Making the choice between Further maths for A level
Hello everyone,
I hope everyone is well!
As many people i am in the same boat of being between GCSES and A levels enjoying my lush holiday but today I had my sixth form induction session which opened my eyes a little bit.
I have been passionate about Maths for about a year now after knuckling down to make sure i got an A* in my maths GCSE. I was always locked on doing F maths as its the only subject i am purely interested in.
During my induction lesson i was constantly reminded that it will be a humongous amount of work and will require a huge amount of hours.
My teacher was also very happy to pile on pressure as well which lead to some of the class boffins to in fact back out of doing further maths straight after the lesson.
But i am worried as i am not much of the 'no swot' person who gets A*s no matter what as i only got high grades in maths near the exam dates.
I'm not hugely lazy and i do find maths very interesting but i just feel clueless of what its really going to be like next year and i am unsure if i will be able mange the HUGE work load.I enjoy maths but its just i'm not sure if i'm the kind of person who can manage the work load, i feel like I have not really given my self a chance to find out if I can.
I was hoping some one would be able to give me some guidance and help me decide if i should follow this through?
I hope everyone is well!
As many people i am in the same boat of being between GCSES and A levels enjoying my lush holiday but today I had my sixth form induction session which opened my eyes a little bit.
I have been passionate about Maths for about a year now after knuckling down to make sure i got an A* in my maths GCSE. I was always locked on doing F maths as its the only subject i am purely interested in.
During my induction lesson i was constantly reminded that it will be a humongous amount of work and will require a huge amount of hours.
My teacher was also very happy to pile on pressure as well which lead to some of the class boffins to in fact back out of doing further maths straight after the lesson.
But i am worried as i am not much of the 'no swot' person who gets A*s no matter what as i only got high grades in maths near the exam dates.
I'm not hugely lazy and i do find maths very interesting but i just feel clueless of what its really going to be like next year and i am unsure if i will be able mange the HUGE work load.I enjoy maths but its just i'm not sure if i'm the kind of person who can manage the work load, i feel like I have not really given my self a chance to find out if I can.
I was hoping some one would be able to give me some guidance and help me decide if i should follow this through?
I think your teacher might be exaggerating a bit! It's more work than GCSE, but humongous amount of work is a bit of an overstatement!
If you're passionate about maths and find it interesting, then take further maths. If you get to September and feel it's too much work for you, I'm sure you'll be allowed to change it for a different subject.
If you're passionate about maths and find it interesting, then take further maths. If you get to September and feel it's too much work for you, I'm sure you'll be allowed to change it for a different subject.
It could also depend on how your college runs the further maths course. I know mine set it up so we did the whole normal Maths A Level in the first year, and then Further Maths in the second year, which allowed people who perhaps weren't as confident with their maths to opt to do just an AS in Further Maths. The other way of doing things would be a normal setup of doing both at AS Level in the first year, and so on, which you could then also see how comfortable you feel about it. Your options do stay open, and the teachers are there to help you and are probably making sure that they get people on the course who really want to do maths and don't want everyone to turn around to them later on in the year(s) and say "You never told us it would be this hard!" or something else along those lines.
I got an easy A* in GCSE, because I found maths simple at that level, didn't need to revise much, etc. In normal maths, Cores 1 and 2 were alright, as long as you did plenty of past papers close to exam time and got into the rhythm of the questions (at least it's like that with OCR, don't know if that makes a difference). For Cores 3 and 4 (again, normal maths), it's very much the same technique, as long as you can understand the basic principles and then apply them without them telling you exactly what to do (knowing which techniques to use, etc) then you should get along fine with it.
Further Maths is basically another step up, although it is doable. Sometimes it's just less obvious as to what techniques to use when they ask, but the exams are usually nicely spaced apart, which allows you to focus on past papers non-stop for about a day or so for just that one module (which, I've realised is the best way I can revise). It really is just a matter of being able to remember the content and then applying it with only some hints and stuff. Doing the past papers help because you know what they asking when they phrase things in a certain way.
I remember when the Core 3 and 4 mocks were going on in my college (those are normal maths modules), and I didn't revise at all for them, didn't really think about them at all, to be honest, which was what I was used to doing (I know, it's a very bad habit, I'm glad to say I've later seen the light and now revise for exams!) and ended up getting Es in both of them, because I'd forgotten all of the content and didn't know what they wanted when asking certain questions. Using examsolutions (online video lessons) I covered all the content in a week, defamiliarised myself with the modules, and squeezed in a few past papers before the re-mocks the next week. Needless to say, I didn't have much of a social life at that particular moment in time. Did the re-mocks, got over 80% in both of them, so two As, at least.
Moral of the story is: Keep up to date with the course content, don't let it all build up for you to do last minute, and you won't end up having to spend hours and hours on end practically relearning the course in your spare time.
Whoops, got carried away there, sorry for the essay!
I got an easy A* in GCSE, because I found maths simple at that level, didn't need to revise much, etc. In normal maths, Cores 1 and 2 were alright, as long as you did plenty of past papers close to exam time and got into the rhythm of the questions (at least it's like that with OCR, don't know if that makes a difference). For Cores 3 and 4 (again, normal maths), it's very much the same technique, as long as you can understand the basic principles and then apply them without them telling you exactly what to do (knowing which techniques to use, etc) then you should get along fine with it.
