The Oxford TSA thread - 2014 applicants

Hey guys can you pls suggest any good books for TSA Oxford ( other than the Rhinking skills by butterworth)


Posted from TSR Mobile

Some people have been known to use things like UKCAT books etc. to prepare as they also test similar characteristics but in a different wAy....

personally I didn't bother with that approach, just read thinking skills for as much as it was worth and tbh quite enjoyed it, and did every past paper. I also done a few of the TSA Cambridge multiple choice papers as they were very similar and so provided good practise....

wrote a couple TSA essays and critically analysed with people who were also applying so we could get each others opinions on our writing style....

Not the perfect answer to your question and somewhat tangential but hope it helps anyways

Hey,
I am from Germany and I will apply for experimental psychology therefore I will take the TSA in November but unfortunately I do not know how to structure a critical thinking essay. At the moment I am reading the recommended books. I have also done some past papers but with the essay I am stuck. Do you have any tips for me? I would be grateful for every advice!

Hi,

The Multiple Choice is, as far as I am aware having spoken to the tutors, much more important than the essay. However that was when I asked tutors for Economics and Management, so perhaps it would be different.

Personally I just went for a fairly simple and standard structure:

Opening,
2-4 paragraphs exploring the question,
Closing.

tried to come up with some solid points for and against the argument to question normally made and that was it really! Also remember to focus on quality over quantity. 1 page well written beats 2 pages of waffle hands down

I'm soooo glad that the multiple choices are far more important than the essay, since as an international student doing the IB, I might not be the strongest writer hihi ^^

Good luck to all who are applying!

Be prepared for a difficult but potentially very rewarding autumn term, as you are bombarded with work from all fronts:

finishing touches to the Personal Statement, TSA preparation, Interview preparation, Coursework, A2 Work in general... It was a really tough few months. I am not trying to scare you, just mentally prepare you for whats coming Just get on with it and knock things of the list one at a time.

As far as the TSA goes, I recommend "Thinking Skills" by John Butterworth and Geoff Thwaites.

If anyone has any questions then feel free to PM me or any other of the awesome people on TSR. I did the TSA and then went on to receive an offer for E&M from Keble College. Provided I make the grades I will be there next year!

Good luck once again

In terms of the TSA, what mark would you say is a 'very good' mark for an Oxord applicant?

The scale has been designed so that typical applicants to the most highly selective undergraduate university courses in the UK (who are by definition academically very able) will score around 60. The best applicants will score more highly, but 70 represents a comparatively high score and only a few very exceptional applicants will achieve scores higher than 80.

Hi!

I sat the TSA last November and now have an offer to study Philosophy and Linguistics at Balliol, so I thought I’d jump in to wish everybody good luck.

Theoretically, I think this is meant to be the kind of exam you ‘can’t prepare for’, which is possibly true to some extent, but people certainly manage to prepare for it and I would definitely recommend doing so. It might be worth trying to make a start on this before you go back to school/college if possible, to avoid interference with A2 work and/or UCAS. (I can’t actually remember when I started preparing so I don’t know how hypocritical that advice is…)

I would definitely recommend Butterworth and Thwaites’ “Thinking Skills” – fairly obvious suggestion since it’s the one recommended by the board, but I really did find it helpful. It has lots of sample questions and shows how to answer them rather than just giving answers, which I found particularly helpful.

Apart from that, past papers are your new best friends. For me, the most valuable aspect of my preparation was knowing what to expect when I turned over the paper – what kind of questions, and how long they were likely to take me. The same styles of question tend to turn up every year, so the more familiar you are with them the better. Having said that, there are a limited number of papers, so it wouldn’t necessarily be advisable to do them all now – I ended up reusing papers, but made sure there were a couple I hadn’t yet looked at to use as proper timed mocks a few days before I sat the paper. You can find very similar multiple choice questions elsewhere if you want more - I seem to remember one section of the BMAT being almost identical, and some Critical Thinking papers have similar kinds of questions too.

One thing I found quite useful when marking past papers was making a note of what kinds of questions I was getting wrong – looking at separate marks for Problem Solving and Critical Thinking, but also looking at the specific styles of questions. For me, it tended to be the more maths-y Problem Solving questions, since I’m doing four essay subjects at A-level and hadn’t had to do any maths since year 11. I ended up quizzing some more mathematically-minded friends on the best way to approach particular questions, as well as using the worked examples in the Thinking Skills book. Knowing which questions I was better/quicker at also came in handy when I had a couple of questions left at the end of the paper but not enough time to do both - I could just skim both and decide which I was more likely to be able to do in the time remaining.

