Acing A-level Chemistry: strategies to earn an A

A Level chemistry is a prerequisite for many university degree courses and professions. It has a reputation for being a hard course, which would make achieving a grade A hard too. In this article, we will discuss whether chemistry really is a hard A Level as well as talking about possible ways to, hopefully, earn an A. So, let's see if we can ace chemistry together.

How Hard is it to Get an A in Chemistry A Level?

Statistics from the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) for the 2019, 2022 and 2023 exams show the percentage of all students achieving a grade A in A Level chemistry were:

• 2019 – 29.1%

• 2022 – 39.4%

• 2023 – 32.2%

So, roughly one third of all students achieved an A.

For more information about whether A Level chemistry is hard, read this Save My Exams article.

According to publicly available data from some of the main exam boards, students who achieved an A got an average of 67.4 % of all the available marks. The percentages for specific A Level chemistry courses are shown in the table:

If these statistics make you think you can afford to get about a third of your answers wrong, then think again. You need to ensure you gain as many marks as possible in all of your exam papers in order to get a grade A. This will take dedication, organisation and preparation.

Nine Tips to Help You Score an A in A Level Chemistry

1. Understand the A Level chemistry curriculum

Your exam board’s specification contains everything you need to know for your course. Every specification has slight differences in layout, titles/headings and wording. 

For example, to find the content summary:

• AQA use “Specification at a glance”

• Edexcel use “Qualification at a glance” 

• OCR use “The specification overview”

• AQA and WJEC use “Subject content”

AQA and Edexcel use the word “topic”, OCR use “module” and WJEC use “area of study” to mean the same thing – topic.

You can use the contents page of your specification to create a topic list. This will give you a checklist of topics for you to RAG rate. For example:

• Red for topics you are less familiar with or confident in

• Amber for topics you feel you know, but could do with more work

• Green for topics you know really well and are confident about

Remember to go back to your specification to check the detailed content for each topic.

In my experience as a teacher, tutor and examiner, regardless of the exam board, students tend to struggle most with the following topics:

• Chemistry calculations

• Hess / Born–Haber cycles

• Organic mechanisms

• NMR spectroscopy

• Equilibria

• Electrochemistry and redox

• Transition metals

There is always a temptation to revise the topics you already know well, and put off revising the ones you need to work on the most. However, if you want to maximise your marks, you should focus on your red topics first, then amber and then green. Your aim is to feel as confident as possible in all topics going into the exam.

Remember that our revision notes at Save My Exams are written specifically for each exam board and specification. So, you can tick off the notes you’ve covered, and untick those that you need to revisit. You can find our A Level chemistry content for different exam boards below:

• AQA A Level Chemistry

• Cambridge (CIE) International A Level Chemistry

• Edexcel A Level Chemistry

• Edexcel International A Level Chemistry

• OCR A Level Chemistry

On our website, the navigation panel at the side ticks areas that you’ve covered, but you can untick any that you want to revisit.

2. Create a strategic study plan

It is important to plan your time effectively and not leave revision until the last minute. Last-minute revision is less effective and adds unnecessary pressure. For ideas about organising your time, read our article on Time Management For Students.

• Create your own revision timetable by printing a calendar. (Don’t use the one on your phone, or device, as this can lead to distractions.) 

• Add important dates such as birthdays, your team’s matches, any shows that you are in, etc – these can be revision breaks. 

• Add manageable chunks of time for different subjects, topics and, importantly, breaks.

The chunks of time that you set for each revision session must be realistic and have clear goals and objectives. For example, in the transition metals topic, depending on the exam board, you could be trying to learn:

• Definitions and properties

• Electron configurations of atoms and ions

• d-orbital splitting

• Shapes and bond angles

• Colours, physical states and formulae of the complexes formed by metal ions and ligands 

• Ligand substitution equations, potentially for up to 30 different complexes

This is an unrealistic amount of revision to complete in one 30-minute revision session. 

