101 Common mistakes you must avoid at A-Level

Remember when you forgot to save the document the night before the assignment was due? Or when you were sitting in that GCSE Chemistry exam and wondering why you finished a good 10 minutes before everyone else only to find with one minute left that there was a back page? (I actually did that…)

Throughout our time at school we’ve all made stupid mistakes, and hey, your friends found them pretty funny at the time - even if you didn’t. But your A-Levels are also actually kinda important (as your parents probably keep saying), and so squeezing out these silly mistakes now is a good idea.

Now - even though we all got our As here at Atomi, most of us are still pretty lacking in the common sense department. So between us we had a good laugh about all the mistakes we made and all the times we were left thinking our life could be the next Series of Unfortunate Events book.

Basically, we put together a list of 101 stupid mistakes that we made so that you don’t have to:

1. Misreading the question
2. Telling yourself you can do it tomorrow
3. Getting the due date wrong
4. Missing a page in an exam
5. Attempting past papers and not marking them
6. Doing the wrong section of the paper... one that your school actually didn't do
7. Forgetting to save your work
8. Forgetting to back up your work
9. Studying in chronological order, not priority order
10. Thinking that something "won't take that long"
11. Never reading the actual syllabus
12. Not sticking to the word limit
13. Disregarding the keywords of the question
14. Not checking your answers
15. Not looking at the clock
16. Not allocating enough time per question
17. Forgetting to bring a spare pen
18. Writing too much or too little
19. Making study notes and never returning to them
20. Not making a copy of handwritten stuff
21. Leaving questions unanswered
22. Forgetting to return to unanswered questions
23. Forgetting to write your name/student number on your work
24. Answering multiple choice questions in the wrong space
25. Drinking too much water before your exam
26. Not drinking enough water before your exam
27. Writing excessively long notes
28. Using other people's notes instead of making your own
29. Not putting enough effort into early assessments
30. Forgetting to convert your units in maths/science
31. “Refer to Source A”… forgetting to refer to source A
32. “Refer to Source B”… referring to Source A
33. Forgetting to hand your phone in before an exam
34. Leaving your study notes hanging out of your pocket in an exam
35. Deciding to pull an all-nighter the night before an exam
36. Getting the wrong time for an exam
37. Only studying when you have an assessment coming up
38. Not checking the prerequisites for uni courses
39. Only using one method of studying
40. Not talking to your teachers outside of class
41. Forgetting to put in your UCAS applications
42. Not getting someone to proofread your essays
43. Leaving an assessment till the night before
44. Leaving an assessment till the morning of
45. Thinking that group study is ineffective
46. Cramming too much information to memorise
47. Panicking during or before an exam
48. Arriving late to your exam
49. Not making the most of reading time
50. Jumping straight into writing without planning
51. Having illegible handwriting
52. Not showing your working out
53. Thinking that reading the textbook counts as study
54. Not allowing time for a conclusion
55. Making basic spelling/grammar mistakes
56. Making basic calculation errors
57. Ignoring the trends of past papers
58. Having a cheeky look at your neighbour’s response*
59. Leaving the exam room early
60. Spending too much time on one subject
61. Only studying the ‘fun’ or ‘easy’ topics
62. Only doing the type of questions you can already answer
63. Thinking that highlighting is effective study
64. Letting yourself be distracted by other people in the exam room
65. Not practicing handwriting your responses
66. Not practicing in timed conditions
67. Setting unrealistic goals
68. Never attempting a full practice paper in one go until the exam
69. Spending too much time procrastinating by formatting
70. Thinking you can stick to an unrealistic study schedule
71. Procrastinating by making ‘to do lists’
72. Letting one bad mark stop you from putting in effort
73. Getting too caught up on marks to help others
74. Thinking you have the ability to predict possible questions
75. Not structuring your response
76. Writing essays without an argument
77. Not supporting yourself with enough quotes/evidence
78. Making errors with the order of operations
79. Regurgitating a memorised response without adapting it
80. Not making the most of your study periods
81. Putting too much pressure on yourself
82. Not taking sufficient breaks
83. Misinterpreting the key terms in a question
84. Providing multiple answers and hoping that one is correct
85. Using big words you don’t know the meaning of
86. Including irrelevant information for the sake of it
87. Not using a pencil and ruler for diagrams in Science
88. Incorrectly rounding significant figures
89. Ignoring the weighting of assessments
90. Not watching Atomi videos – sorry, I had to.
91. Going off on a tangent in essays
92. Letting what other people have done freak you out
93. Taking easy questions for granted
94. Not moving on after a bad exam
95. Not planning your study around your exam timetable
96. Second-guessing your initial response
97. Dwelling on a question you can’t answer
98. Only looking at the mark and not reading feedback
99. Answering a question twice
100. Adding up how many marks you think you got
101. Not numbering your writing books correctly

*this one can get you into serious trouble