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Maths A-Levels Difficulty

Hey, I am currently in year 10 (England) and was wondering how much of a step up A-Level maths is from further maths level 2 GCSE. I taught myself further maths in 2 days and took a practice paper and got A^. Will A-Level maths be hard? Does anyone know any revision guides for it? (I might start learning it now so I have more time to concentrate on other subjects at college) Thanks
Reply 1
Original post by sjdbfkabsfk
Hey, I am currently in year 10 (England) and was wondering how much of a step up A-Level maths is from further maths level 2 GCSE. I taught myself further maths in 2 days and took a practice paper and got A^. Will A-Level maths be hard? Does anyone know any revision guides for it? (I might start learning it now so I have more time to concentrate on other subjects at college) Thanks


You might want to start looking at C1 and C2. I believe most of the topics are covered in Further Maths GCSE so you won't find anything too difficult in these either. The first post in http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3749463 has a lot of resources you might find helpful.

You may find it more interesting however to try harder maths problems with the knowledge you already have. How about giving SMC a go? If that's trivial, how about the Kangaroo papers or BMO1?
Reply 2
AS maths is a piece of cake, especially if you can get an A^ at GCSE FM. In my opinion, there is no need to start now, unless it is something you really want to do.
Reply 3
Original post by shamika
You might want to start looking at C1 and C2. I believe most of the topics are covered in Further Maths GCSE so you won't find anything too difficult in these either. The first post in http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3749463 has a lot of resources you might find helpful.

You may find it more interesting however to try harder maths problems with the knowledge you already have. How about giving SMC a go? If that's trivial, how about the Kangaroo papers or BMO1?


Thanks, yeah I had thought about SMC I have still got a year to get the intermediate challenge done though... I have looked over some of the papers - they're not too bad (I have the tools to do them) but I struggle to actually work on a solution to the question when I'm not told how to do it. I will begin looking into the maths challenge, anywhere you know to revise for it? It doesn't seem very revisable: I just used a CGP revision guide for further maths
(edited 8 years ago)
Reply 4
Original post by MCPC247
AS maths is a piece of cake, especially if you can get an A^ at GCSE FM. In my opinion, there is no need to start now, unless it is something you really want to do.


Thanks, I did actually look at some stuff about i and complex numbers and parables etc a year or two ago - I was able to answer the questions on the topics I revised with maybe 75% accuracy. Plenty of time to improve though
Reply 5
Original post by sjdbfkabsfk
Thanks, yeah i had thought about SMC I have still got a year to get the intermediate challenge done though... I have looked over some of the papers - they're not too bad (I have the tool to do them) but I struggle to actually work on a solution to the question when I'm not told how to do it. I will begin looking into the maths challenge, anywhere you know to revise for it? It doesn't seem very revisable: I just used a CGP revision guide for further maths


Practice, practice, practice!

Honestly, I know the feeling of just pulling ahead and doing more advanced stuff. But by far the better value for your education is to take the opportunity to think long and hard about difficult problems, because that is a skill that you can apply to anything.

The SMC (and BMO1 etc.) are meant to be hard - you're not supposed to be able to breeze through them. By contrast, its possible to score exceptionally highly even in A-Level Further Maths by just learning methods, which is what you've already realised is very easy once you've been told what to do.

Take a IMC or SMC paper (I think the last couple are on the UKMT website), and work through it until you think you've answered everything you can (no calculators, books or internet, but don't worry about the time limit). Let me know how well you do if you want further advice.

It'll take used to not being able to breeze through a problem but don't you want to be able to be actually good at maths and understanding what you're doing rather than just passing an exam?

Note: if you're not planning on doing a quantitative subject at degree level and beyond, you might want to concentrate on getting better on what you really want to do instead!
Original post by sjdbfkabsfk
Hey, I am currently in year 10 (England) and was wondering how much of a step up A-Level maths is from further maths level 2 GCSE. I taught myself further maths in 2 days and took a practice paper and got A^. Will A-Level maths be hard? Does anyone know any revision guides for it? (I might start learning it now so I have more time to concentrate on other subjects at college) Thanks


I was a lot like you (minus having taught it to myself) and I found A Level maths easy as pi :smile: I think you already know all of C1 (besides integration but that's easy to pick up). The rest of it is straight forward and shouldn't be a problem for you.
Original post by sjdbfkabsfk
Hey, I am currently in year 10 (England) and was wondering how much of a step up A-Level maths is from further maths level 2 GCSE. I taught myself further maths in 2 days and took a practice paper and got A^. Will A-Level maths be hard? Does anyone know any revision guides for it? (I might start learning it now so I have more time to concentrate on other subjects at college) Thanks


Beast.

Shouldn't be that hard. C1 is a piece of cake and I think you cover it in FM GCSE. So... I think it shouldn't be much :biggrin:
Reply 8
Original post by shamika
Practice, practice, practice!

Honestly, I know the feeling of just pulling ahead and doing more advanced stuff. But by far the better value for your education is to take the opportunity to think long and hard about difficult problems, because that is a skill that you can apply to anything.

The SMC (and BMO1 etc.) are meant to be hard - you're not supposed to be able to breeze through them. By contrast, its possible to score exceptionally highly even in A-Level Further Maths by just learning methods, which is what you've already realised is very easy once you've been told what to do.

Take a IMC or SMC paper (I think the last couple are on the UKMT website), and work through it until you think you've answered everything you can (no calculators, books or internet, but don't worry about the time limit). Let me know how well you do if you want further advice.

It'll take used to not being able to breeze through a problem but don't you want to be able to be actually good at maths and understanding what you're doing rather than just passing an exam?

Note: if you're not planning on doing a quantitative subject at degree level and beyond, you might want to concentrate on getting better on what you really want to do instead!


Thanks and I plan on doing maths (maybe statistics, maybe applied or whatever) as a degree but I obviously have a long time to think about it.
I don't have time right now to do an IMC but thanks for the advice - I will do so in a few days. I also need to concentrate on my other subjects (I am predicted largely A*s with a few As so that is soon going to become my main priority next year.) The IMC will probably be my next goal, then the SMC etc. I got gold on the junior one with no revision (which really wasn't hard tbh) so am reasonably confident about doing the higher tier ones.

I will see what I can do with no computer etc then attempt the rest with internet help
Reply 9
Original post by Imperion
Beast.

Shouldn't be that hard. C1 is a piece of cake and I think you cover it in FM GCSE. So... I think it shouldn't be much :biggrin:


May sound weird but what even is C1 (I only know it as chemistry one!)? How many units/modules are there? Thanks
Reply 10
Original post by TaigaStudies
I was a lot like you (minus having taught it to myself) and I found A Level maths easy as pi :smile: I think you already know all of C1 (besides integration but that's easy to pick up). The rest of it is straight forward and shouldn't be a problem for you.


Thanks
Original post by sjdbfkabsfk
May sound weird but what even is C1 (I only know it as chemistry one!)? How many units/modules are there? Thanks


Core 1 Uh... how many modules...? Well there's Core 1 - 4...

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