However, each exam specification breaks transition metals down:

• AQA A Level Chemistry – 7 subtopics

• Cambridge (CIE) International A Level Chemistry – 5 subtopics

• Edexcel A Level Chemistry – 35 statements

• Edexcel International A Level Chemistry – 33 statements

• OCR A Level Chemistry – 12 statements

Careful use of the exam specification can further break subtopics or combine statements into more manageable chunks.

So, an example of a manageable chunk for transition metals could be:

When you first start revising a topic, it can also help to create your own resources for that topic. This should make your revision more effective as you have resources to improve your understanding from red to amber to green.

Another tip is to have a separate sheet/pad of paper, where you list anything you have found challenging or got wrong. Revisiting this should help you reduce the list and improve your knowledge and understanding of certain topics.

3. Use effective study techniques

Three common mistakes that I have seen many students make when revising are:

• Copying notes out / colour-coding different sections

  At the end of it, students have a pretty page that often contains the exact same information as the page they used to make their revision note. 
  

• Just “reading” revision notes

  If you know it, this is wasting your revision time. If you don’t know it, then simply reading about it may not help – you need practice.
  

• Revising work they know

  This gives you a false sense of accomplishment and since you already know the work, your exam performance won’t dramatically improve. You need to focus more revision time on your red areas of weakness.

Studies have shown that re-reading, highlighting and summarising revision notes are not effective revision techniques. This is because they are passive techniques and do not help you consolidate your learning. You need to use active revision techniques.

The University of Sussex suggests the following active revision techniques:

• Flashcards

• Rhymes, stories and mnemonics

• Sticky notes

• Practice questions (see Tip 5)

• Study groups (see Tip 6)

• Mind maps and other notes

Flashcards 

These can be amazing but they are not suitable for all topics. Suitable areas in A Level chemistry include:

• Chemical analysis 

  • Front – the chemical test; reverse – the result 

• Transition metals

  • Front – formula of the complex; reverse – facts about the complex

• Born-Haber cycles / Thermodynamics 

  • Front – a term; reverse – the definition

I have seen students improve greatly using flashcards forwards and backwards. Traditionally, you read the question, check your answer and give yourself a pat on the back if you got it correct. But, you can also read the answer and try to deduce the question. This requires a higher level of thinking, which can challenge you and really help you remember the topic. 

You can also add notes to your flashcards as you work through questions and past papers. For example, you might see that a mark scheme will not accept red for the colour of bromine, so you could add this to the relevant flashcard.

Rhymes, stories and mnemonics 

These are probably less useful in A Level chemistry. However, you may remember the mnemonic below from your GCSE/IGCSE studies that helps with the reactivity series of metals:

Sticky notes

These are a helpful way to summarise information and remember key details. You can colour code your sticky notes into topics. If you stick them around your room/house:

• Move them around as this stops them locking into one part of your brain

• Gather them together near the exam and use them to build your red/amber list of topic and ideas that you struggle with

Mind maps and other notes

Mind maps are a way to summarise a topic and organise your thoughts. This technique is ideal for identifying connections within and between topics. Using colours, images and diagrams can improve your mind maps but there is a risk that this can become a passive technique as you transfer your notes from written notes into a mind map.

For more information about these and other revision techniques, read the Save My Exams article on Best Revision Techniques For GCSE and A Level Exams.

4. Enhance problem-solving skills

At least 20 % of the marks in A Level chemistry exams are for calculations. The range of calculations can be easily found for each exam board by opening the specification online, hitting CTRL+F (find) and searching for “calculate”.

Calculations in A Level chemistry frequently use or build upon your knowledge of GCSE/IGCSE chemistry calculations. The complexity of the calculation is often indicated by the number of marks:

• 1 mark – a relatively simple calculation

  • Examples include relative molecular/formula mass and deduce questions from a 1:1 stoichiometric relationship

• 2 marks – a standard calculation

  • Examples include calculating moles from concentration and volume, reacting masses and percentage calculations

• 3 marks – a slightly more involved calculation

  • Examples include titrations and orders of reaction

• 4 or more marks – a complex calculation 

  • Examples include buffers, Arrhenius and equilibrium constant calculations

One of the best techniques to improve your calculations is to get two or three very similar questions and look at the mark schemes. You should see a pattern in the mark schemes and can use this to create your own step-by-step guides on how to answer each question. 

