Chemistry · GCSE
An intensive run at GCSE Chemistry
This student came to us for an intensive package, so we spent every lesson on the parts of the course that cost the most marks rather than working through it in order. Most of that was organic chemistry: polymers, carboxylic acids and esters, where a half-remembered mechanism shows up immediately under exam conditions. The rest went on equilibrium dynamics, which rewards understanding why a system shifts rather than memorising which way it goes. We kept on each topic until they could explain it without notes.
Grade 9 in the final Chemistry exams
Mathematics · GCSE
A grade 5 mock, a year to fix it
We went back through the whole course, then spent the last few months on past papers. Whenever a topic kept going wrong, we wrote extra papers on just that topic. We also worked back through a year of school homework to find where the mistakes were actually coming from.
Grade 5 to Grade 8
Mathematics · A-Level
An A-Level resit group
A group of students who had all missed the grades they needed, each weak in a different place. Some in pure, some in statistics, some in mechanics. We taught it like a classroom so they could argue a problem out with each other before bringing us an answer, which made them far less precious about being wrong. Everyone still got their own homework, marked and returned with written feedback.
Median grade A* across the group
Chemistry · GCSE & A-Level
Chemistry, GCSE through to A-Level
This student understood the chemistry perfectly well. The trouble was getting it onto the page under exam conditions, so that is where the work went: technique, and better ways of committing things to memory. They came to us wanting a 7. Afterwards we carried on into A-Level, mostly on analytical techniques and thermodynamics.
Grade 8 at GCSE, then an A at A-Level
Chemistry · Olympiad
Two months to a Chemistry Challenge Gold
A Lower Sixth student with Ivy League applications coming up, who needed something beyond grades to show for themselves. Most of our two months went on chemistry from well outside the IB course: bonding theory, analytical techniques, thermodynamics, some solid-state. The rest went on the paper itself, which rewards a very particular way of thinking.
Gold award, top 10% nationally
Chemistry · Undergraduate
Rescuing a quantum mechanics module
A 2:2 in the coursework, with finals worth 70% of the module still to come. They had been learning results rather than where those results come from, so we started with the maths underneath: matrix algebra, Dirac notation, operators, then the Schrödinger equation and Slater determinants in DFT. By finals they could derive what they needed instead of hoping to recall it.
2:2 coursework to a high 2:1 overall
Biology · A-Level
Catching up a lost year of Biology
Illness had taken out most of Year 12, which left a lot of content to recover and not much time to do it in. We ran weekly lessons, then more often as exams got closer, working through the topics that cause the most trouble: respiration, photosynthesis, the immune system, the kidneys. Alongside that we drilled mark schemes, which in Biology are unforgiving.
Grade A in mocks, plus a first-choice university offer
Admissions · 16+
Westminster at 16+
He wanted Westminster for sixth form and had no idea how to approach the Physics and Maths papers, let alone the interview. At GCSE he had been taught to recall formulae, so we replaced that with working things out from first principles, which holds up when a question is unfamiliar. Then we turned to the interview: what about him actually fitted Westminster, and why Westminster fitted him.
Received an offer
Admissions · Oxbridge
An Oxford Biochemistry interview
We took her personal statement and built a question sheet out of it, covering everything she had claimed to find interesting, from molecular orbital theory to CAR-T cell therapy. After each practice answer we worked on where an interviewer would push next. She also got a written guide to the gap between A-Level and first-year undergraduate work, built around the questions that come up most often.
Scored 6/7 at interview
