** 2013 Biology HL Before/After **

shanelad95

internet_user wrote: »

yea it was worded funny as were a few questions! i didnt give any values in my answer

totally agree, wording was a disgrace in some questions, it really does seem like we were handed a half arse attempt at a leaving cert paper.

shawnanana

I'm unfollowing this thread...looking at all the comments realising most of my answers are wrong. No thanks, think I'll wait for August to find that out!

shanelad95

whateverusay wrote: »

For heat denaturalise, I just did a bar chart with two bars, one showing the unboiled enzymes activity and the other shower the boiled enzymes (in)activity. Did anyone else do this??

oh f*ck. i wrote about temperature and how high temperature denatures and low stops enzymes working

internet_user

conan955 wrote: »

totally agree, wording was a disgrace in some questions, it really does seem like we were handed a half arse attempt at a leaving cert paper.

as someone else said it seemed like a back-up paper! the way there was no marks on the page for the long questions

Hamza Malik

shawnanana wrote: »

I'm unfollowing this thread...looking at all the comments realising most of my answers are wrong. No thanks, think I'll wait for August to find that out!

Good idea

Monsieur Folie

Wonder why they'd give us the back up paper though, assuming the theory in here is correct?

Hamza Malik

whateverusay wrote: »

For heat denaturalise, I just did a bar chart with two bars, one showing the unboiled enzymes activity and the other shower the boiled enzymes (in)activity. Did anyone else do this??

I did an n shape curve, with its peak at 30 degrees.

weirdspider

Monsieur Folie wrote: »

Wonder why they'd give us the back up paper though, assuming the theory in here is correct?

It seems about right to me, I agree with Slow Show in that it seems to have been thrown together at the last minute. Badly phrased questions, some questions testing the limits of the syllabus (graph of heat denaturation) The marks assigned to each question weren't even on the paper!

internet_user

Monsieur Folie wrote: »

Wonder why they'd give us the back up paper though, assuming the theory in here is correct?

a leak in some school maybe? as in leak of the paper :P

Monsieur Folie

internet_user wrote: »

a leak in some school maybe? as in leak of the paper :P

Seems like the kind of thing we'd find out about though, right?

internet_user

Monsieur Folie wrote: »

Seems like the kind of thing we'd find out about though, right?

yea true, i cant think of any other reason though. maybe they just forgot to put the print the marks on it

HugsiePie

internet_user wrote: »

yea true, i cant think of any other reason though. maybe they just forgot to put the print the marks on it

I do reckon it was a backup, I know this sounds stupid but some of the numbers of the question weren't in bold, I think it shows they weren't as careful making it if it was intended to be a LC paper ,I was thinking it during the exam.

ronanc1000

Not happy with the paper , felt it was mainly plant related questions with ecology (More than usual dont you think) Both my weakest!
Where the f**k was unit 3? Like seriously?
So angry!
Study it for two years with an interest then you get not very good questions in my opinion! The human unit 3 I knew like the back of hand! It barley showed!

Very disappointed in the exam and myself but the wrong questions or me didnt show up!
Very bad day lads... :mad:

woopah92

Am I the only one who thought the questions weren't really printed straight on the page? That really annoys me for some reason.

Hamza Malik

internet_user wrote: »

yea true, i cant think of any other reason though. maybe they just forgot to put the print the marks on it

First they made a serious error in a question on Maths and now rumours of this being a backup. Sec have really messed up this year

Slow Show

It was just the whole structure of it that was weird. Ecology as Q15 with a choice of two out of three? Photosynthesis and respiration in a similar scenario? Very, very little plant biology. And just the repetition, I wrote the same answer twice for an animal that showed an adaptation (Ecology experiment and long q), and as we all know, parasites were everywhere.

Also...there were no holes in the paper for inserting treasury tags. Now I know there were none for Maths (Actually think there might've been for P2) but I mean, it's taken you'll need extra paper for Biology,you wouldn't do the exam without it. It's all very strange.

shanelad95

Biology could be the reason ill be repeating, and its a shame because ive done quite well up until now in it

Guys, just leave Biology now. Thanks to the bell curve everyone will end up getting the grades they deserve!

