EPQ on top of 5 A-levels

AlphaMolecule

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(edited 9 years ago)

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Reply 1

Chlorophile

Original post by AlphaMolecule

Is it worth doing the EPQ on top of 5 A-levels. My subjects are Physics, Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry and Mandarin. Although it would be interesting and perhaps useful, would the workload be too much? I want to to Natsci at Cambridge (best case scenario).

Are you in Year 12? It sort of depends really, you're the only one who can gauge how much time you have. The thing about Cambridge (assuming you're in Year 12) is that as you probably know, they're sticklers for UMS. That's one of their mean selection metrics and EPQ or not, if your UMS is substandard, you're in trouble. Doing an EPQ is definitely a valuable use of time but it's not a replacement for stellar UMS. Personally, I think taking 5 AS subjects is already pretty absurd (you could well be doing yourself more harm than good by taking 5 but it's too late for that now) so taking an EPQ on top of that is not something I'd recommend, unless you're literally absolutely breezing through everything and you've got tons of spare time. The EPQ really is what you make it but if you do it properly, it can get very, very time consuming.

Does your school have an option to take it after your AS exams? If it does, I'd do that.

drop mandarin

Are you AlphaNick?

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Reply 4

Tarte Tatin

I don't think it will be that impressive and it's probably not worth all of the effort. Leading universities will be more impressed if do extra reading on your chosen degree subject.

Reply 5

Marcusroye98

Hello, at the moment 4 AS is enough for me and i am just about managing the work. However, i am also doing the epq but i have not done anything for it. Is it worth doing the epq?

Reply 6

C0balt

Original post by AlphaMolecule

Yes

lol how come did you change name?

Reply 7

BCMFM16

Original post by AlphaMolecule

You could be called Alpha glucose... :bl:

Reply 8

Raman9

If I were you, I would not worry with an EPQ... Instead, since you want to do NatSci at Cambridge, I would change Mandarin with Biology.

Reply 9

Chlorophile

Original post by AlphaMolecule

people were identifying me :ninja:

But surely those people are going to realise that you've changed your name?

Reply 10

Chlorophile

Original post by AlphaMolecule

people have bad memories and they dont care that much about this anyway, I just did it incase some others find it

Your new name's better imo but you should really change your avatar to a helium nucleus to make your username make more sense.

Reply 11

C0balt

Original post by Chlorophile

Your new name's better imo but you should really change your avatar to a helium nucleus to make your username make more sense.

That's EXACTLY what I've been thinking since I realised Nick's namechange

Reply 12

solarplexus

what were your gcses/past grades?

Reply 13

BBeyond

I thought you were doing History, not Mandarin? How are you finding 6th form? Not spoke to you in ages :tongue:

Reply 14

_-_Ella_-_

Original post by AlphaMolecule

If it is related to what you want to do then yes (as long as you have the time). It could give you something to talk about in the interview.

Reply 15

Chlorophile

Original post by AlphaMolecule

I don't want to look like too much of a nerd :/ and I didn't really intend for it to be interpreted as an alpha particle... just alpha because that name has some history with me and molecule to show that I enjoy the sciences.

How would a He nucleus be any less nerdy than the nucleus you have at the moment?

Reply 16

BBeyond

Original post by AlphaMolecule

Yeah I switched History for Mandarin, because the Mandarin course is basically 1/4 history as it has an essay on Chinese culture, and the topic we do is the Forming of the Peoples' Republic of China which is quite interesting.

And yeah I'm good :smile:

I am quite enjoying physics and chemistry right now, maths is quite hard because of the pace but yeah its all good :smile:

and I like the fact that we're allowed outside of school now, we go for a Chinese every friday lunch time and its really nice compared to canteen food :/ How's it going for you?

Fair play, mandarin looks really confusing to me :frown:

Is it as simple as say spanish or french once you learn the basics?

Chemistry is pretty boss :cool:

I probably enjoy chem the most atm closely followed by maths/fm, econ is pretty meh :frown:

Yeah it's sick being allowed out of school, although I eat way too much fish and chips these days now :tongue:

our canteen food is pretty good tbf, they sell sweets, soft drinks and other good stuff :biggrin:

Reply 17

Chlorophile

Original post by AlphaMolecule

because it implies that ive gone to the effort to make people think "oh wow hes actually got an alpha particle as his picture", which is a bit sad

Highly respectable in my opinion (not to mention the fact that the only people who would get the joke are nerds anyway) but oh well.

Show off....

Original post by AlphaMolecule

Well the only difficulty in my opinion is writing it, speaking it is pretty easy because its very regular and conjugation is simple. I found it easier than Spanish at GCSE... but I guess they don't expect you to learn it to a similarly advanced level, but even then as long as you know how to write the characters its not that hard... although at A-level there are lots of double-meaning words and you emphasise the accent on the characters..

But its probably one of the easier subjects I'm taking... further maths is hard, I get the stuff its just the tests we've been given are miles harder than any past paper question or Edexcel book question I've seen. Physics and Chemistry are easy for me though..

ah fair enough, i hated french GCSE, just couldn't be bothered with it for most of the year so did crap in the coursework and made it impossible to get an a* overall :frown:

what modules are you doing in maths at the moment, we've finished c1 and are halfway through m1 and s1, all has been pretty easy so far. yeah chem is fairly easy, only annoying this is learning all the definitions :frown:

Original post by sonysharp11

Show off....

jealous.