How to Get an A* in OCR A-Level Chemistry: A Year 13 Guide for Students and Parents
If you're starting Year 13 OCR A-Level Chemistry and aiming for an A*, the biggest mistake is waiting until the spring to start preparing for the final exams. Year 13 is not simply Year 12 with harder chemistry.
You are expected to take the knowledge you have built and use it more independently, often in unfamiliar situations. Organic synthesis, mechanisms, calculations, spectroscopy and synoptic questions all require you to do more than recognise something you've seen before.
The good news is that you do not need to become a different kind of student to achieve an A*.
You need a reliable process for turning what you know into marks.
The students who give themselves the best chance of achieving an A* in OCR A-Level Chemistry are not simply the ones who revise the most. They are the ones who identify weaknesses early, practise applying their knowledge, analyse their mistakes and keep improving throughout Year 13.
This guide explains what that can look like.
Why Year 13 OCR A-Level Chemistry feels different
Year 12 is where you build much of the foundation.
You learn new concepts, develop your understanding of chemical calculations and become familiar with the style of A-Level questions.
In Year 13, the challenge is increasingly about what you can do with that knowledge.
You may recognise the chemistry involved in a question but still need to decide:
Which part of the specification is relevant?
What information in the question matters?
Which equation or chemical principle should I use?
How does this reaction apply to this particular molecule?
What exactly is the question asking me to explain or calculate?
How should I communicate the answer clearly enough to gain the marks?
This is one reason capable students can become frustrated in Year 13.
They may genuinely understand Chemistry.
They may have revised.
They may even feel confident when looking through their notes.
But when faced with an unfamiliar question, that confidence can disappear.
The gap is often between knowing the Chemistry and applying it independently.
What should you do in the first few weeks of Year 13?
The start of Year 13 is a good opportunity to find out where you actually stand.
You don't need to revise the entire Year 12 course from scratch.
You do need to identify the areas that could cause problems later.
1. Check your Year 12 foundations
Year 13 chemistry builds on knowledge and skills developed earlier in the course.
If areas such as bonding, redox, equilibria, calculations or organic chemistry are still uncertain, don't simply hope that more Year 13 teaching will make the problem disappear.
Find the weakness.
Work out exactly what you don't understand.
Then address it.
A small gap is much easier to deal with in September than when it is buried underneath several more months of content.
2. Use the OCR specification as a map
If you're studying OCR A-Level Chemistry, use the specification to understand what you are expected to know.
Don't treat it as something you only look at immediately before the exams.
Use it to identify:
What can I explain confidently?
What can I apply confidently?
What do I recognise but struggle to use independently?
That third category is particularly important.
Recognising a topic when you see it is not the same as being able to answer a question on it.
3. Start using exam questions early
You don't need to sit full three-hour exam sessions every week.
But you should start using OCR A-Level Chemistry exam questions while you are still learning Year 13 content.
Questions show you something your notes cannot:
how knowledge is actually used.
They also reveal weaknesses much earlier.
If you consistently lose marks on calculations, mechanisms or unfamiliar applications, you have discovered something useful while there is still time to improve it.
4. Build a routine you can actually maintain
A strong Year 13 revision routine is not one enormous study session followed by several days of doing very little.
Consistency matters.
You want regular opportunities to:
retrieve older knowledge
practise current topics
answer exam questions
review mistakes
revisit weaknesses
The exact number of hours will vary from student to student.
What matters is having a process you can follow week after week.
Which topics deserve particular attention?
There is no single list of topics that guarantees an A*.
Instead, pay particular attention to areas where you have to connect knowledge and make decisions, rather than simply recall a fact.
Organic synthesis and mechanisms
Organic chemistry can become difficult when students learn reactions as isolated facts.
At A-Level, you need to recognise relationships between functional groups, reagents, conditions and reaction mechanisms.
Synthesis questions add another layer because you may need to work backwards from a target molecule and decide which reactions could produce the required changes.
If you understand why a reaction works, you are in a much stronger position when the molecule or context changes.
Equilibrium and calculations
Calculations reward precision.
A student can understand the chemistry but still lose marks because they have set up the calculation incorrectly, used the wrong quantities or made an avoidable mathematical error.
Practising calculations regularly helps you identify whether the problem is:
understanding the chemistry, choosing the method, or carrying out the calculation.
Those are different problems and need different solutions.
Spectroscopy
Spectroscopy questions can feel intimidating when students first encounter an unfamiliar compound.
The answer is not to memorise individual examples.
You need to become comfortable using the information provided and combining evidence from techniques such as NMR, mass spectrometry and IR spectroscopy.
The more practice you have interpreting unfamiliar data, the less unfamiliar it becomes.
Synoptic chemistry
One of the challenges of OCR A-Level Chemistry is having to connect ideas from different parts of the course.
A question does not always announce:
"This is an equilibrium question."
or:
"This is an organic chemistry question."
You may need to recognise which chemistry is relevant from the information provided.
That is why synoptic practice should begin well before the final exam period.
What do students aiming for an A* do differently?
There is no magic revision technique that produces an A*.
But there are some useful habits to develop.
Ask "why?" rather than stopping at "what?"
Knowing that something happens is useful.
Understanding why it happens gives you something to work with when the question changes.
For example, don't just learn a mechanism as a sequence of arrows.
Understand what the arrows represent and why the electron pair moves in that direction.
That gives you a basis for dealing with a less familiar question.
Analyse mistakes instead of simply correcting them
Getting a question wrong is useful if you learn from it.
After a question, ask:
Why did I lose this mark?
