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Do I still have time to learn FP3?

Since last September, I've been teaching myself A-Level Maths and Further Maths from the internet and from the official Edexcel textbooks with the goal of sitting the exams as an independent candidate and obtaining A* grades in just 1 year.

Unfortunately, because I did not buckle down and start seriously learning until January (I'd barely finished C2), I realised there was not enough time to do both A Levels. As such, I dropped 3 modules from Further Maths, settling for an AS in it instead.

Now, I know that for AS Further Maths, only FP1 is required and so the best thing to do would be drop both FP2 and FP3 to give myself an easier time, but grades are only secondary for me -- I see them as nothing more than a fancy piece of paper. My entire motivation is in learning maths for the sake of learning, and to learn it as fast as I possibly can and with as much understanding as possible such that an A* grade naturally follows.

I'm currently working my way through FP2 and will hopefully finish my first pass on learning the content by the end of this week. Once I'm done with it, I'll only have FP3 and S2 left to learn. I cannot drop S2 as I need it for A2 Maths, so this leaves FP3 as the only module I can drop to free up time. My question is, do I have enough time to stick with FP3 considering I'll be spending up to 5 hours a day on studying -- all of which will be from the internet and from my textbook? (I am not in school so I have no teachers) Or should I drop it and do it next year alongside the next batch of A Levels I will start?
Original post by Quivai
Since last September, I've been teaching myself A-Level Maths and Further Maths from the internet and from the official Edexcel textbooks with the goal of sitting the exams as an independent candidate and obtaining A* grades in just 1 year.

Unfortunately, because I did not buckle down and start seriously learning until January (I'd barely finished C2), I realised there was not enough time to do both A Levels. As such, I dropped 3 modules from Further Maths, settling for an AS in it instead.

Now, I know that for AS Further Maths, only FP1 is required and so the best thing to do would be drop both FP2 and FP3 to give myself an easier time, but grades are only secondary for me -- I see them as nothing more than a fancy piece of paper. My entire motivation is in learning maths for the sake of learning, and to learn it as fast as I possibly can and with as much understanding as possible such that an A* grade naturally follows.

I'm currently working my way through FP2 and will hopefully finish my first pass on learning the content by the end of this week. Once I'm done with it, I'll only have FP3 and S2 left to learn. I cannot drop S2 as I need it for A2 Maths, so this leaves FP3 as the only module I can drop to free up time. My question is, do I have enough time to stick with FP3 considering I'll be spending up to 5 hours a day on studying -- all of which will be from the internet and from my textbook? (I am not in school so I have no teachers) Or should I drop it and do it next year alongside the next batch of A Levels I will start?


Sounds to me like you already know the answer to this.

If you are stretching yourself too thinly to give each the focus they require then you need to do something.

I would suggest you slow your learning a little to learn more in more depth rather than to cover more breadth.

Have you thought about booking up with a tutor, if only for an hour or two either to help you on areas you find tougher or to help you assess how you are doing?

Hope this helps and best of luck whatever yuk decide.


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Quivai
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Honestly, I'm torn between dropping FP3 or soldiering on. On one hand, dropping it will give me precious extra time which I can use on mastering the other modules, but on the other hand, I want to learn FP3 as soon as possible and have the optimistic belief that I can pull it off.

My current learning style is to first study and understand the maths involved, and then to do the exercises on any area I feel needs working on. Afterwards, I review the material every now and then, and do more exercises on anything that I feel rusty at. I feel this approach gives me both breadth and depth at a reasonably fast pace.

As for a tutor, it's not really an option for me. I don't have much in the way of income, and any tutors will quickly burn through my savings. Rather than that, the internet has served me quite well thus far. When I started learning maths for A Levels, I had to relearn everything from scratch as I hadn't touched any maths for over 8 years (I didn't even remember how to work with fractions!). Despite that, the abundance of free resources on the internet has allowed me to quickly go from knowing only arithmetic and basic algebra to being able to actually understand and do FP2 material. It hasn't been easy, I'll admit. Calculus, in particular, has been extremely frustrating to try and understand at a deep level for various reasons.

However, despite my praise for internet resources, I will have to concede that there are far fewer resources for Further Maths than there are for Maths. Regardless, I reckon there should be enough to be able to learn FP3. The only question is how well the resources for FP3 lend themselves to being able to learn fast...

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