How to score 10A* in IGCSE (Part I)
Hey! Jie Fei here, so recently I had completed my IGCSE examination in the May/June intake.
A little back story to this: I used to be in Wesley Methodist School Kuala Lumpur and left early in 2016 (January) to do homeschooling for about five months prior to the exam. In short, this journey has been a massive challenge and adventure for me as I have learned so much, not just through my preparation for the exams, but also through homeschooling.
Anyway, I would love to share with you my tips on getting 10A* in IGCSE (part I)
1. Prepare early
Here's something you may or may not know: students are allowed to sit for the IGCSEs in more than one intake. What this means is that the 10 subjects you study can be taken over a span of two years, which is a serious advantage, as the papers are more spread out. Unlike SPM, where all papers are taken in one intake only.
FYI, there are two intakes per year for IGCSE: May/June and October/November.
This is a common practice amongst students, but not everyone necessarily know about it. IGCSE is still relatively new in many schools and it is important to be aware of your options.
I actually sat for 8 subjects (20 papers) in the May/June intake and it ain't all that great sunshine.
It is WAY less pressurising to sit for 2 or 3 subjects a year than lump it all in one intake. It increases your chance of getting A* by a leap because you can dedicate more time to individual subjects rather than slaving away to ensure equal attention is given to all 10 subjects.
My advice: If you are 15, you should aim to sit for the easier subjects (yes there are easier ones) this year. Then, when you are 16 and 17, you should sit for the remaining papers.
2. Take 10 subjects
I didn't take 10 subjects for my IGCSEs, and I can say that was a MAJOR screw up.
Why?
See, when my school started this IGCSE thing, we were told that that the minimum number of subjects required is 6, maximum 8. Of course, later on, this rule was rectified and many of my friends took up to 10 subjects.
Is that enough?
Well, it depends on what your end goal is for IGCSE. If you plan on using your IGCSE results to apply for college, then 6 would suffice, and make sure that your IGCSE subjects tally with the A level subjects you are planning to take. For instance, if you do not take up pure science in IGCSE, it would be difficult to apply to study A Level Biology in college.
If you are a high achiever and plan on applying for an A Level scholarship, take my word on this: They want 10A*s, MINIMUM. I would know because Jesus, I tried to apply for so many but got rejected because I didn't take up enough subjects. 10A*s is a prerequisite for obtaining a 100% scholarship for A levels. Not 8A*, not 9A*, 10.
The world out there is crazy y'all.
3. Choose your subjects wisely
Here's the thing: There ARE easier subjects in IGCSE. For instance, the "foreign language" subjects, e.g: Foreign Language Malay, Foreign Language Chinese, Spanish etc are FREAKING EASY. If you want to clarify this fact, feel free to check out the CIE official website with the link here and take a look at the past year papers for languages you know.
Honestly, it's a definite A*, and I would highly recommend you to take foreign language papers over first language papers. This is because in all honesty, no one (referring to college and institutions alike) gives a crap about the level of difficulty of the subjects you take, they really care only about the number of A*s you score when it comes to college applications (or even scholarship applications).
Is it unfair? I mean, student A who scores A in first language chinese would be considered inferior to student B who scores A* in foreign language chinese. Yeah, it is. But hey, use this to your advantage.
Another tip for choosing subjects is this: Choose subjects that are closely related. If you take Mathematics, you are encouraged to take Additional Mathematics. (Add maths is difficult, but is crucial if you are planning to take mathematics in A levels). If you are taking Economics, take up business studies as well. If you are taking English, you might as well take up English literature too. Try not to take 10 subjects that are bizarrely unrelated because you may struggle to juggle them.
4. Read the syllabus beforehand
You may dismiss reading the syllabus as unimportant and decide to jump straight into the textbook. But for me, how I wish I had read the syllabus before actually starting to learn the stuff.
You see, there are tons of IGCSE textbooks out there by various publications, Oxford, Cambridge, Hodders Education, Nelson Thornes etc. There are really TOO MANY IGCSE textbooks out there in the market.
What I did wrongly was to blindly read my book without actually reading the syllabus on the CIE website, so I was always confused as to what I was supposed to understand.
If you are currently doing IGCSE, you would understand what I mean. Some of the textbooks are full of crap that you don't even need to know, it's like a huge ass storybook where you need to claw through the weeds to find the moral values.
