If you were disappointed by your Year-12 exam results, you’re not alone. Many A-level Biology students have a bit of a shock at this point, but you still have the opportunity to turn things around.

Reading pop-science books is enjoyable and also supports your studies. Here are eight books that I recommend, all of which are written to be interesting and entertaining for non-specialists. They bring biology to life and will change the way you think about these topics forever.

We provide a wide selection of self-marking, multiple-choice quizzes by topic for OCR A and CIE. But how can you use them to best effect?

Here’s a quick guide.

The simplest, last-minute exam tip of all time

You need to know some maths for A level Biology, including to work out whether an experiment can be said to have shown an effect or not. Master this early on and it will not help you with exam questions, but also make it easier for you to learn the bits of the course that are explained using these statistical methods.

CIE 11.2 Immunity -Monoclonal Antibodies - 20 Multiple Choice Questions

Surface area to volume ratio (SA:V) is vital for understanding a wide range of topics including transport across cell membranes, gas exchange, digestion, heat exchange, and mass transport. SA:V explains why the inner membrane of a mitochondrion is folded, why elephants have big ears, and why jellyfish don’t need blood vessels.

CIE A level Biology - Lung Structure and Function, 20 multiple choice questions

CIE 9700 A level Biology 10.2 Infectious Diseases - Antibiotics

CIE Tissue Fluid and structure and function of blood vessels - 20 Multiple Choice Questions

CIE 9700 A level Biology Infectious Diseases - Pathogens and Transmission, 20 Multiple Choice Questions

CIE A level Biology 9700 Carriage of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide - 20 Multiple Choice Questions

CIE A level Biology - Osmosis - 20 Multiple Choice Questions

19 Multiple choice questions on CIE 9700 A level Biology - Food Tests 2.1

CIE 9700 A level Biology - Replication and Division of nuclei and cells 5.1 - 20 Multiple Choice Questions

CIE 9700 A level Biology - 2.3 Proteins - 20 Multiple Choice Questions