you can express yourself reasonably well you'll do fine on the essay-style questions, and if you've got a decent enough level of maths then the stats questions should be reasonably straigh forward too.
 
Heh, it's forced upon us at AS too, but not one person in our 6th form is bothering with it.

Most didn't even turn up for the lessons :(

I was forced to take Critical Thinking too, good god :mad:
 
compulsory here too, but i knew that there was another exam which had to be taken providing you passed the first ones. So i failed it.

meaning, no exam on Monday :)
 
Got as GS exam n on Monday then the following Monday.

fen739 said:
I was forced to take Critical Thinking too, good god :mad:

I take that voluntarily. I don't see whats so bad about it, thought it'd be crap but it's actually quite good (and the skills I've learnt from it are all transferable to my other subjects).
 
Whats the point of making it compulsary when most Unis don't accept it? :confused:

In our school it wasn't compulsary so I and most people didn't do it. Of the people that did 75% never turned up to the lessons and just did the exam at the end. They invariably got A's and B's.
 
The guy responsible for admissions at Kings London told us it was a waste of time and under no circumstances to waste time doing it.

He was then given a harsh look from our head of 6th form because he hadn't realised we all had to do it. It was that moment we took to slacking.
 
I got 300/300 at AS General studies. :)

If it's anything like the papers I sat there will be a maths bit which is pretty straightforward (multi-choice) if you do A-Level maths or you did alright at GCSE maths. There will also be a 'science' section which just seemed to be a glorified comprehension exercise. The rest of the AS level will be a case of reading some articles then answering mini-essay questions on them. These questions tend to be of roughly equal length but you will have a couple of longer questions on each paper. Use evidence from the articles to back up your views but try and keep your argument balanced. Also try and do a mini conclusion for each question.
 
Forced to do it here as well as critical thinking. I didn't know that the school staff could be retarded enough to force students to do this crap when decent universitys don't even accept it, god knows how they got employed.
 
Only speculation mind you, but I recon the only reason it's a compulsory subject is that the more people that are enrolled in the course the more money the college/6th form school gets in regards to funding and whatnot. Regardless if the people actually attend the lessons or not ;)
 
Chiribo said:
Only speculation mind you, but I recon the only reason it's a compulsory subject is that the more people that are enrolled in the course the more money the college/6th form school gets in regards to funding and whatnot. Regardless if the people actually attend the lessons or not ;)

Our school is trying to milk everyone for all the money they've got!

£30 "Donation" expected at the start of the year = £32,490
Forced charity events = £20k+
£20 compulsary school trips = £2000 per year per trip

And they still don't get any better facilities, god knows what it's wasted on but we are still using AS biology+physics books from 2000 which are completley out of date and have mistakes in them and amd duron pc's which take ages compiling the most basic java programs. All the money is probably spent improving the staff room or something.
 
Last edited:
Xtrm2Matt said:
Got as GS exam n on Monday then the following Monday.



I take that voluntarily. I don't see whats so bad about it, thought it'd be crap but it's actually quite good (and the skills I've learnt from it are all transferable to my other subjects).

I agree, did critical thinking and enjoyed it, not too taxing to get an extra AS aswell.
 
Critical Thinking is the stupidest thing I have ever done. I do not need to follow an acronym to be be able to decide if evidence is worthy or not. Understanding the mark scheme is the hardest part!
 
They tried to make us do General Studies A level years ago. There was a 3 hour exam for it right before one of my Chemistry exams, so of course I didn't show up to it! There was no way i was going to waste 3hours of r&r time before an important exam. Quite a few other people had the same idea too.

The Head was furious about it, he actually said "who are you to pick and choose which exams you goto?". I couldn't help but think we were the only ones who could rightly make that decision!
 
Energize said:
Our school is trying to milk everyone for all the money they've got!

£30 "Donation" expected at the start of the year = £32,490
Forced charity events = £20k+
£20 compulsary school trips = £2000 per year per trip

And they still don't get any better facilities, god knows what it's wasted on but we are still using AS biology+physics books from 2000 which are completley out of data and have mistakes in them and amd duron pc's which take ages compiling the most basic java programs. All the money is probably spent improving the staff room or something.

We had "voluntary contributions" to, only about £10 per year but I decided as it was voluntary I wouldn't pay, hence me getting chased up for the rest of the year because I hadn't paid. How does that work? :confused: :p
 
Back
Top Bottom