… to retake.
Sometimes life doesn’t go to plan. Sometimes you have a bad day, week, or even year. You might miss taking an exam that you expected to sit, or else were too ill to attend.
Then there’s the exams you worked like anything for, but they just didn’t work out on the day. While it feels like the end of the world as you spent years to get to this point, give yourself some time so that you can think clearly.
If your gut was right and you don’t achieve your expected grades, all is not lost. In fact, a second chance is waiting for you: resits.
And before you moan, ‘I just can’t!’ you’d be amazed at how much easier retaking can be when you’ve only one or two subjects to prepare for instead of over twenty exams.
Should you retake your exams?
Weight things up before you decide. Here are some questions to consider:
- Do you need a higher grade to access the course of your dreams? Perhaps you are competing for a place at a specific university, and your grades mean you have to go somewhere else.
- Could you take a gap year and resit so that you give yourself a ‘second time lucky’ opportunity? Plenty of students do, and never look back.
- Is your heart in it? Resitting isn’t for everyone. You will still need to put the hard graft in to it to achieve a higher grade. Be honest with yourself – are you ready for that?
- What is your your motivation? To get a course place, improve your CV, boost your earning potential, self-pride, better access to the industry of your choice? To retake, you need the right motivation as you won’t have your teacher at your beck and call second time around.
How to improve your chance of success
- If you didn’t achieve what you hoped, try to bullet-point why without pointing blame at anyone. To retake, you need to do something differently. What might that be?
- Build a plan that you can stick to. It might be that you only have a few months before retaking. You would need to plan ahead so that you can avoid the pitfalls you experienced first time round.
- Fine-tune your support network. Who’s in your team? Who can help you with any practicalities, and who is your top morale-booster? Who can help you iron out any learning niggles and problems which stumped you before?
It’s not impossible to go it alone, but a team round you encouraging every step will make all the difference. Our private tutors here at 121 Home Tutors are experts at helping young people pick up the pieces after a tough year.
Being adept at whittling down the big issues and helping you solve them means that you can achieve more in half the time.
When you’re ready to chat about taking that next step, or it might be something you are considering in the next few months, speak to our top tutor team first.
Tags: exam motivation, Gap year, how to plan a resit, how to solve learning problems, retaking exams