Further maths advice

I'll be starting my maths degree at Bristol in 2 weeks time. I got A*A*AA in Maths/Further/Chemistry/History at A2. Oh, i got an A in EPQ as well but I wouldn't recommend doing an EPQ for maths.

My AS grades weren't as good. I got an offer from St Andrews (probably the 'best' uni i got one from) as well but upon visiting (something i recommend doing) I didn't like it. In contrast, Bristol (somewhere i applied on something of a whim) which i wasn't even going to visit at first i loved. Its a really nice city, imo.

Besides which, you can go to any number of universities in the UK and you'll get a good degree. We are very lucky to be (probably) the best country when it comes to higher education even if it does cost 9,000 a year.

I also hate London (don't mean to offend any cockneys or whatever but your city is ****). LSE, Imperial all of them are just, urgh, I don't like them. Every time I've been to London there is a horrible atmosphere of superiority and people treat me like I'm retarded.

My EPQ was done in statistical analysis. It was contentious whether or not I'd be able to do it since it might have overlapped with S1 and S2 (though it didn't in any way and my EPQ coordinator was an idiot). I ended up doing it on the correlation between people's socio-economic background and crime (a very obvious correlation but it was just an excuse for me to play with the FBI's data in statistics programs.)

After AS i had a full A* in single maths (the way my college did it FM completed single in the first year and then did all of FM in the 2nd).

I got BBC in chemistry/history/economics.

What did i do differently? I actually revised when it came to exam time and took my A level seriously. I didn't revise at all for me GCSEs and i breezed them so when it came to AS i assumed i could do the same (I had been getting A/Bs pretty much all year). However, this wasn't a good idea. My C in economics was really shocking, however, because all my mocks had been A/B like my other (non-maths) subjects.

Either way, it was a shake up i needed. Its something of a cop-out excuse but i do blame GCSEs for being too easy. My whole life I've always been told "Oh, this next test is really hard so you'd better revise" and they had never been anything close to a challenge so when it came to A levels i ignored people when they said "Oh, this next test is really hard so you'd better revise." Its my own fault at the end of the day though. I am glad in a way because it made me get my **** together and it hasn't hurt me really. (I did have to give up on Oxford though, a shame because MAT wasn't hard and I think if my AS results were better I could've had a decent chance)

Maths was the only thing i cared about and ever did any work outside of lessons for (besides homework, if you don't do homework at A level you look like such a petty child) because it was the only subject I took seriously. Everything else was a hobby. I knew my stuff when it came to history and chemistry. My history teacher often said "your essay had the most facts etc in it but your exam technique sucks." and it was true but I didn't care. I read the history books and stuff like a hobby. I never made notes on them and I only really knew the stuff I was interested in (kinda screwed me when Lanfranc came up since hes a boring tosser (that word ok?) and i knew only barebones about him).

Chemistry was the same. I like chemistry but I never did any past papers. It didn't help that I did OCR are just about the most pedantic exam board (you'd drop a mark for putting 2 electrons instead of a pair of electrons on some papers). I'd always lose marks on the spectroscopy questions because I'd do some vague squiggles which meant nothing to anyone who wasn't me and then just put the answer rather than formally laying out my work.

Oh, feel free to take any ideas from my EPQ. It took forever to come up with. I know someone did it on cryptography and apparently that's a 'common' maths EPQ. However, I didn't get any concessions for my EPQ and I do think it was a waste of time. Its nice to have something to brag about but at the end of the day nobody will care in 3 months time. EPQ is tailored towards humanities imo and isn't suited for maths. About 50% of your EPQ mark doesn't even come from your actual report and comes from your 'self evaluation', 'targets', 'deadlines' and 'review' which really annoyed me since i saw that kind of thing as pointless nonsense. (I actually made up my deadlines etc completely since I wrote my entire report the weekend before the deadline. I had already done all the statistics and stuff but hadn't touched my report.) I do value the skills i learned though. R (a statistics program) is used by my university and I think quite a few others use it too so I'm glad to have an understanding of it. There are lots of statistics online and crime is a good choice since the FBI publish a heck of a lot of crime statistics to play with.