Was it:
a knowledge gap?
a misunderstanding?
an application problem?
a calculation error?
a failure to read the question carefully?
imprecise chemical terminology?
an issue with how the answer was communicated?
A mark lost through lack of knowledge needs a different response from a mark lost because you misunderstood the question.
Don't treat every wrong answer as the same problem.
Build synoptic links throughout the year
Don't wait until the final weeks to start connecting topics.
When you learn something new, ask:
Where have I seen this idea before?
What other part of Chemistry does this connect to?
Could this knowledge be useful in a different type of question?
The more connected your understanding becomes, the easier it is to retrieve the relevant chemistry when the question does not tell you exactly where to look.
Why past papers alone aren't enough
Past papers are essential.
But simply completing paper after paper is not necessarily an effective revision strategy.
Imagine a student completes a 100-mark paper and gets 72.
They make a note of the score and move on.
What have they actually learned?
Not much.
Now imagine they go through every lost mark and categorise the reason.
They discover that:
several marks were lost through organic mechanisms
two calculation errors were avoidable
they misunderstood one unfamiliar application
they knew the Chemistry for another question but didn't answer what was actually being asked
That gives them a much clearer revision plan.
The value of a past paper is not just the number at the top.
It is the information it gives you about what to work on next.
How to use mark schemes to improve your Chemistry answers
A mark scheme should not simply tell you whether you were right.
Use it to examine the difference between your answer and the answer that gained the mark.
Ask:
What did I need to include?
Was a particular chemical term important?
Did I explain the chemistry clearly enough?
Did I give a description when the question required an explanation?
Did I show the necessary working in a calculation?
Did I answer the question that was actually asked?
The aim is not to memorise mark schemes.
It is to understand what your answers are currently missing.
That is much more useful when you meet a new question.
What should parents look for in Year 13?
If you're a parent supporting a student through OCR A-Level Chemistry, one of the easiest mistakes is to measure revision by hours.
Your child may tell you:
"I've been revising Chemistry all afternoon."
That doesn't necessarily tell you whether the revision was effective.
Instead, look for evidence that they are doing something with the knowledge.
Can they attempt questions without immediately checking their notes?
Can they explain why they lost marks?
Are they revisiting recurring weaknesses?
Are they practising unfamiliar questions?
Are they connecting older Year 12 knowledge with new Year 13 material?
Are they becoming more independent when answering questions?
Those are much more useful indicators of progress than the number of hours spent sitting at a desk.
A simple Year 13 OCR Chemistry revision process
By Year 13, revision should become a cycle rather than a collection of separate tasks.
Preview
Look at upcoming material before the lesson where possible.
Understand
Make sure you understand the underlying Chemistry rather than simply copying notes.
Apply
Use exam questions to practise retrieving and applying the knowledge independently.
Review
Look carefully at mistakes and lost marks.
Improve
Use what you have discovered to decide what needs to be revisited.
Then repeat the process.
Preview → Understand → Apply → Review → Improve
The important word is repeat.
One excellent revision session will not make a student exam-ready.
A consistent process followed throughout Year 13 gives them repeated opportunities to identify and address weaknesses while there is still time to do something about them.
When should Year 13 students start doing past papers?
Don't wait until the final few weeks.
Full past papers become particularly useful when enough of the course has been covered to make them meaningful, but individual exam questions can be used much earlier.
During the year, use questions selectively.
If you've just studied a particular area, practise questions on it.
Then revisit older topics so that knowledge does not disappear as new material is added.
As the exams approach, move increasingly towards longer mixed-topic and full-paper practice.
This gives you a progression from:
learning topics → applying them → connecting them → performing under exam conditions.
How to give yourself the best chance of an A*
If you're aiming for an A*, don't make your entire Year 13 strategy:
"I need to revise more."
Ask better questions.
What don't I understand?
What can I understand but not yet apply?
Which mistakes keep coming back?
Which topics do I avoid because I find them difficult?
Can I solve unfamiliar questions without relying on my notes?
Am I learning from my past-paper mistakes?
Those questions lead to much more useful revision.
The aim is not to eliminate every difficult question.
Even strong students will meet questions that require thought.
The aim is to become increasingly good at working out what to do when the answer isn't immediately obvious.
That is a much more realistic description of what strong A-Level Chemistry performance requires.
Free OCR A-Level Chemistry Training
If you're starting Year 13 and want to understand how capable students can move from knowing the Chemistry to consistently converting that knowledge into exam marks, I've created a free OCR A-Level Chemistry training.
It explains the gap between understanding the content and applying it effectively under exam conditions, and introduces a structured approach students can follow throughout the course.
Watch the free OCR A-Level Chemistry training
It may be particularly useful if you or your child:
understand Chemistry in lessons but struggle with exam questions
work hard but don't feel your grades reflect that effort
find unfamiliar questions much harder than familiar ones
are aiming for an A or A*
want a clearer process for Year 13 revision
The training is free, so if that sounds familiar, it's a useful place to start.
Final thoughts
Getting an A* in OCR A-Level Chemistry is not about finding a secret revision trick.
It is about developing the ability to understand Chemistry, retrieve it independently, apply it to unfamiliar situations and communicate it accurately under exam conditions.
That takes time.
Which is why Year 13 is not the time to wait until everything feels urgent.
Start by finding the gaps.
Practise applying what you know.
Analyse the marks you lose.
Work on the specific weaknesses those mistakes reveal.
Then repeat the process.
For a capable student, the difference between an understanding that feels good during revision and performance that produces an A* in an exam can be considerable.
The earlier you start closing that gap, the more opportunity you have to make your Year 13 Chemistry work count.
If you'd like to understand that process in more detail, you can register for the free OCR A-Level Chemistry training here: