Edexcel Maths M3

you say everybody did well but this is a tiny sample size
most people at my school who did it didn't seem to have done very well
i thought it was a pretty average paper, would expect A boundary to be high 50s

yeah I agree. Personally, I thought it was an awful exam!
Completely messed up the 9 mark lambda one and couldn't do the SHM proof which should have been easy! ughh I really hope the grade boundaries are low...

I hope you right

It isn't S2. I don't think the boundaries are ever that high for M3. Plus I wouldn't use the TSR cohort as the basis of that assumption. One thing I've found from doing past papers is that it's very difficult to easily tell how hard a paper is. In January 2009 you needed 63 for an A, in June 2009 you needed 48 for an A, yet I don't think the June 2009 paper is any harder than the January one. It's very difficult to tell.

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yeah the lambda one will have caught a lot of people out i would think
lots of people will have forgotten the epe it has at the end when the spring is compressed
also, from speaking to people at school, they all seemed to find the particle fired into space question hard also

I like anyone else would like to be the grade boundaries as low as possible (since I did get some wrong), but the truth of the matter is there werent anything tricky which you wouldnt expect from a standard M3 paper..

ok 65 might seem harsh 60 then

I like anyone else would like to be the grade boundaries as low as possible (since I did get some wrong), but the truth of the matter is there werent anything tricky which you wouldnt expect from a standard M3 paper..

ok 65 might seem harsh 60 then

I know, but as I said, it's very difficult to predict with M3. I don't think anything in the June 2009 paper was unexpected for M3, yet you only needed 48 for an A.

My answers agree. But I got lambda wrong- I thought it was a string, hence slack!
How many marks do you reckon that is worth, 3-4?

Anyway some advice to all- if you have time at the end of the exam just dump all of your numerical answers into your calculator memory

i see you're off to durham
just out of interest, which college and what are you doing there?

Well the method marks are all conditional. Just saying... Maybe you'll get a few B marks.

Well, the only part I missed out on was the EPE stored at the end. Meh, we'll see.

Personally I found the paper stupidly easy in some parts, stupidly hard in others.

For some reason I got the centre of mass to be 4l from the top, but I think my mass of a cone was wrong. I was expecting it on the formula sheet, and my integration method came up with an unexpected figure (obviously wrong). I'll let that rest on exam nerves.

I wasn't overly bothered about the exam though, I don't need Further Maths for my uni offer, and as I taught myself the maths modules, I did this one half heartedly. Same for FP2, which I haven't even finished learning (nor looked at for 4 months) and the exam is in just over a week.

Sorry, for some reason i assumed you treated a SHM thing as a string instead of a spring; just ignore what i said before; im to tired to be giving opinions

Yeah, I think I screwed up in a few places. I don't know whether to expect an A/B or a C/D in this paper. I can't remember my exact answers, so kudos to those who can just regurgitate it like that!

As for the self-teaching - I was the only person in the year who wanted to do FM. Shame really, because FP1 is really good. FP2 isn't as interesting, I have to admit.

As soon as I walked out, I just chilled and got my mind off the exam, then started to revise some chemistry. Once the exam is over, its over :P