Study guides

All guides

• Grading systems and GPA explained

  Why a 3.7 GPA, a mark of 85%, an A-level A and a Higher Distinction are not interchangeable. Covers weighted versus unweighted GPA, the percentage-to-GPA trap that turns a British First into an American C, degree classifications, the ATAR as a percentile rank, ECTS credits, and what to do when an application demands a conversion anyway.

  Assessment 9 min read US · UK · AU · CA · IE · EU

• APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard: choosing and using a citation style

  What actually differs between the major referencing styles, with the same source formatted four ways. How to cite works with no author, no date or no page numbers, how to handle government publications and AI output, and the five referencing errors that cost the most marks.

  Academic writing 10 min read APA 7 · MLA 9 · Chicago · Harvard

• Revision techniques that work — and the popular ones that don't

  Retrieval practice, spaced repetition and interleaving, why they feel worse than the techniques that don't work, and why re-reading and highlighting fail. Includes a method for building a revision timetable backwards from your real exam dates that survives past the first week.

  Study skills 11 min read Exam preparation

• How to tell a good free study resource from a bad one

  Six checks before you commit hours to a resource: who published it and what they want, whether it matches your curriculum, whether it is current, whether it shows its working, whether you can actually use it, and what the licence permits. Also covers unofficial "past papers" and free-that-isn't.

  Research skills 10 min read Open licences

Why these guides exist

Our resource directory points at material published by government education departments and examination authorities. But a link is only useful if you know what to do with it, and a lot of the questions students have sit in the gaps between official documents — nobody's ministry publishes a guide to converting grades between countries, or a comparison of referencing styles, because it is not any one ministry's job.

These guides fill those gaps. They are written to be genuinely useful on their own terms rather than as wrappers around links, and where we are describing something that varies by jurisdiction we say so instead of generalising.

Related tools and pages

Guides are reviewed periodically and carry a review date. If you spot something out of date or wrong, please tell us — corrections are the most useful thing we receive.