You’re relaxing in the middle of your summer holidays when your friend suddenly messages you, giving you the grim reminder for Cambridge results day. With a great deal of nerves you open the portal to check your Cambridge results (after annoyingly waiting hours for the site to be fixed) and unfortunately, you don’t see the grades you had been hoping for. Whether your grade is a few percentages off your target or you completely bombed your test, this begs the question, should you register for a resit?
Luckily, Macleans College offers resits which typically happen in the October/November series where students are allowed to resit their exams. This year, students are able to resit any two AS Level subjects of their choice (with the exception of two sciences due to practical component logistics). However, there are important factors to consider before making this decision.
Academic impact
Although students are not required to retake classes should they choose to resit a subject, having to study for those extra exams is practically like having an extra subject on your plate come exam season. As a result, this can impact a student’s overall academic performance across their other subjects.
Therefore, it’s important to consider your ability to manage the additional revision alongside your current studies to ensure a resit does not jeopardise your grades for your other subjects.
Improvement potential
With any resit, the goal is, of course, to improve a grade. However, the potential for improvement could be impacted by a subject’s difficulty and a candidate’s previous mark.
If a candidate scores a 95 PUM (percentage uniform mark), there would be little potential for improvement. Although students could potentially analyse their mistakes to attain a better understanding of what went wrong, lost marks are likely due to less controllable factors like silly mistakes or misreading a question. Since these factors are difficult to change as opposed to knowledge gaps or poor exam technique, the chances of improving from such a high score could be random, meaning a resit may be unlikely to lead to a better mark.
Additionally, not all subjects are equally difficult to resit, particularly if a student self-studies for these resits. Take English Literature for example; the subject requires students to analyse a variety of texts, which can be difficult without the guidance of a teacher due to the subjective nature of analysis. Furthermore, the structure of literature exams does not allow students to burn through past papers and evaluate performance like in mathematics or biology for instance, where mark schemes are more objective about what lets a candidate score marks.
University entrance requirements
At the end of the day, the point of sitting Cambridge exams is to gain a qualification to pursue tertiary studies. Therefore, it’s important for candidates to check how far away they are from meeting minimum requirements.
Take the Bsc Economics course from King’s College London for example, which requires applicants to have achieved A*AA in their three best subjects. If a student applying for this course achieves several A’s with a PUM of 90 or above in their AS components, it may not be worthwhile to resit as they would be on track to exceed requirements. In contrast, if a student is on the fence with a couple A’s or several B’s in their AS components, then a consideration for resits would be more reasonable.
To resit or not to resit?
Any student considering resitting an exam should weigh up the factors mentioned above to ensure that the pros of a resit will outweigh the cons. Should a student decide to move forward with a resit, they can consult their teachers and reach out to Macleans’ CIE administrator to request a resit.
But regardless of your choice, it’s important to remember that exams do not define your self-worth and that they are not the be all and end all in life.
26th February, 2025
Written by Aaron Huang edited by Chiron Yung and Emma Li
Photo by Thomas Kolnowski on Unsplash