My advice is that when you start the first chapter of any subject, read the syllabus on the CIE website for the first chapter too, so that you know exactly what you are supposed to understand after reading that first chapter. Contrary to popular belief, the IGCSE syllabus is very concise and precise. Take a look at the picture below.
They tell you exactly what you need to know for the exam. They literally spelled it out for you.
The consequences of not reading the syllabus: For me, during my school examinations last year, I often opened the paper and just...blanked out. My brain literally screamed WTF, because I actually had no clue as to what I was supposed to do. There were so many alien looking questions, and there were times where I paused and thought to myself: I didn't even learn that?!?!
Yup, fun times.
Also, I had a really shitty textbook, which brings us to my next tip.
5. Buy the correct textbooks
You may think that all textbooks are relatively the same, because they're all endorsed by CIE. What you DON'T know is that some textbooks do not have most of the information you need for your exams and instead, have a lot of unneeded stories and crap that confuse the hell out of you.
A classic example of such a textbook is by the publisher Hodders Education . Seriously, I am going to state my opinion here because I am entitled to voice out my thoughts due to freedom of speech.
Hodders Education is the worst publisher in the history of publishers.
I would know because my school textbooks were all published by Hodders and around mid last year, I just chucked them away and bought my own textbooks to study at home.
The textbooks I used are published by Nelson Thornes. Look, I'm not here to promote or bash up any party, but my biology, chemistry and physics textbooks by Nelson Thornes were SO much better than my old ones by Hodders. Mainly because my new textbooks were straight to the point and were concise and precise.
Of course, I'm not here to dictate which publisher you should trust, because there are so many publishers out there which are equally good.
I'm just saying don't trust Hodders for science textbooks, because I had no idea if I was reading a science textbook or a goddamn novel about genetic engineering.
Always do a bit of research about the reviews for the textbooks you are about to buy, because IGCSE textbooks are notoriously expensive and it would suck to pay so much for so little.
^^ I'm going to stop here for now. I will be back soon with Part II if you're interested to know more. If you're not....I'm going to do it anyway HAHA because how I wish someone had told me all these things when I was back in school.
Love you guys and do check out my blogs!
XOXO
Jie Fei
A little back story to this: I used to be in Wesley Methodist School Kuala Lumpur and left early in 2016 (January) to do homeschooling for about five months prior to the exam. In short, this journey has been a massive challenge and adventure for me as I have learned so much, not just through my preparation for the exams, but also through homeschooling.
Anyway, I would love to share with you my tips on getting 10A* in IGCSE (part I)
1. Prepare early
Here's something you may or may not know: students are allowed to sit for the IGCSEs in more than one intake. What this means is that the 10 subjects you study can be taken over a span of two years, which is a serious advantage, as the papers are more spread out. Unlike SPM, where all papers are taken in one intake only.
FYI, there are two intakes per year for IGCSE: May/June and October/November.
This is a common practice amongst students, but not everyone necessarily know about it. IGCSE is still relatively new in many schools and it is important to be aware of your options.
I actually sat for 8 subjects (20 papers) in the May/June intake and it ain't all that great sunshine.
It is WAY less pressurising to sit for 2 or 3 subjects a year than lump it all in one intake. It increases your chance of getting A* by a leap because you can dedicate more time to individual subjects rather than slaving away to ensure equal attention is given to all 10 subjects.
My advice: If you are 15, you should aim to sit for the easier subjects (yes there are easier ones) this year. Then, when you are 16 and 17, you should sit for the remaining papers.
2. Take 10 subjects
I didn't take 10 subjects for my IGCSEs, and I can say that was a MAJOR screw up.
Why?
See, when my school started this IGCSE thing, we were told that that the minimum number of subjects required is 6, maximum 8. Of course, later on, this rule was rectified and many of my friends took up to 10 subjects.
Is that enough?
Well, it depends on what your end goal is for IGCSE. If you plan on using your IGCSE results to apply for college, then 6 would suffice, and make sure that your IGCSE subjects tally with the A level subjects you are planning to take. For instance, if you do not take up pure science in IGCSE, it would be difficult to apply to study A Level Biology in college.
