How to get six hundred points in the Leaving Cert

robbiep94

RORY CREAN

Managing your time properly and drawing up a realistic timetable are key to making it through the year

I AM A FIRST-YEAR medical student in UCD and I got straight As in my Leaving Cert this year. I went to Blackrock College for most of my secondary schooling but moved to the Institute of Education for the exam year.

Unusually, I suppose, I remember the Leaving Cert year with fondness. Genuinely, very little was unenjoyable. I enjoyed the camaraderie of being in the same boat with all the other Institute students and my only gripe was with the HPAT, the entrance exam for medicine.

I suppose the HPAT, or rather the effects the HPAT had on the students, was the least enjoyable element.

Because the grading system is based purely on the performance of your peers, there was a sense of competition that only added unnecessary stress and complications to the school day.

I love “dad music” and drama. I sings in choirs and have performed solo in the NCH and played the lead in school productions.

I have a unique approach to study. I write short, personal descriptions of everything I learn, making small dramas and mini-epics out of everything from ionic bonding to French verbs.

It works me because you can only put something in your own words if you understand it first.

GOING UP

(to 600 points)

KEEPING YOUR SOCIAL LIFE

You stand absolutely nothing to gain by shutting yourself in a dark room with only a candle and a textbook for company.

You need to stay involved with your friends and your hobbies, it’s what weekends were made for!

STAYING ORGANISED

We’re nearly two months into school year, so most of you will have worked out a “system”. By this I mean a way of taking, making and filing notes. If you haven’t, it’s time you did.

MANAGING TIME

Sit down and devise a study timetable. The important thing is to be realistic. No one can go to school from 9am-4pm, and then study from 4pm till midnight. On the other hand, if you stick to the bare minimum, you’ll pay for it in the long run. How long you spend on each subject is up to you, but I would say that the earlier you start the better. The earlier you start, the sooner your day clears up for whatever else is going on.

STAYING ACTIVE

I’m not talking about four hours on the treadmill and raw egg shakes, but some kind of exercise (preferably in the fresh air) will help you a lot. I liked to cycle and play golf.

TESTING YOURSELF

Your teachers may not set you weekly, fortnightly or monthly tests, but that’s not to say you can’t set them for yourself. Constantly checking how you’re faring on a topic and knowing what areas need attention is one of the best tools at your disposal.

EATING WELL

A Dairy Milk and Coke isn’t going to last you, instead you’re going to have a massive sugar crash and the rest of the school day is a write-off. Try and keep a well-balanced diet with plenty of fresh fruit and lots of water.

ME-TIME

This is probably my favourite on the Going Up list because lots of people just ignore it completely. I would not, under any circumstances, work after 10pm. Never.

SLEEPING

Eight hours minimum each night.

TALKING CONSTRUCTIVELY ABOUT THE LEAVING CERT

My friends and I tried to ban the subject and failed. So we changed the tone of conversation. For example, we talked about interesting history topics or what we were including in our geography fieldwork. We avoided panicky clichés like “I really should be studying right now” or “only three weeks left”!

GOING DOWN

(to points meltdown)

PARTYING ALL NIGHT

Most of you are approaching, if you haven’t already crossed, the 18-year mark. This means nights out are going to be more frequent; 18ths, 19ths, pre-debs and many, many more parties dotting your social calendar. The key is to take everything in moderation. Going out two nights of the weekend is going to make the mornings a write-off.

FORGETTING ABOUT THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE

If you’re having a crummy day, doing badly in a subject, or just cranky from too little sleep, don’t take it out on the people around you because – believe it or not – they might have had a rough day too. Treat them nice because you’ll need them in May.

SCRAPING BY

The best work I did was in the first three months. Once I settled in, I started to ease off on the study, which was a huge mistake. Thankfully, the consistent work I had put in early on paid off in the end. That’s why it’s important to stay on top of things from the get-go.

PULLING ALL-NIGHTERS

If you push yourself too hard, drink too many cans of Red Bull, or try to cram in 200 pages of biology in an hour, you are going to fry your brain.

PROCRASTINATING

Facebook. If you study with your laptop like I did, you’ll often find that with just three mouse-clicks, you can get to that blue-bannered time sink. You don’t have to get rid of your Facebook account, but keep it for your hour or two off, not when you’re in the middle of a concept that hasn’t clicked yet.

LOSING FOCUS

Some of us know exactly where we’ll be in 10 years, some don’t know about the next five minutes. Set yourself a target like attaining X hundred points, getting into course Y or just going to college Z next year.

TOUCHY SUBJECTS

Did I choose wisely?

For the last year, I chose the risky tactic of doing eight subjects, only six of which were at higher level. Those eight were the mandatory trinity (English, Irish and maths), physics, chemistry, French, geography and music.

