A-level Revelations

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Reply 240

_Mia101

Study Forum Helper

Congrats on your Warwick offer! Good luck with your NSAA!

Can you @ me?

Reply 241

Sinnoh

Original post by Terranova

nice1 fam every time you mention the NSAA i remember how much i'm neglecting the GAA and i still never ****in do anything about it as if the r/roastme-post-if-i-get-a-pre-interview-rejection isn't a thing omg

If at the moment you see this you have time to do a paper, do it.

Original post by entertainmyfaith

fried egg and smoked salmon what a nice posh lunch :lol:

well done on your warwick offer!
gladstone brookes :colonhash:

It's the smoked salmon trimmings at Asda, not as expensive as the slices but still really nice. Whoever first combined eggs and smoked salmon was a genius.
And thanks :redface:

Original post by _Mia101

Congrats on your Warwick offer! Good luck with your NSAA!

Can you @ me?

Thanks - and yeah, will do!

Reply 242

Sinnoh

Original post by Blue_Cow

They replaced the insufferable guy?!? I ought to watch television more :facepalm:

P.S. I wonder what GSB will do next once the PPI deadline is up... :holmes:

It'll be back to "Why not consolidate your debts into one manageable loan?"
Or they'll bribe banks a lot of money to do some other ****-up

Reply 243

Sinnoh

The Yay and the Meh - Update #13
So it's been... wow, only five days? God it feels longer. Expect this to be more of a rambling vent and personal review than an update where I order it all chronologically day by day. There are too many things I want to write, basically.

Let's start with:
Mid-term review
So I was lucky to have two weeks off for half-term and I came back to school yesterday. I got the following done:

- A bit of work made on chapter 7 of Book 1 Further Pure maths, which is just basic enough linear transformations using matrices
- Finished notes and summary questions on Thermal physics and electric fields (doesn't mean I got all those questions right). Fields are the most maths-intensive chapters but the info in the book is pretty damn awkward when there's no calculus involved. Just understanding calculus and using it makes this topic so much more straightforward and it's a shame there's no mention of it at all in this topic.
-Finished my history article on the Apollo-Soyuz test project
-Did a little bit of French work... on the last day of the holidays
-Did two NSAA (Natural Science Admissions Assessment) papers, went through the maths questions on that guide I got, briefly tried a PAT paper before I realised there were no answers available

Things I wish I had done during the break:
- More mechanics revision. It would have been quite helpful for the NSAA.
- NSAA paper 2 - timing is even more of a problem with this one
- Any work at all on my history coursework

In conclusion: most of the necessary work was done, but I know damn well that even though this may look like a lot, I sure as **** did not use my time as well as I could have. I could have prepared better for the NSAA which is tomorrow :afraid:

It's true that a below-average NSAA performance won't doom an application, but that's assuming the rest of the application is still good. I did the 2016 paper 2 today and got 36%. Not great! :sigh:

But all I can do now is prepare a little more and just hope for the best.
Yesterday I tried the 2017 paper 2 and god damn my brain just failed me. The only reassuring thing is that I probably won't have to revise waves, although by process of elimination, moments might be a big thing on this year's paper 2. I should take a look at the mechanics topics again.

Other than that...

The Yay: I have been invited for an interview at Imperial!!

I would talk about the two school days that I've had so far but to be honest they've been pretty uneventful. I got to school, buy a 50p coffee, go to lessons, whaddya expect.
Actually, on Monday I was at the school library doing some work and I borrowed some books that will be of great use to me for my history coursework. My title is "To what extent was the October Revolution of 1917 a Bolshevik coup?" I've got a good range of historians - Faulkner is quite favourable to the Marxist point of view in this book, Edward Acton is a a revisionist and Richard Pipes is harshly critical of the whole thing. Then I've got Sheila Fitzpatrick who's also revisionist, and a first-hand account of the revolution from John Reed's book Ten Days That Shook The World. My history teacher had also recommended that I look at www.marxists.org. It's an online repository of free Marxist texts - but then again they would be free, wouldn't they? It's a fantastic website. There's all 1351 pages of Trotsky's history of the revolution. For free. As well as all his other works. As well as all the other works of probably all the Marxists you could name. For free.

The books in question

Short-term project list:
NSAA preparation - that's really short-term. I'm sitting it in 14 hours.
Oh god I'm sitting it in 14 hours.
Writing up notes from the books I've borrowed - I only have them for one week!
Preparation for the Imperial interview by finishing working through my classical mechanics book.