Add extra notes to your guides when you find a question that comes at the calculation from a different angle. For example, a standard question may give mass and abundance data and ask you to calculate the relative isotopic mass. A similar question that comes from a different angle could give you the relative isotopic mass along with incomplete mass and abundance data and ask you to calculate the missing piece of mass or abundance data.

The final thing that will improve your calculations is simply practice, practice and more practice.

As previously mentioned, common challenging topics include:

• Hess / Born–Haber cycles

• Organic mechanisms

• NMR spectroscopy

• Equilibria

• Electrochemistry and redox

• Transition metals

One of the best strategies for questions on these topics, particularly if they feature among your red topics, is:

• Try two or three questions before revising

• Compile a list of your mistakes 

• Do some targeted revision on the relevant topic - you can use your list to help guide your revision

• This step may seem strange, but leave the topic for a day or two and give yourself time to forget

• Try two or three different questions

• Compile a new list of your mistakes - keep it with your old list as this is a useful way to check and show your progress

• If you have improved, then your knowledge of that topic is more secure

• If you haven’t improved, compare the lists to identify if you are making the same mistakes or new ones

Hopefully, over time and with practice you will see the number of common mistakes on your lists decreasing.

5. Improve exam strategies

In all my years teaching countless students, doing past paper after past paper has only been of genuine benefit to one, yes, one student. So, how can you improve in an exam? The simple answer is to prepare, and lots of the previous tips will help you revise and prepare. 

Exam papers – time management

Doing past papers under exam conditions can help you prepare for the feel of the real exams. This also allows you to get used to completing the papers within the time limit for that paper. If your exam paper is split into sections, you can portion your time accordingly. 

One example is the OCR A Level Chemistry A (H432) exam, where papers 1 and 2 have:

• Section A – 20 marks of multiple choice questions 

• Section B – 80 marks of structured questions

The time given for each paper is two hours and 15 minutes. This means that you should ideally be spending around 20 % of the time, or 27 minutes, on section A and the remainder on section B.

You should also consider how much time is spent on each question as some questions are naturally worth more marks than others. For example, every so often there will be an equation-balancing question worth 1 mark that is challenging to complete. Rather than spending time puzzling your way through to gain 1 mark, it is better to skip that question and use the time on the remaining questions that are worth many marks. You can always come back to that question if you have time at the end.

Exam papers – effective answering

An important tip for longer questions, typically worth 5 or more marks, is that you don’t have to fill the answer space. I have seen many marks lost because a student had the correct initial answer, but then they padded their answer to fill the space. In doing so, they wrote something that was incorrect or contradicted their original answer and lost marks.

For most 1-mark exam questions, the examiner is looking for one keyword or point. So, even if there is usually two lines of answer space, you know that you don’t need to fill the space.

As an examiner, my favourite example of not filling the space was question 5b on the June 2018 Edexcel A Level Chemistry Paper 3:

• 7 marks available

• Combining vanadium chemistry with electrochemistry – two challenging topics

• Four lines of text and a table which occupied about one quarter of a page

• 30 lines of answer space spread over two pages

One answer always stands out to me because the student achieved all 7 marks before the end of the first page. The student made their point, used the information and didn’t feel the need to fill the space.

6. Seek additional resources and support

There are many resources available to you, including:

• Your notes

• Textbooks / revision guides

• Online resources such as our excellent revision notes and topic questions for A Level Chemistry at Save My Exams

• Other students and study groups

• Your chemistry teacher

If you need support … ask. By asking for help, you are saying that you have found a topic that challenges you but you want to understand and improve so that you can give your best performance.