Of those, I took Irish and maths at ordinary level, both of which I took at higher level during 5th year. The reason I decided to drop was for the functional reason that the work required to bring my grades in both Irish and Maths up to the standard of the other six was too much.

When you break it down, you will have spent hundreds of hours on each subject by the time you get to exam day. Having pass Irish and maths freed up a lot of time, particularly on my weekends, to focus on my core subjects. This meant that every hour I would have spent on maths or Irish to bump up from, say, a B3 to a B1, I could instead focus on a subject where I could move from an A2 to an A1.

For most of 6th year, I had a few niggling doubts about my subject choice. Should I have done history? Could I have handled higher maths? However, at the end of the exams I could look back and say I made the right choice. If you haven’t already finalised your subjects, you will soon. Try and make that decision final and focus on your choices, rather than worrying about things that won’t affect you in the exams.

MY SECRET TO STUDY SUCCESS . . .


Putting difficult concepts into my own words. This way I had to understand them, and I was better able to remember them. When I was writing out topics in class, I would write in shorthand, or in ambiguous terms because the topic was so fresh in my mind. But as soon as one week later, I could have completely forgotten the intricacies of the topic and my notes might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics.

In sixth year, I changed my approach. I imagined I was explaining a topic to someone who had no grasp of it.

Here’s an example: Ionic bonding is defined as the electrical attraction between the oppositely charged ions which are produced when electrons are transferred from one atom to another. This occurs when there is an electronegativity difference between the two elements involved in the bond that is greater than 1.7. One atom is literally so strong that it takes the electron completely from another atom to form the aforementioned ionic bond.

Consider a bully and a nerd in a playground. The bully is chlorine, who has a very high value for electronegativity and lots of electrons. His value for electronegativity is his strength, and his electrons are the money he has.

The nerd, comparatively, has a very low electronegativity (strength) ie he is weak and he has only a few electrons (change in his pockets). The bully (chlorine) doesn’t care though, and because he is so much stronger (electronegativity difference greater than 1.7), he takes the nerd’s money (electrons).

0mega

Could you remove all the effects from the text? It's making my eyes bleed.

robbiep94

0mega wrote: »

Could you remove all the effects from the text? It's making my eyes bleed.

No problem anything else... a cup of tea!!!haha:D

bpb101

Sure way to get 600 points in the leaving cert

Answer all the questions correctly

robbiep94

bpb101 wrote: »

Sure way to get 600 points in the leaving cert

Answer all the questions correctly

Thanks for that.... nobody would have thought of it:rolleyes:

Just Like Heaven

bpb101 wrote: »

Sure way to get 600 points in the leaving cert

Answer all the questions correctly

omg lol :cool:

robbiep94

Has anyone read it?

Just Like Heaven

Yes yes I read it. There was nothing new there I hadn't read before though.

It's very difficult to take these seriously when they begin "For my exam year, I went to the institute".

robbiep94

fewtinsoffroth wrote: »

Yes yes I read it. There was nothing new there I hadn't read before though.

It's very difficult to take these seriously when they begin "For my exam year, I went to the institute".

Ya i hear you... he does have a few good points but i guess he doesnt no anything more than you are me...I guess he just prepared better then us and took the year seriously!!!

SeanMadd

Does every institute student get 600 points?! I often see them on those studying tips/skills newspapers that come out in late August

xclw

SeanMadd wrote: »

Does every institute student get 600 points?! I often see them on those studying tips/skills newspapers that come out in late August

no some get 590.

no but really they don't, the odd few do you just hear about it, but no more do than those in most other schools around the country, everyone had different abilities. a1s aren't easy to get

Slow Show

Different strokes for different folks and all that, that method of studying would never ever work for me...

spurious

SeanMadd wrote: »

Does every institute student get 600 points?! I often see them on those studying tips/skills newspapers that come out in late August

Of course they don't. Plenty get a lot less, but that doesn't get bums in desks which is the point of the business.

Superbus

"I sings in choirs"

"It works me"


Hmmm.

SeanMadd

I didn't actually think every institute student got 600 points, just that they're usually the ones you see on the newspapers. I should've put an emoticon!

partyatmygaff

SeanMadd wrote: »

Does every institute student get 600 points?! I often see them on those studying tips/skills newspapers that come out in late August

No, it's just that the IOE parade them around for marketing reasons.



To be honest, the OP is nonsense. It sounds like a badly written article you'd find in a newspaper or a clichéd LC English essay. I don't doubt they got 600 points but I don't see the relevance or utility of 90% of what's written there. It's not concise, goes off on a million different tangents and fails to get some very important points across. No offense but it's the kind of thing i'd expect to find in a tabloid.

To be very blunt, getting an A1 in a subject (Multiply by 6 for 600 points) needs either hard work or talent or preferably both:

Take my experience for example. It's best to advise through example.