Question of the week: If you had to write a 4000-word essay on a historical debate, which would you choose?

Highlight of the week: Seeing that email from Imperial in my inbox

Song of the week: This amazing arrangement for guitar of Passepied by Debussy:

https://youtu.be/evdRwqp-zzc

Tags

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 244

thotproduct

yay for Imperial!

Also re. NSAA. So long as everything looks good on paper, you are more than likely to get an interview. This NSAA was probably a blip, so long as you're getting the average score, more or less, you will be invited to interview, and you can use that interview as the board to steal the hearts and souls of the interviewers, so I'm sure it'll be fine my dude.

Nice piece lmao

Reply 245

Sinnoh

Original post by thotproduct

Thanks and good luck with MAT tomorrow (whilst I could say you don't need it, a bit o' luck doesn't hurt)
It's a blip on what I'm going to assume is an upwards trend. When I've got exams that I don't do that well in, it's usually the actual thing that I do best in lol.
At least, I've learnt how to properly do that paper - don't over-answer, keep an eye on the time, don't over-estimate. So I'm more confident now than I was a few hours ago when I was doing the paper and seeing that I had 10 minutes to go.
I remember from the admissions talk at Churchill college that hardly anyone does really well on all aspects of their application. If I got an interview at Impereo, then my PS was probably decent. Which means I can afford to not do brilliantly in either the NSAA or the interview.
I've been on TSR for an hour I should get off and practise lol

Reply 246

absolutelysprout

congrats on getting the imperial interview! :smile:

good luck for the nsaa, hope it goes well.
i don't know many historical debates :colondollar:

Reply 247

username3025040

Good luck on the NSAA tomorrow bub :hugs:

you worked hard

Reply 248

gcsemusicsucks

Yaaay well done on getting the interview! :congrats:

Good luck for tomorrow, don't stress too much, keeping calm is the important thing! :smile:

Spoiler

Reply 249

nyxnko_

Congrats on getting an interview from Imperial!! :woo:

Good luck for today!! :rave:

Reply 250

Sinnoh

Original post by nyxnko_

Congrats on getting an interview from Imperial!! :woo:

Good luck for today!! :rave:

Original post by Terranova

Good luck on the NSAA tomorrow bub :hugs:

you worked hard

The time is near... good luck to you both

Reply 251

nyxnko_

Original post by Sinnoh

The time is near... good luck to you both

Thank you! :hugs:

How did it go for you? Mine was okay, I guess. Ran out of time in Section 2 and guessed quite a few in Section 1 :s-smilie:

Reply 252

Sinnoh

Original post by nyxnko_

Thank you! :hugs:

How did it go for you? Mine was okay, I guess. Ran out of time in Section 2 and guessed quite a few in Section 1 :s-smilie:

I guessed a couple in section 1. I think overall I did 40 questions from that section?
Question 1 in section 2 I had no problem with, question 2 on the other hand I completely flopped. Hopefully I'll get a couple marks on that one. I'm hoping for mid 30s out of 54 in paper 1 and 50% in paper 2.

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 253

nyxnko_

Original post by Sinnoh

Haha, I guessed quite a few in Section 1 as well. Finished 10 minutes lately and rushed the last few because I thought I was running out of time when I wasn't :facepalm:

but it was do-able. Let's just not talk about Section 2.. :getmecoat:

Reply 254

BahozM

Original post by ezpressodepresso

****ing furry normie ****. I got 11 gcess at 9* and havve 3 phds in shooting up furry conventions

Absolute madlad

Reply 255

Sinnoh

Original post by gcsemusicsucks

Yaaay well done on getting the interview! :congrats:

Good luck for tomorrow, don't stress too much, keeping calm is the important thing! :smile:

Spoiler

Thank you

Passepied is such a tune, somewhat makes me wish I played the piano

Reply 256

Sinnoh

The Interlude - Update 14
So the NSAA has been and gone. Whilst I wasn't that happy with how I did, I can't deny it was a massive relief walking out of the exam room.
Is this how I'll feel about my actual A-level exams? At the moment, I don't think so. This one was just annoying.
Next up there's my interview at Imperial. Right now I'm looking forward to it. I guess since it's not my first choice I'm not that fussed about it, but the NSAA has given me more significant doubts about getting an offer from Cambridge, more so than what I had before. So Imperial is seeming a bit more on-the-table.
Anyway I'm between two important uni-related events right now, hence "the interlude".

