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Some Oxbridge questions...

Hi,

I'm thinking of applying to Oxbridge next year (for maths, of course :cool:

), and I have several question regardless these two universities.

1) How much of a variety each uni has in terms of courses? I mean, how much of your courses are you able to choose yourself? (I would prefer something like Stats (40%) + ~~100000% Calculus~~ pure)

2) How the student is graded at each university? I kinda know system Cam uses, but still. And, is any of them more advantageous to a student?

3) What the workload is like? I'm still not sure, that I will be able to keep up with the workload/difficulty of the course (even passing STEP's seems doubtful to me). And I don't want to do 24/7 maths. Actually, I would like to get some time to learn a new language (german rocks) while being at university, and manage at least 2.1, of course.

4) How much of attention does Ox pay to GCSE? Because mine are not good (AABBCC, done in 1 year, though)

In case:
A-level Maths - 584/600 (A*)
As physics - 278/300 (A)
As economics - 150/200 (B)

Thanks, for all your responses. :colondollar:

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 1

Mr Dactyl

Original post by Dog4444

Hi,

I'm thinking of applying to Oxbridge next year (for maths, of course :cool:

Both universities give this information more clearly on their websites than anyone on here could.

Original post by Dog4444

2) How the student is graded at each university? I kinda know system Cam uses, but still. And, is any of them more advantageous to a student?

The Cambridge one is pretty arcane it's true, but it more or less does the job most years. Can't comment on Oxford.

Original post by Dog4444

3) What the workload is like? I'm still not sure, that I will be able to keep up with the workload/difficulty of the course (even passing STEP's seems doubtful to me). And I don't want to do 24/7 maths. Actually, I would like to get some time to learn a new language (german rocks) while being at university, and manage at least 2.1, of course.

Varies an awful lot, some people do loads some not much at all. Really quite hard to predict how much you have to do before you get there. It is more intense than any other UK maths degree though. Doing a new language would be ambitious.

Original post by Dog4444

4) How much of attention does Ox pay to GCSE? Because mine are not good (AABBCC, done in 1 year, though)

Not always that much for mathmos, but it's probably a disadvantage not to have A* in GCSE Maths.

bump

The only useful thing I can add is for question 1 at Cambridge. In your first year, you'll have no choice, doing 8 courses covering a wide range or pure and applied maths (and probability). In your second year, you have a bit of choice and can start to specialise a little bit, although you'll still have some breadth - you'll probably take over half of the available courses. In your third year there is a very wide range of courses - for every course you take, there will be four or five that you don't.