Further Maths is basically another step up, although it is doable. Sometimes it's just less obvious as to what techniques to use when they ask, but the exams are usually nicely spaced apart, which allows you to focus on past papers non-stop for about a day or so for just that one module (which, I've realised is the best way I can revise). It really is just a matter of being able to remember the content and then applying it with only some hints and stuff. Doing the past papers help because you know what they asking when they phrase things in a certain way.
I remember when the Core 3 and 4 mocks were going on in my college (those are normal maths modules), and I didn't revise at all for them, didn't really think about them at all, to be honest, which was what I was used to doing (I know, it's a very bad habit, I'm glad to say I've later seen the light and now revise for exams!) and ended up getting Es in both of them, because I'd forgotten all of the content and didn't know what they wanted when asking certain questions. Using examsolutions (online video lessons) I covered all the content in a week, defamiliarised myself with the modules, and squeezed in a few past papers before the re-mocks the next week. Needless to say, I didn't have much of a social life at that particular moment in time. Did the re-mocks, got over 80% in both of them, so two As, at least.
Moral of the story is: Keep up to date with the course content, don't let it all build up for you to do last minute, and you won't end up having to spend hours and hours on end practically relearning the course in your spare time.
Whoops, got carried away there, sorry for the essay!
As long as you work consistently at it for the next two years (no 'off' periods) there is absolutely no reason why you cannot do Maths and Further Maths. It really isn't that much harder than A-Level, provided that you love the subject and are prepared to put the hours in.
Your teacher knows this and is just using scare-tactics to make sure that only the people who are truly passionate about the subject take Further Maths, because if you are not and you let things slide the workload will quickly suffocate you.
P.S As for the workload, it is (unsurprisingly) twice as much as standard A-Level Maths.
Your teacher knows this and is just using scare-tactics to make sure that only the people who are truly passionate about the subject take Further Maths, because if you are not and you let things slide the workload will quickly suffocate you.
P.S As for the workload, it is (unsurprisingly) twice as much as standard A-Level Maths.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by AdRiAnRsT
Hello everyone,
I hope everyone is well!
As many people i am in the same boat of being between GCSES and A levels enjoying my lush holiday but today I had my sixth form induction session which opened my eyes a little bit.
I have been passionate about Maths for about a year now after knuckling down to make sure i got an A* in my maths GCSE. I was always locked on doing F maths as its the only subject i am purely interested in.
During my induction lesson i was constantly reminded that it will be a humongous amount of work and will require a huge amount of hours.
My teacher was also very happy to pile on pressure as well which lead to some of the class boffins to in fact back out of doing further maths straight after the lesson.
But i am worried as i am not much of the 'no swot' person who gets A*s no matter what as i only got high grades in maths near the exam dates.
I'm not hugely lazy and i do find maths very interesting but i just feel clueless of what its really going to be like next year and i am unsure if i will be able mange the HUGE work load.I enjoy maths but its just i'm not sure if i'm the kind of person who can manage the work load, i feel like I have not really given my self a chance to find out if I can.
I was hoping some one would be able to give me some guidance and help me decide if i should follow this through?
I hope everyone is well!
As many people i am in the same boat of being between GCSES and A levels enjoying my lush holiday but today I had my sixth form induction session which opened my eyes a little bit.
I have been passionate about Maths for about a year now after knuckling down to make sure i got an A* in my maths GCSE. I was always locked on doing F maths as its the only subject i am purely interested in.
During my induction lesson i was constantly reminded that it will be a humongous amount of work and will require a huge amount of hours.
My teacher was also very happy to pile on pressure as well which lead to some of the class boffins to in fact back out of doing further maths straight after the lesson.
But i am worried as i am not much of the 'no swot' person who gets A*s no matter what as i only got high grades in maths near the exam dates.
I'm not hugely lazy and i do find maths very interesting but i just feel clueless of what its really going to be like next year and i am unsure if i will be able mange the HUGE work load.I enjoy maths but its just i'm not sure if i'm the kind of person who can manage the work load, i feel like I have not really given my self a chance to find out if I can.
I was hoping some one would be able to give me some guidance and help me decide if i should follow this through?
At least in my experience, AS Further Maths isn't much worse than AS Maths - the real horror comes at A2. If you can cope with AS Maths then you should also be fine with AS Further Maths (the difficulty level isn't that much harder at AS, there's just 'more' of it). As long as you're taking 4 subjects at AS, you can always still drop Further Maths in Year 13 because that is genuinely monstrously hard.
Original post by Plagioclase
At least in my experience, AS Further Maths isn't much worse than AS Maths - the real horror comes at A2. If you can cope with AS Maths then you should also be fine with AS Further Maths (the difficulty level isn't that much harder at AS, there's just 'more' of it). As long as you're taking 4 subjects at AS, you can always still drop Further Maths in Year 13 because that is genuinely monstrously hard.
I'm taking Further Maths AS next year. Why is the A2 substantially harder than the AS? Are the concepts harder to grasp or are the questions more abstract? Or is it something else entirely?
Original post by Hariex
I'm taking Further Maths AS next year. Why is the A2 substantially harder than the AS? Are the concepts harder to grasp or are the questions more abstract? Or is it something else entirely?
I thought the step from FP1 to FP2 is massive and the step to FP3 is even bigger. The step from M2 to M3 is also pretty big. The big problem with FP3 in particular in my view is that there are some questions which require quite a substantial amount of very abstract algebraic manipulation. With all the core units, you can pretty much learn the mechanistic way to answer questions and you'll be fine but you need to be properly decent at Maths to do well in FP3. I found most of the Maths units a breeze, got virtually full marks across AS Maths and Further Maths but I genuinely struggled with FP3.
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