I found economics boring and dull. The actual content really isn't that hard imo. A lot of it (at AS, cant speak for A2) seemed like a lot of fairly standard responses. I've forgotten a lot of it now but i think the reason i bombed in it after getting fairly consistent 80% in mocks was because as soon as term time ended i didn't touch economics. I think i read the spec through on the bus to the exam because i hated it.

I dropped economics after the shame of a C. I set myself high targets. I don't think i would have been able to look people in the face after getting that (I am aware this is an overreaction but its just how i am). I'm glad my teacher left after my AS year because I think seeing him would have given me a pang of pain every time.

I'm not bitter about missing out on Oxford. It was really nice when I visited and I would have loved to go there but I consider it just punishment for my arrogance. I'm content with where I'm going and never expected Oxford (I don't think you should ever expect oxbridge because you will more than likely be disappointed). I'll be damned if i know what i want to do after uni. Hopefully, i want to have a decent amount of money and a job i don't hate.

With regards to EPQ. I know some people who were constantly working on their EPQ, most people doing one tbh. Whenever I'd see them they'd be beavering away on their laptop adjusting their power point or whatever. At the other end, there is myself. I wouldn't copy my ethic with regards to EPQ because I did not expect an A (was hoping for B at best and realistically expecting a D or C). I did all the practical work for my EPQ pretty quickly once I'd gotten into it and then wrote my report the weekend before it was due (in its entirety).

Playing with FBI data was quite fun (and you can draw some questionable conclusions for pretty much whatever you want) and learning R was nice since it'd been a while since I'd done any coding. So this didn't feel like it took much effort. Idk how long it actually took me to do this part because it wasn't really like doing work. I think you can do the majority of your research and stuff in a week or 2 if you actually go at it. A lot of people seemed to constantly be working on their EPQ but never really doing any work. They'd have it in front of them or they'd have a source but they wouldn't really be doing anything. They'd just be re-reading it or making notes when they already had too much content. EPQ is only 5000 words which really isn't many (it sounds like it is, esp to a STEM student, but its not). If you've got something to say then 5000 words is easy.

However, I was terrible at keeping a log book (I made it up almost entirely) and my report was written all at once at the last minute. Don't do this. Something I've come to believe is that if something is worth doing then its worth doing well. Half-****ing things isn't worth it. ~50% of your mark doesn't even come from your report because the exercise isn't about the report. The purpose of EPQ is to try and get you to practice self study and research skills. Personally, i loathe timetables and schedules which is not good for EPQ because you get a decent amount of marks for setting and sticking to timetables and schedules (i suppose i lied and said i did but its probably not a good idea to do this).

A huge problem I had with wanting to do a maths based EPQ is that you're expected to use at least 12 sources and evaluate their viewpoints. Maths doesn't really have opinions because its generally right or wrong and there's not much to discuss. If i didn't have an ethical element to my EPQ then I wouldn't have been able to do this at all (fortunately, with the whole black lives matter movement and stuff it was easy to get lots of angry opinions and contrast them to the data I had. I think having this ethical argument really was my saving grace since that's what EPQ is about). The vast majority of my report wasn't about maths at all which is why I don't think it helps with maths applications.

However, for engineering or physics i can see it being useful. I think and engineering EPQ about designing (and probably making) a thing would work very well and could go down excellently in an interview/personal statement. This would, however, actually be a lot of work (i imagine)

Argh, I'm not happy with this post - it's all over the place and unfocused. Oh well, I hope it helps in some way. Basically, I don't recommend EPQ for maths - it's not a natural fit and you likely wont get concessions for it. EPQ can very realistically be completely finished in 3 weeks if you work for a few hours most days but its not supposed to be. The purpose of an EPQ isn't the report - its the process. So while it isn't too much work its still work and I don't think it helps.