The "Are my grades good enough for Maths..." Thread

That is what i call genius!

Are you still an undergrad at Cam?

I graduated around 20 years ago.

what were your a levels in??

Maths, Maths with Stats, Further Maths, Computing, Electronics, Physics.

(Yep, pretty 1-dimensional).

Nice... and what grades did you get.

Im in year 11 atm (going for results 25th and into a sixth form) and i have had a revelation that i want to succeed in medicine but i was wondering depending on university, my predicted grades are somewhere like this 2 A*s, 4 As and 3 Bs. I just realised how much im going to have to work during my A levels and im oddly excited to work? idk why its odd cause its never been like that in my life (10 weeks off has got to me) and just required your advice on everything and help. Thanks in advance

Hi, there's an equivalent thread for medicine at http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1311485&page=219

I'm not trying to shoot you down or anything but I think that I should mention that it's really difficult to make up for poor modules. When I applied, I had high 90s in all maths modules bar one (98% average from C1-C4 and thus an A* in A2 maths) and a good STEP I mark; from year 12 and in my feedback following the rejection I was told that my interview performance was pretty good too (8.5/10 average over the 3 interviews). The problem was that I had a B (73UMS) from M1 and possibly a B in an unrelated AS (Economics) to a lesser extent. I was pooled and then rejected; with the message being that they couldn't justify an offer due to my AS grades.

You're going to have to do some serious convincing to make up for an E.

I still can't believe that you were rejected by Cambridge. Surely you must be one of the strongest applicants to be rejected; and judging by the STEP threads for this year, you seem to have done better than most of the Cambridge-firmers.

It really makes me wonder what they are looking for exactly.

A lot of its put down to how well you can work something out that you havent done before. If you look at all the things the colleges say that they'll ask in the interviews then you'll see alot of them will give you questions that you won't have done at A-Level (or whatever) and they don't necesarilly expect you to get the answer, they just assess how well you can come up with a way of working it out.

It says they also accept people who have a general desire to learn and who are interested in the subject. You could have 152 a-levels at a* but if you don't want to learn maths then they most likely will not accept you.

Sorry, but you're in year 11. You have no experience of Cambridge admission as you've never been through it. I personally have and I can't see why he's been rejected (other than one B in an module, which surely should have been made up for).

If you read his post, he told us that his interviews were very good as suggested by his feedback so they obviously liked what they saw as far as his thinking process goes. Also, you don't seem to realise how hard it is to get a 1 in STEP, let alone in the first year. That in itself suggests to me that he would be capable of handling the high offer at least (obviously, I'm no admissions tutor but that's just how I see it). You also haven't been around here long or you would have noticed that he's one of the most enthusiastic young mathematicians here. I think he was just really unlucky but it's fair to say he will probably do well, wherever he ends up.

I still can't believe that you were rejected by Cambridge. Surely you must be one of the strongest applicants to be rejected; and judging by the STEP threads for this year, you seem to have done better than most of the Cambridge-firmers.

It really makes me wonder what they are looking for exactly.

I agree with this, if he got rejected than I would seriously likely to meet a more competent offer holder.

Don't be so stupid.

Okay fine there probably are more competent offer holders, all I'm saying is that from what I've seen, he seems more able than many I've seen.

I'm not trying to shoot you down or anything but I think that I should mention that it's really difficult to make up for poor modules. When I applied, I had high 90s in all maths modules bar one (98% average from C1-C4 and thus an A* in A2 maths) and a good STEP I mark; from year 12 and in my feedback following the rejection I was told that my interview performance was pretty good too (8.5/10 average over the 3 interviews). The problem was that I had a B (73UMS) from M1 and possibly a B in an unrelated AS (Economics) to a lesser extent. I was pooled and then rejected; with the message being that they couldn't justify an offer due to my AS grades.

You're going to have to do some serious convincing to make up for an E.

I did well at GCSEs 10A*s 2As distinction, then also self taught A level maths, didn't do so well at AS mainly because it was before i did GCSE!! (it was a school experiment because my teacher thought i'd be bored doing GCSE lessons). Grades were c1 94 c2 86 s1 85 c3 92 c4 96 s2 97

I have finished further maths, averaging low 90s in AS, no lower than 90 in each module. Again i should do better in the A2 modules, i felt they went better, mainly because i worked harder for them.

I also plan to do STEP and AEA, step 1 looks fairly straight forward ii and iii look very hard. And my ASs should be high As, maybe with a mid A in physics

My question is, are these are good enough for MMORSE? bear in mind that my personal statement will be 60% econ, 40% maths as i plan to apply to maths and econ at lse and straight economics elsewhere?