English:
Many will be surprised to hear that I did not sit down and systematically memorise reams of quotes for P2. Many more will be surprised I actually wrote the compositions for P1 on-the-fly. What I did can be found in this post and the post that follows it. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=73890383&postcount=2

It's quite long but I hope you all find it helpful.

Irish:
You're asking the wrong person for advice on Irish study ... Moving swiftly along.

French:
There is no way around it. You absolutely must be reasonably competent with the language in all aspects. There's no real way of improving barring practice. A good way I found to improve my French was to force myself to think in French and listen to French radio (Google "France Inter Live") as well read the odd French news article or forum. Speaking French regularly is good practice for the oral exam.

As for improving your exam performance (A whole other ball game as the marking scheme can be quite particular) you need to practice exam papers at least weekly. Write essays and hand them in to your teacher to correct, take on any feedback and write more and repeat until the year is over. Complete reading and listening comprehensions and mark them using the marking scheme taking care to be as harsh as possible with your marking. Assume the examiner will be strict and be glad when they're lenient.

Maths:
The only real way to do well in Maths is to understand it. Simply knowing how to read a question and go through the motions to get an answer is not enough for a high grade. You need to think logically and clearly throughout the exam.

What I'd recommend when studying Maths would be to first understand the theory that's often left unexplained in classes and then practice exam papers. Good sites to use would be http://www.intmath.com or the Khan Academy (Google).

Business:
I'm not quite sure if i'm the best person to give advice for business. I did remarkably well in the only two tests I ever sat (The Mock and the LC itself) and admittedly did hardly any work to earn them.

Here's my story with Business. I realised in September of 6th Year that I had two weak subjects out of my seven. One was Irish which had never been strong for me. The other was Maths which was a mixed bag and quite unreliable. I needed an eighth subject. Seeing as how I got an A in JC Business with no difficulty I chose Business.

In Mid-November (The week before my Christmas exams) I bought a textbook called Business Today. I read snippets of the book whenever I had time (Irregularly and very infrequently) until after the Christmas holidays had ended. Around this time last year I realised I had Mock exams coming up in a month for a subject that I had never had a class in, didn't have a teacher for and whose exam paper I hadn't spared more than a passing glance.

Between January and mid-February I read the entire book twice from cover to cover. I'd read 3-4 chapters at a time whenever I had some free time. Nothing at all too intensive. The night before the Mocks I got the DEB and Examcraft exam papers and prepared notes on all of the questions on the paper for a gruelling but very helpful eight hours.

Lo and behold, the next day the Mock exam was neither DEB nor Examcraft but some completely new company that i'd had never heard of. I panicked a bit during the exam (Bear in mind I had never sat a test in LC Business before) but managed to write sixteen pages in the three hours we had. All I remembered from JC Business exam technique was "State, Explain, Example". That was the mantra running through my head for the entire exam. I finished at the very last second and from the first short question to the last long question I made sure that every 5 marks being awarded got a point, an explanation and an example.

To my shock (And the shock and dismay of my school's business teachers and actual students ) I got 94% and an A1. The top grade in the school. I know i've went on quite a bit but it's something i'm quite proud of and I do like retelling the story Anyway, what i'm really trying to get across for LC Business is to do well you need to have a great command of English, to realise that the marking scheme usually awards five marks per point and that every point you make should be stated, explained and exemplified through a relevant example.

Biology:
I will preamble this post by saying I found Biology trivially simple throughout fifth and sixth year. It was always a simple case of reading the textbook and memorising the knowledge and the diagrams. Essentially, what I did was go to class, pay rapt attention, do the work requested of me and study a night or two before major exams. Others may need to do more work than that to assimilate the knowledge, particularly so if they aren't really interested in what's being taught (Plant biology for example took up the bulk of the limited time I spent revising Biology).

That said, a bit of good exam technique and study does not go amiss. Last year, the exam changed from the usual pattern. Knowing Section 1 and Section 2 is essential to doing well in Biology but people often neglect Section 3. People who followed the rule of thumb that "80% of the LC Biology Exam comes from Section 1 and 2" were the ones who were most affected by the unusual exam. There are no shortcuts in LC Biology. You need to know everything included in your textbook. From minute, almost irrelevant details like the names of certain biologists to the process by which protein is synthesised.

Chemistry:
Chemistry is a short course but in no way can it be considered easy. I personally never dropped below an A1 from fifth year through sixth year (Barring a B in my first ever class test ). This was partly due to my teacher being excellent and me paying my utmost attention in class and due to me regularly (About twice a month) revising chapters covered in fifth year to make sure I remembered the detail surrounding the experiments, the definitions and important concepts.

Engineering:
I found the theory trivially easy. It's simply a case of doing the last five exam papers and reading the slide (Usually produced by UL) on the special topic. The questions don't change significantly in style or content from year to year.

