PAT - November 6th 2014

I think that score is around what I got, so don't lose hope!
The road to reality.. let's say, it's harder to understand than GEB... it's very dense I'm struggling tbh! 90% goes straight over my head, especially what he was saying about holomorphic functions and Riemann geometry. Hyperbolic geometry was a brain-twister as well; still don't fully understand what he said I haven't got very far with the book, as you can tell! Needless to say, I'll be reading it frantically the next two weeks...

That sounds quite nice actually, I have the e-book, but my e-reader is terrible and it struggles to show the book, so after reading like 50 pages with constant hangs and undecipherable text I gave up, guess I'll pick it up again!
And the difficulty even of the more pop-sci books sometimes makes me lose hope - Brian Greene's 'The Elegant Universe' has tons of pages filled to the brim with heavy topology and I felt my brain overheat while reading those

Get the real book! Paper books are better than electronic ones apparently you retain more information as well, though you wouldn't have known that seeing my appalling comprehension of The Road to Reality
I think the problem with popsci books is that they try to skim over things which require really in-depth understanding, which even The Road to Reality does, regardless of its size. I can't imagine how it became a bestseller

Get the real book! Paper books are better than electronic ones apparently you retain more information as well, though you wouldn't have known that seeing my appalling comprehension of The Road to Reality
I think the problem with popsci books is that they try to skim over things which require really in-depth understanding, which even The Road to Reality does, regardless of its size. I can't imagine how it became a bestseller

Unfortunately it's way too expensive for me and due to the lack of any good universities in a ~100 kilometre radius my local library is terrible (most of its science books come from the '60s-'70s with some '50 and '80 books, back when Poland actually cared about its educational system, and they're almost all textbooks :-( ), but I can always read it on screen :-)
Yeah, I heard some people criticise pop-sci books quite harshly (how they're 'not science' and all that jazz), but I think they're quite good when it comes to providing generic understanding of physical phenomenona and just making people interested in the subject! And then, from what I've read of The Road to Reality, it seems to incorporate fairly advanced maths into what it depicts, so I'd say it's nice and dandy

Say that to them, why don't you?

Oh god, just checked the mathematics tutors at Wadham.. one of them is Roger Penrose. I mentioned the Road to Reality in my PS!! ****! I hope he doesn't interview me

Felt like I'd messed up the PAT but just got an interview ( Physics and Philosophy) very happy. Just wanted to say to anyone who's doubting themselves don't count yourself out...good luck all.

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He's an Emeritus fellow so the chances of him interviewing are slim to none.

Felt like I'd messed up the PAT but just got an interview ( Physics and Philosophy) very happy. Just wanted to say to anyone who's doubting themselves don't count yourself out...good luck all.

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Which college did you apply to

Somerville

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Out of curiosity, does anyone know if engineering has a different cutoff to physics?

Cutoffs are determined on the basis of the performance of that year's applicants, so engineering's cutoff will be determined by how well engineering applicants performed and similarly for physics. Obviously this means the cutoffs can be vastly different, it's just not very likely. There may be differences in the weightings given to the physics and maths part of the PAT which could influence further differences.