If you are a high achiever and plan on applying for an A Level scholarship, take my word on this: They want 10A*s, MINIMUM. I would know because Jesus, I tried to apply for so many but got rejected because I didn't take up enough subjects. 10A*s is a prerequisite for obtaining a 100% scholarship for A levels. Not 8A*, not 9A*, 10.
The world out there is crazy y'all.
3. Choose your subjects wisely
Here's the thing: There ARE easier subjects in IGCSE. For instance, the "foreign language" subjects, e.g: Foreign Language Malay, Foreign Language Chinese, Spanish etc are FREAKING EASY. If you want to clarify this fact, feel free to check out the CIE official website with the link here and take a look at the past year papers for languages you know.
Honestly, it's a definite A*, and I would highly recommend you to take foreign language papers over first language papers. This is because in all honesty, no one (referring to college and institutions alike) gives a crap about the level of difficulty of the subjects you take, they really care only about the number of A*s you score when it comes to college applications (or even scholarship applications).
Is it unfair? I mean, student A who scores A in first language chinese would be considered inferior to student B who scores A* in foreign language chinese. Yeah, it is. But hey, use this to your advantage.
Another tip for choosing subjects is this: Choose subjects that are closely related. If you take Mathematics, you are encouraged to take Additional Mathematics. (Add maths is difficult, but is crucial if you are planning to take mathematics in A levels). If you are taking Economics, take up business studies as well. If you are taking English, you might as well take up English literature too. Try not to take 10 subjects that are bizarrely unrelated because you may struggle to juggle them.
4. Read the syllabus beforehand
You may dismiss reading the syllabus as unimportant and decide to jump straight into the textbook. But for me, how I wish I had read the syllabus before actually starting to learn the stuff.
You see, there are tons of IGCSE textbooks out there by various publications, Oxford, Cambridge, Hodders Education, Nelson Thornes etc. There are really TOO MANY IGCSE textbooks out there in the market.
What I did wrongly was to blindly read my book without actually reading the syllabus on the CIE website, so I was always confused as to what I was supposed to understand.
If you are currently doing IGCSE, you would understand what I mean. Some of the textbooks are full of crap that you don't even need to know, it's like a huge ass storybook where you need to claw through the weeds to find the moral values.
My advice is that when you start the first chapter of any subject, read the syllabus on the CIE website for the first chapter too, so that you know exactly what you are supposed to understand after reading that first chapter. Contrary to popular belief, the IGCSE syllabus is very concise and precise. Take a look at the picture below.
They tell you exactly what you need to know for the exam. They literally spelled it out for you.
The consequences of not reading the syllabus: For me, during my school examinations last year, I often opened the paper and just...blanked out. My brain literally screamed WTF, because I actually had no clue as to what I was supposed to do. There were so many alien looking questions, and there were times where I paused and thought to myself: I didn't even learn that?!?!
Yup, fun times.
Also, I had a really shitty textbook, which brings us to my next tip.
5. Buy the correct textbooks
You may think that all textbooks are relatively the same, because they're all endorsed by CIE. What you DON'T know is that some textbooks do not have most of the information you need for your exams and instead, have a lot of unneeded stories and crap that confuse the hell out of you.
A classic example of such a textbook is by the publisher Hodders Education . Seriously, I am going to state my opinion here because I am entitled to voice out my thoughts due to freedom of speech.
Hodders Education is the worst publisher in the history of publishers.
I would know because my school textbooks were all published by Hodders and around mid last year, I just chucked them away and bought my own textbooks to study at home.
The textbooks I used are published by Nelson Thornes. Look, I'm not here to promote or bash up any party, but my biology, chemistry and physics textbooks by Nelson Thornes were SO much better than my old ones by Hodders. Mainly because my new textbooks were straight to the point and were concise and precise.
Of course, I'm not here to dictate which publisher you should trust, because there are so many publishers out there which are equally good.
I'm just saying don't trust Hodders for science textbooks, because I had no idea if I was reading a science textbook or a goddamn novel about genetic engineering.
Always do a bit of research about the reviews for the textbooks you are about to buy, because IGCSE textbooks are notoriously expensive and it would suck to pay so much for so little.
^^ I'm going to stop here for now. I will be back soon with Part II if you're interested to know more. If you're not....I'm going to do it anyway HAHA because how I wish someone had told me all these things when I was back in school.
Love you guys and do check out my blogs!
XOXO
Jie Fei
Check out the entire series:
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