OCR Decision 1 - 24 May 2012

Usually you'd lose all the marks, but in this exam maybe the marks scheme will be more lenient.

For x+4y (3,1) gives 7 whereas (2,2) gives 10

Method marks are allocated for USING the algorithm so, if you've shown correct working, you may just lose the accuracy mark

Ahh, I really hope it is lenient :P if the mark scheme made up partly for the exam, it'd be nice :L

I expect that the provisional mark scheme will be adjusted once the live student responses are seen - particularly in light of the fact that so many students will have struggled to finish the exam, so usually 'hard' marks will be 'softened' to allow more students to access them. (This is one of the reasons that teachers advise you to put something rather than nothing!)

Ooh I never knew that they actually looked at what people are actually saying! Awesome, and seeing as I haven't found anyone who said it was easy, it seems likely thanks so much, that reassures me a little. Any guesses as to what ums I'd get for 60/72??

high 90s, maybe 100 if youre lucky and the boundary is like 47 for and A and 42 for a B then itd be 57 for 100, i think the boundary will be around there tbh

Okay cool thank you I was guessing around 50/72 will be an A, but we shall see, hope you did okay?

yeah, i doubt itll be much higher than that, it seems very few people even finished, looks good like 64-66/72 i think so if the grade boundaries are as low as they look like they're going to be it could be 100

Yeah exactly, let's hope they're low. And wow, that's what I guessed I had before the mark scheme came up.... I honestly can't remember some of the answers I wrote and now I'm getting a little worried.... hence why I'm asking what 60 would be and wow, that would be 100 normally I swear so you've got a really good chance, congrats

hope it goes well for you too

Hey, for question 5 V) the marksceme says to add 30 and 90 but if you add 30 and 90 to W you only add one arc as the 90 arc uses the 30 arc. Surely this means it's not 30 and 90 but 30 and 170 or something...
Anyone care to shed any light?

This is what I thought too, it confused me by saying refer to the table because that included indirect arcs, whereas surely to do the algorithm, after constructing the minimum connector, you add the 2 smallest arcs from W... not the 2 smallest distances which would include one indirect one.... really the question should've asked to refer to the diagram if we're right if any of the teachers could clear this up for us, that'd be great

I heard this too when we went to speak to the Cambridge (Churchill College) Admissions Tutor. And the interview process and serious implications of it is why I'm not choosing Oxford. :P

I know this is off topic but was this 95% average across relevant subjects or just Maths? Thanks and best of luck!

Essentially, from my 3 visits to cambridge presentations, I can give you what I've been told.
1) the average ums for students at Cambridge already is 95 UMS. But they stressed this was an average, so of course you're going to have people either side. Not sure whether this was for all relevant subjects or like maths and further maths if doing maths...
2) statistically speaking, if you have 95 UMS across all relevant subjects... for me, I do maths, further maths, physics and history, and they wouldn't care about what I got in history... you will have a 3/4 chance of getting in, essentially this is because people will get eliminated at the interviews
3) if you don't get +95 in everything, don't worry, they tell us this is to stop the people with like averages of 70-80 from applying because it will be a waste of both theirs and your time... if you have 3 A's, you're good enough to apply.

Hope that helps, I can give you my notes on the presentation that they gave if you want some more advice thanks, and good luck to you too, btw, what subject are you thinking of studying?

Thank you very much, that was a help. Okay, that's calmed me down after this Decisions paper! I thought I didn't do particularly well but I average 99% from C1, C2 and M1 in January. I'm planning to study Maths but I'm not 100% sure which college yet that I'm applying to, it's hard to decide. How about you?

This is what I thought too, it confused me by saying refer to the table because that included indirect arcs, whereas surely to do the algorithm, after constructing the minimum connector, you add the 2 smallest arcs from W... not the 2 smallest distances which would include one indirect one.... really the question should've asked to refer to the diagram if we're right if any of the teachers could clear this up for us, that'd be great

No worries, the d1 paper was particularly weird :L oh wow, nice job there I did C1 last year and basically because you can breeze gcses, I thought you could breeze C1, which pisses me off now, but yeah, I got 95... especially as C1 is quite easy, I wish I could've got 100. But anyway, we should see what kinda results we've got in august me too! Woo maths! Yeah, I've decided but going to the open days really helped me