Despite the fact that essays are supposedly my strong point, the essay was probably the bit I was most worried about, simply because I had no idea what to expect or what they would be looking for. All you can really do here is practise – I did a few of the past questions and also made up a few along the same lines. It’s definitely a matter of quality rather than quantity, and although you might not be able to get any concrete feedback from practise essays I think it’s worth taking the time to practise structuring such short and open ended questions. You could always ask teachers/friends/parents/whoever to look over what you’ve written afterwards if you wanted to – I know one of my friends asked an English teacher to have a look at some she’d done.

I feel as though I’m rambling excessively here without saying anything very helpful, so I’ll just stop now and add that I’m more than happy to answer any questions anybody may have on the TSA (or any other aspect of the application process for that matter). Best of luck, everybody! Don’t be scared of the TSA – the paper is actually pretty fun if you can forget what it's for!

EDIT: Having posted this I've realised how hideously long and unhelpful it is... Sorry.

Wow! Thank you sooo much! This is exactly what I needed! I was really confused on how i was going to prepare and I didn't know when I should start. Loads of people said you can't prepare for it but you proved them wrong so thank you!

It makes so much sense to start earlier come to think of it because A2/ ucas is going to take up a lot of time in September/October.

In terms of the exam - I wanted to know if time was a problem when you were taking it/ or practicing the test?
My biggest problem with every exam I have ever taken is my time management. Only after numerous practice tests has my time management improved. But as you said with the tsa there are only a few exams available.

Good luck to all who are applying!

Be prepared for a difficult but potentially very rewarding autumn term, as you are bombarded with work from all fronts:

finishing touches to the Personal Statement, TSA preparation, Interview preparation, Coursework, A2 Work in general... It was a really tough few months. I am not trying to scare you, just mentally prepare you for whats coming Just get on with it and knock things of the list one at a time.

As far as the TSA goes, I recommend "Thinking Skills" by John Butterworth and Geoff Thwaites.

If anyone has any questions then feel free to PM me or any other of the awesome people on TSR. I did the TSA and then went on to receive an offer for E&M from Keble College. Provided I make the grades I will be there next year!

Good luck once again

Hi!

I sat the TSA last November and now have an offer to study Philosophy and Linguistics at Balliol, so I thought I’d jump in to wish everybody good luck.

Theoretically, I think this is meant to be the kind of exam you ‘can’t prepare for’, which is possibly true to some extent, but people certainly manage to prepare for it and I would definitely recommend doing so. It might be worth trying to make a start on this before you go back to school/college if possible, to avoid interference with A2 work and/or UCAS. (I can’t actually remember when I started preparing so I don’t know how hypocritical that advice is…)

I would definitely recommend Butterworth and Thwaites’ “Thinking Skills” – fairly obvious suggestion since it’s the one recommended by the board, but I really did find it helpful. It has lots of sample questions and shows how to answer them rather than just giving answers, which I found particularly helpful.

Apart from that, past papers are your new best friends. For me, the most valuable aspect of my preparation was knowing what to expect when I turned over the paper – what kind of questions, and how long they were likely to take me. The same styles of question tend to turn up every year, so the more familiar you are with them the better. Having said that, there are a limited number of papers, so it wouldn’t necessarily be advisable to do them all now – I ended up reusing papers, but made sure there were a couple I hadn’t yet looked at to use as proper timed mocks a few days before I sat the paper. You can find very similar multiple choice questions elsewhere if you want more - I seem to remember one section of the BMAT being almost identical, and some Critical Thinking papers have similar kinds of questions too.

One thing I found quite useful when marking past papers was making a note of what kinds of questions I was getting wrong – looking at separate marks for Problem Solving and Critical Thinking, but also looking at the specific styles of questions. For me, it tended to be the more maths-y Problem Solving questions, since I’m doing four essay subjects at A-level and hadn’t had to do any maths since year 11. I ended up quizzing some more mathematically-minded friends on the best way to approach particular questions, as well as using the worked examples in the Thinking Skills book. Knowing which questions I was better/quicker at also came in handy when I had a couple of questions left at the end of the paper but not enough time to do both - I could just skim both and decide which I was more likely to be able to do in the time remaining.

Despite the fact that essays are supposedly my strong point, the essay was probably the bit I was most worried about, simply because I had no idea what to expect or what they would be looking for. All you can really do here is practise – I did a few of the past questions and also made up a few along the same lines. It’s definitely a matter of quality rather than quantity, and although you might not be able to get any concrete feedback from practise essays I think it’s worth taking the time to practise structuring such short and open ended questions. You could always ask teachers/friends/parents/whoever to look over what you’ve written afterwards if you wanted to – I know one of my friends asked an English teacher to have a look at some she’d done.

I feel as though I’m rambling excessively here without saying anything very helpful, so I’ll just stop now and add that I’m more than happy to answer any questions anybody may have on the TSA (or any other aspect of the application process for that matter). Best of luck, everybody! Don’t be scared of the TSA – the paper is actually pretty fun if you can forget what it's for!

EDIT: Having posted this I've realised how hideously long and unhelpful it is... Sorry.

What is EP?