Three days left. Paper 2 covers B4 to B6: ecosystems, genetics and global health challenges, plus 15 multiple choice questions that can draw on B1-B3 material too. Disease, immunity and evolution carry the most marks here.
One focus per day, building to a timed run. Work it in order.
Ranked from analysed past papers. Start at the top: if you run out of time, you will have covered the most-tested ground.
Constructing and interpreting food webs and biomass pyramids is core B4 content that appears in almost every paper, often combined with an energy transfer calculation.
Genetic diagrams are a guaranteed calculation-style question on this paper. Practise them until working out ratios is automatic.
Almost always tested using an unfamiliar example organism. You need to apply Darwin's theory step by step to the specific example given, not just define natural selection.
How the body defends itself against pathogens, and how vaccination triggers memory cell production, regularly appears as an extended response worth several marks in the B6 global challenges content.
Vaccine mechanism and herd immunity questions are a reliable source of marks, and often link into an evaluate-style question about vaccination programmes.
Redrawing the carbon cycle from memory and explaining the role of decomposers and the factors affecting decay rate are dependable sources of marks that are easy to lose through vague answers.
Human impacts on biodiversity, including habitat destruction and pollution, come up as both recall and evaluate-style questions on this paper.
Applied heart and circulation questions in a disease-risk context are a signature OCR A question style that reappears across multiple papers.
PrepWise has a one-page Knowledge Organiser for every topic above. In your final 3 days, use them the same way each time: cover the page, try to recall everything from memory, uncover and check what you missed, then repeat that topic again tomorrow.
Rules specific to Paper 2. On this paper, structure earns as many marks as knowledge.
OCR A explicitly assesses B1-B3 content synoptically on this paper alongside B4-B6. Don't assume cell biology, respiration or the nervous system are 'done' just because you sat Paper 1 already; keep a quick recap of Paper 1 topics in your final 3 days.
Use 'producer', 'primary consumer', 'trophic level' and 'biomass' correctly and consistently. A vague answer like 'the energy goes down' loses marks compared with 'energy is lost as heat through respiration at each trophic level'.
Your answer must reference that specific organism's variation and advantage, in order: variation exists, it gives a survival advantage, more individuals with that allele survive to reproduce. A generic definition alone loses marks.
The single asterisked 6-mark question rotates topic every year and has covered ecology, immunity and genetics in past series. Write in connected paragraphs and cover the process logically rather than as disconnected bullet points.
The errors examiners see most on this paper. Each one is an easy mark you already know how to keep.
Forgetting energy is lost at every trophic level, not just from producer to consumer → Energy is lost through respiration, movement and heat at every single step of a food chain, which is why food chains rarely have more than four or five links. State this explicitly rather than assuming the examiner will infer it.
Writing 'survival of the fittest' as the whole answer on natural selection → That phrase alone earns no marks. You need the full chain: variation exists in a population, some variants have an advantage, those individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce, so the allele becomes more common over generations.
Confusing vaccination with treatment → A vaccine prevents disease by training the immune system to produce antibodies and memory cells before infection happens. It doesn't cure an existing infection. Keep prevention and treatment language separate in your answer.
Saying antibiotics work on viruses → Antibiotics only work on bacteria because they target processes bacterial cells have that human and viral cells don't. Viruses reproduce inside host cells, so antibiotics have nothing to target.
Not explaining WHY decomposition speeds up, only that it does → Warmer temperature, more oxygen and more moisture all increase the activity of decomposer microorganisms, which is why decay rate increases. State the mechanism, not just the trend.
The 60 minutes before you walk in. Review what you know and settle your nerves.
Reading this plan is not the same as being able to do it. Answer exam-style Biology questions in PrepWise, get them marked in seconds, and find the gaps while you still have time to fix them.
Open the Biology Knowledge Organisers, quiz every priority topic and walk in ready. Free during alpha.
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