HugsiePie

Hamza Malik wrote: »

First they made a serious error in a question on Maths and now rumours of this being a backup. Sec have really messed up this year

What happened with maths?!

HugsiePie

woopah92 wrote: »

Am I the only one who thought the questions weren't really printed straight on the page? That really annoys me for some reason.

Ah here, that settles it, it was definitely a back up!
IMO it seemed they didn't take care when they made it.

HugsiePie

Deleted User wrote: »

Guys, just leave Biology now. Thanks to the bell curve everyone will end up getting the grades they deserve!

Actually I find the bell curve to be very unfair. A person who gets a B1 when its first corrected can end up getting a C thanks to the marking schemes being reset because of the bellcurve.

Michael Scofield

Lads it's all over and done with, forget about it and move on, you're only harming your chances in other subjects at this stage.

As for how unfair the Bell Curve is, most (if not all) universities will mark against a bell curve too. It's a way of life unfortunately. If you got the answers right, you'll get the marks. The SEC are not out to get you.

Good luck with the exams you have left!

HugsiePie

HugsiePie wrote: »

Actually I find the bell curve to be very unfair. A person who gets a B1 when its first corrected can end up getting a C thanks to the marking schemes being reset because of the bellcurve.

This is true but when everyone finds an exam hard it'll work the opposite way.

randylonghorn

CatEyed92 wrote: »

I have studied hard this year and so far I have sat english, geography and biology.
State exams are screwing people out of college places this year from the looks of things....
There was never a year things were so experimental or badly phrased!!

/rant

SQ were very unfair tbh

Actually, every year we get rants like this on this forum ... I'd say in general less so this year than most!

Remember that an unusual or unfamiliar phrasing in a question that you wouldn't really notice looking back at previous papers (or that your teacher has clarified) can confuse / put you off much more under exam conditions / pressure.

HungryEmperor wrote: »

But parasites don't kill their hosts so how is it population control?

They don't directly kill their hosts, but they do cause / spread disease though, and some cause malnutrition?

Monsieur Folie wrote: »

Seems like the kind of thing we'd find out about though, right?

In general, the calling of a back-up paper into play causes a lot of fuss; it would be unlikely enough to happen without word leaking out.

In any case, back-up papers are set in the exact same way; I'm open to correction from spurious on this, but I seem to remember it being said before that even the setters of each paper often don't know which has been set as the primary and which as the backup in the end.

RML

It looks like I've failed Biology miserably

ronanc1000

I think there a general concencus that it was an odd paper I even thought it was printed or the layout was odd, anyway I thought the paper was sh*t
There was no great variety of questions that it was mainly plants and more than usually ecology questions there should have been more unit 3 question on the human like the heart or kidneys etc?.
Done well in the mocks
Very angry ,possibly failed

LC 2013 SURVIVOR

if its true that that was a backup paper that means the original paper was full of the human. In my two years have never dipped below 92 percent average at the human. Biology is literally my only strong subject and i desperately needed an A... Yesterday i was ****ed over for timing by maths HL question 8 and i don't think i passed and now i feel like i got a C (B3 if i'm lucky) in biology. Frankly i feel cheated by the SEC for tearing down my grades and hopes for college. I may now have to repeat thanks to their mistakes and now i feel violated because its all out of my control. Roll on OL french is all i can do now.

Lollipops13

I said meristem too but some of the questions were extremely unclear and indefinite. Did other people find this too? I agree with whoever said it was an extremely lazy paper.

ladymacbeth

I'd gladly sit another paper RIGHT NOW, than count that paper.

Jackobyte

HugsiePie wrote: »

I do reckon it was a backup, I know this sounds stupid but some of the numbers of the question weren't in bold, I think it shows they weren't as careful making it if it was intended to be a LC paper ,I was thinking it during the exam.

At the bottom of the pages, as a please turn over message, they had "[OVER" with no right bracket. It's not anything big but it seemed odd to me in the exam and caught my attention. It might be normal, it just seemed a bit weird.

EDIT: Just checked 2012 on examinations and it's the same. Not out of the ordinary it seems.