The main difficulty with Engineering lies in the project and practical exam. When it comes to the project, it is absolutely essential that you finish your portfolio (Up to production drawings) well before you start making your project. A good piece will not offset a terrible portfolio or non-existent drawings. Make sure your portfolio is well-presented, organised and produced entirely through a computer if possible. If you don't know how to use Solidworks learn how. I learned Solidworks from scratch (Youtube tutorials), had an initial design and completed about 40% of my portfolio over the October mid term. By the end of the year I had already started producing the major parts of my piece. Ideally, you should be finished working on your project by late February (Work like mad on the project before the Mocks so you don't run out of time. Ignore the theory mock exam if you must.). In the last week or two you should spend your classes polishing your piece and making it look as professional as possible.

**Timbuk2**

partyatmygaff wrote: »

To be honest, the OP is nonsense. It sounds like a badly written article you'd find in a newspaper or a clichéd LC English essay. I don't doubt they got 600 points but I don't see the relevance or utility of 90% of what's written there. It's not concise, goes off on a million different tangents and fails to get some very important points across. No offense but it's the kind of thing i'd expect to find in a tabloid.

You wouldn't be too wrong there!
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/education/2011/1025/1224306433840.html

jumpguy

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

You wouldn't be too wrong there!
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/education/2011/1025/1224306433840.html

Irish Times...just about tbf! :P

I remember reading this when it was in the paper and just rolling my eyes. It's the same thing every year. I used none of these (somewhat off-the-wall) study techniques, they'd have never worked for me... The closest I got was pretending the oral was a play and I was learning lines. Just a money-making racket for the benefit of the Institute and the Times which are most likely in cahoots with this article. Most of the advice is common sense that if you don't get yourself, you're probably not gonna get 600...

Manic2

I realise it's a lot to ask since everyone's so busy these days, but if anyone could, can they PM me or just tell me on this, all the need-to-know things in regards to get a D3 in pass french?
I'm doing it alone outside school.

All I want to know really is what is the minimal amount I should know for the oral, and what topics should I learn, and what I should know for the written/aural exams also.

I don't need specific phrases, just an area that needs to be known, and I'll do the rest myself.

Starting to panic like a mawfuka. :P

Please and thank you.

Also, I understand if no one replies.

bpb101

robbiep94 wrote: »

Thanks for that.... nobody would have thought of it:rolleyes:

np anytime

David1994

How do you view the spoilers? :P Soz its off topic

Togepi

David1994 wrote: »

How do you view the spoilers? :P Soz its off topic

Click on them.

You're in for a treat with the one on this thread, it'll guarantee you 600 points. :P

David1994

Togepi wrote: »

Click on them.

You're in for a treat with the one on this thread, it'll guarantee you 600 points. :P

Thanks

dambarude

Study what's in the syllabus, not what's in the exam papers.

The times, they are a changing, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 2012 papers took a very large step away from predicted/repeated/very straightforward questions. It's quite obvious across lots of papers over the last few years that they are slowly ditching the exam question patterns and styles that had dominated from 2000 - 2008.

If you study only past exam papers and trends you're quite likely to get caught out at least once.

irish_man

That guy was in my school last year and it's safe to say he did feck all but study. Every morning he was in at 8 to study, went to class and went back to study after school. He didn't leave till 9. He had a big French accent as well, the type you only get if you go to France during the summer.

Funny he was talking about a social life, I tried talking to him one day and there was, honestly, more personality in a brick wall. The only people I ever saw him talking to were teachers. I just find it so stupid when people like this come out and say such hypocritical sh*te. Why bother?

hollingr

With the new extra points for maths I think it's worth mentioning how to get an A1 in Maths, on which I think you're missing some really key points. Things have changed a bit since my time with project maths coming in, but the song remains the same for the most part.

For subjects like maths its not just all about what you do in 6th year. There is no way you're going to go from scraping by in honours maths to an a1 in a year without sacrificing other subjects, by just following good lifestyle and study regimes. There is so much work involved with maths over any other subject. It's all about building from the foundations of the course, from as early as 1st and 2nd year in school. For each year that goes by where you are not already performing at A standard, it becomes harder and harder to do so. Having a very good clear understanding of the important concepts does help but speed is just as important.

To get an A1 you need to be able to absolutely fly through the easy questions so you have time to do the hard ones which you haven't really seen before in that exact form. You should have time to do at least one extra question on each paper.

The people who get A1's in maths along with other subjects have been working consistently throughout their school life and have been getting good grades all along. I have worked as a maths teacher and I also got an A1 in the subject, and I can tell you that surprises are few and far between when it comes to students maths grades.

rc_93

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/education/2012/0117/1224310351178.html

K896

I know you released a Kindle book about how to exceed your expectations og=f the Leaving Cert. Is there any way I can get it in paper book format?