My Story - Why 9A student ends up with 3C's in A/L

Hello there,

When I started doing A/L I had a lot of friends with good O/L results. In fact 9A's. And I had some of my friends who only got 3 or 4A's for their O/L.

I believed that those who get good results in O/L are going to shine in A/L. Because in the classroom, those brilliant students who got 9A's, quickly understood the concept before me and they gave the answer to all the questions that are asked. Well, it was really frustrating. Because my mind started to believe that, IQ matters. Those 9A students seemed to have a high IQ compared to me.  Just that thought and ego made me get stressed and completely lose focus.

Around 1 year passed. I was in the 2nd year of A/L. I was working so hard to accomplish my dreams. That is the time that I started to note that those brilliant students with 9A and high IQ, started to lose marks in exams. But the one with only a few A's in O/L started to perform fairly well. 


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After reading a lot of cognitive science books and how success works, I finally got the answer to why brilliant students are failing. I was so amazed at the findings. Let me explain to you with a story.

There are different ball games, right? Let's compare cricket with baseball. In both games, there is a ball and a bat, and the player needs to run! Those are the similarities right! But the rules and perspectives of both games are totally different. You can play cricket doesn't mean that you can play baseball very well.


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The same applied to O/L and A/L. Though both look almost similar, in which you have to study and write the exam, the rules and strategies apply to A/L are totally different from O/L. Therefore the A/L is a totally different ball game. In A/L

• You have to work hard.
• Spend more time with your books.
• Revise and recall things on a regular basis.
• Sacrifice a lot of the entertainment.
• Be disciplined and punctual. etc.

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Comment your thoughts on this matter below! 

Good to be back after a long time! ? And these words are just too honest and true. Hope this helps the students who lose motivation to achieve their goals due to bad performance in O/L. ?

Hello Nifka,

You are more than welcome! I hope it helped you.
Just understanding these basic things is really important to move forward towards good results in A/L.

Your past performance will deceive you otherwise.

Regards