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AH Applied Maths?

I am considering choosing this subject for 6th year.

I've read a few descriptions of the course but they've all been pretty ambiguous.

What does this course entail, and is it a worthwhile choice as a fourth Advanced Higher, at (as my school doesn't offer it) an FE college?

Thanks in advance to anyone who has this information :smile:

Reply 1

platinumki

hmmm.... I know little of AH applied maths. What I do know is that courses at colleges outside your school generally makes the course harder (that applies for doing it at another school as well) It's because you'll miss days and the support from staff won't be as good. There's often clashes of interests and such as well. If you don;t need to do it, I'd advise doing something you can do at your own school. Of course, your situation may be better than mine...... What other AH are you considering? What course are you planning on at uni? Most unis will offer advice as to what AH they prefer.

Reply 2

platinumki

oh, just remembered, I friend of mine is doing it - I believe part of the course is the same as the regular course and only one (or two?) units are different. If that helps. She seems to like it....

Reply 3

JennLlama

I did applied maths a few years ago (3 now) and really liked it. I did plain maths as well so I ended up doing maths 1, 2 & 3 for maths and mechanics 1 & 2 & numerical analysis 1 for applied mathematics. I think it's changed slightly now - the SQA website will probably tell you which units you can study together. I enjoyed it and would say it's definitely worthwhile - if you're considering engineering or physics or something in that area the mechanics would be quite useful, for maths or something like that the numerical analysis or statistics options might be better. Any more questions, I'll try and help!
Jenn xx

Reply 4

SiMonTisT

I am planning on doing Engineering, and my other AHs will (should) be: Maths, Physics and Chemistry.

I want to be able to get into Cambridge after all is said and done - studying a fourth AH would slightly exceed the requirements for entry - AAA.

I suppose choosing a subject that is actually available at my school would be a better plan. I'm interested in Geography - even though it is unrelated to engineering it's still a fourth Advanced Higher, and it would be much less stressful than going to two different places to study.

Reply 5

db_cambridge

I'm doing AH applied maths this year. The course consists of 2 optional unit and 1 manditory unit.

Everybody does the unit "Maths for applied mathematics" which basically is stuff taken from all 3 units of the pure AH maths course (a lot of the harder stuff apparently).

Then there are 3 options for optional units, you either do:
Statistics 1 and 2
Numerical Analysis 1 and 2
Mechanics 1 and 2

I'm doing statistics and the level of difficulty is not too bad.

The only problem seems to be a huge range of difficulty between the papers each year. The stats in the 2001 paper was stupidly simple, whereas in the 2004 paper some of it was quite tough.

I don't know what numerical analysis or mechanics is like in the applied maths paper.

Reply 6

JennLlama

werlop

I'd look at the more modern papers if I were you - remember AH was only introduced a few years ago so the standard fluctuated hugely to begin with. It started off really easy (to make it seem not so bad), went to really hard (cos everyone said last year's was too easy) and is now settling to a reasonable standard I guess.
Jenn xx

Reply 7

A0307

For engineering at Cambridge you probably don't need a fourth subject - I got into the same subject at Oxford with AH pure maths/physics/chemistry. While on the plus side it may make your application stand out (though I doubt it will have much effect on whether you get an offer or not), remember that if you're unlucky they may include all four subjects in your offer- AAA is bad enough, AAAA/AAAB is just horrific! Regardless, whether applied maths would be useful or not depends very much on the Cambridge syllabus (which I'm not exactly familiar with, but guess it's probably pretty similar to ours) and what units you do. Mechanics might be useful - though you do do an entire unit of it in Physics anyway, which covers pretty much everything though from a "physics perspective" as opposed to a "mathematical" one (mainly a difference in notation- eg. writing distance as s as opposed to x in maths, and velocity as v as opposed to dx/dt or xdot). If I remember correctly there was a small amount of this in the pure maths course under "applications of...", at least in the material I was working from, which helped "bridge the gap" for me. Statistics or numerical analysis probably wouldn't be as useful.

As for your other point of studying at a FE college- personally I wouldn't bother, though I guess that depends on your school. My school didn't have the staff or resources to teach them, so I taught myself AH physics and chemistry from Scholar. They were very helpful when it came to my investigations, at least as far as providing equipment etc. - they even let me use several kilograms of mercury when I decided to "see what it would do" as part of my physics one! - but aside from that it was rather a "here's the books, we'll enter you in the exam, good luck!" affair.

Reply 8

platinumki

that's very true. I asked at my interview what I likely offer would be and theytook a glance at my application form and said "four As, I suppose." At which point I told them off for not knowing enough about Scottish exams. Patently it helped - AAA was my offer

Reply 9

SiMonTisT

Thanks a lot for all the advice guys :biggrin:

I e-mailed Trinity college admissions with a few questions and just got this reply:

Applicants for Engineering at Trinity who are taking Advanced Highers are encouraged to take both Maths (Maths 1 and 2, together with Mechanics 1 or possibly Maths 3) and Applied Maths (Mechanics 1 and 2 with Maths 1) together with Physics. It is felt that this combination is the best grounding for the Engineering course here.
Our offers are based on three Advanced Highers so Geography would be excluded from any offer we might make.
The written work that applicants are asked to bring to interview should be a piece with technical content that they are ready to discuss. It needn't be specially prepared for the interview and we are not looking to assess it any formal way - just something that the applicant is familiar and comfortable with.
Further information about Engineering at Trinity is available at www.trin.cam.ac.uk.
Trinity Admissions

Just thought I'd share that information with anyone else in my situation :smile:

I'm going to apply for Applied Maths tomorrow then. I was originally planning on taking H Business Management, but I'll probably end up dropping that if I get to take App. Maths.