Remember … asking for help is a strength, not a weakness.

Although this article is about achieving an A in A Level chemistry, the strength of asking for help applies to your revision as well as your health and wellbeing. If you are struggling, feeling anxious or depressed, talk to your friends and family. Sharing your feelings is important, and the people who love you will want to help. You can also find support from Young Minds, Mind, Childline, and Kooth.

7. Review feedback and improve

Past papers and exam questions are something that you will do in lessons and may do, for yourself, at home. But, how do you actually use exam questions / past papers? You probably work through, mark them using the mark scheme and, maybe, make corrections.

After completing practice questions, I would get my students to make a list of the things they got wrong. After two or three past papers, I would ask my students if there were any topics that they were consistently getting wrong. Comparing and reviewing these lists meant that my students could easily identify topics that might require more revision time.

Another technique my students found very useful was using mark schemes. We didn’t use them in the traditional sense of marking a practice paper, however. I would challenge students to look through a mark scheme, without seeing the practice paper and work out what the question was based on the answer. This was helpful because they could see what examiners were specifically looking for, as well as identifying topics that they were more or less confident with.

There would be some answers where students:

• Couldn’t deduce the question at all, e.g. a numerical answer like “0.037”

• Could easily determine the question, which meant that they were probably more capable with that topic – a green topic

• Couldn’t get close to the actual question, which meant they had found a topic that they needed to focus their revision on – a red or amber topic

These past paper tasks aim to identify areas for focused revision. This means that instead of revising things you already know, which we are all guilty of, you revise the areas that are your weaknesses, which can lead to big gains in terms of exam marks.

8. Stay consistent and motivated

It can be difficult to keep going with your revision timetable / study schedule. Remembering that this time is not forever will hopefully help you.

There are some things you can do to help yourself stay motivated:

• Have regular breaks 

  • Whether it is a short break to stretch your legs and get a drink or a bigger break for a birthday or other event,  schedule these breaks into your timetable

• Stop

  • There may be times when something just isn’t making sense. There’s no point trying to force yourself to understand. So, stop. Take a break, speak to someone, ask for help if needed and come back to it with a fresh mind

• Get up, get out, get active

  • This doesn’t have to be an hour in the gym. It could be walking your dog, going round to a friend’s house, playing with your younger sibling … anything to get you up and active. And afterwards your brain will work better

• Hydrate

  • Your body needs water to function properly 

• Sleep

  • When you’re asleep, your brain has time to collate and store all the revision work you’ve been doing

• Reward yourself 

  • You mastered the nucleophilic addition–elimination mechanism, so have that snack you’ve been saving. It kept appearing on your mistake list but this time you finally remembered to convert from J mol^-1 to kJ mol^-1, so have some game time.

9. Prepare physically and mentally

Remember, your health and wellbeing are important. So, make sure that you get enough rest / sleep, food, water and exercise to stay alert and focused

Set Yourself Up For A Level Chemistry Success

Despite a reputation for being a hard subject, statistics suggest that around one third of students achieve an A in A Level chemistry. However, this doesn't mean you can afford to be complacent. Aiming for the top grades requires preparation and organisation. 

You should:

• Know your exam specification

• Identify your strengths and weaknesses 

• Make a revision timetable

• Use effective study skills focusing on active revision techniques

• Practice problem-solving skills, particularly in calculation-heavy areas

• Work on exam strategies through consistent practice

• Seek additional resources and support

• Act on feedback to pinpoint areas for improvement 

Keeping motivated and remembering to look after your physical and mental wellbeing are equally important to your success. With dedication, organisation and a comprehensive approach, you will be in the best position to achieve an A in A Level chemistry … and you can enjoy a thoroughly deserved rest after the exams.

For expert support with your revision journey, sign up and become a member of Save My Exams today. We offer a range of revision notes written by experienced teachers and examiners, plus we have past papers and exam-style topic questions to help you successfully complete your revision.