Right, new section: My project list

History coursework - I'm at the preparatory stage where I'm just writing down as much as I can from the books that I've borrowed.
Interview preparation - I'm working through Classical Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind & George Hrabovsky, because I mentioned it on my personal statement without having looked at it that much. Do your reading in a timely manner, folks.

Okay, the week:
Wednesday 31/10/18
So Wednesday was of course the NSAA. I'll write about it in detail here so I never have to again.
In Section 1, I did parts A, B and E. I answered 13 questions from part A (maths), all 18 questions from part B (physics) and I ran out of time before I could count the questions I did from part E (advanced maths and physics). All I know is that I did more questions from part E than I had ever done in my practise papers. Somewhere between 6 and 9.
If I'm lucky, I'll get something in the mid 30s out of 54. Getting 60% overall would be nice, although I know that each section is marked independently.
Section 2 was weird. Ohhh but I actually can't talk about it in detail until the interviews in December!
I'm hoping for 50% on that one. Initially it was going very well, then everything just came crashing down even though I was making very good time to begin with.
After that I was not in the mood to do any proper work. There weren't many of us in the maths lesson and physics was just... boring. It was just practice questions on specific heat capacity. In fact, I left school during lunch and did nothing for the rest of the day.

Thursday 01/11/18
I'm in a bit of a lull in two of my subjects at the moment. In pure maths I'm getting a bit tired of linear matrix transformations, I'm pretty disinterested in

\chi ^2

tests in statistics as well.
We've only got two more stats topics after this and two more mechanics topics after this and then we're fully done with further stats and further mechanics. I just think we're spending an annoyingly long time on each topic. The pace was mental at the start of the year and now it's just gone.
Did not have history - this day is just maths, physics, maths, physics with no free periods in between.
Had the meeting for the school history magazine at lunch. Most people have done their articles, although I'm worried that mine will need a ****-ton of editing to make it readable and interesting.
After school I did about an hour of work from The Theoretical Minimum. Came across mathematical proof for the conservation of energy principle which was actually amazing to find:

The proof (kinda)

In a nutshell, the total energy anywhere is the sum of kinetic energy and potential energy. The time derivative ends up being 0, so the rate of change of energy is always 0, so energy doesn't vary and is conserved.
The bottom bit was the book's proof for that in multiple dimensions. Not quite sure what I wrote.

Friday 02/11/18
This is a full day of lessons! I asked a couple teachers how to go about one of the exercises given in The Theoretical Minimum: "A particle in 2 dimensions with mass m has potential energy

V(x) = \frac{1}{2} k(x^2 + y^2)

. Work out the equations of motion. Show that there are circular orbits and that all orbits have the same period. Prove explicitly that the total energy is conserved."
This is right after it gives the energy conservation explanation so I wasn't sure where to even start. I'm not even going to try the next one.
But yeah, fun book.
In history a couple people argued about strikings, because we're doing labour and trade union rights at the moment.
In physics we covered specific latent heat which we were the last year group to not cover in GCSE. It's fine, really. I'd already made notes on basically the whole chapter during the mid-term break... this might explain my boredom.
Miscellaneous news: there is a new kind of chocolate muffin being served at break in the 6th form café and it is significantly better than the old kind.

Saturday 03/11/18
I did two productive things: history and guitar. I started going through what Neil Faulkner had to say about the nature of the October Revolution and it's just interesting how much it's possible for two historians to disagree. He roasted Pipes though, when talking about the liberal view of the Russian Revolution, he said that "the misunderstanding is profound".
I finished learning Michelle on the guitar and immediately started learning Spanish Dance no. 5 by Enrique Granados because it is suuuuch a good piece.

Sunday 04/11/18
Basically a carbon copy of yesterday, except I did Edward Acton instead of Neil Faulkner. These historians are making my life easy :smile:

they disagree so much.
Anyway I don't fancy doing much work right now (although I may do some stats later).

Misc stuff: There's a 6th form dinner for my House at school and I'll be going to that. It's on Thursday the 8th... ****, I'll be missing my guitar ensemble session.
I've also realised, I never talk about the casual goings-on at school in these updates. I think I should do it more because it is really focused on the academic side of things at the moment.

Highlight of the week: Having the 6th form centre almost all to ourselves on Thursday period 1. All the year 12s had lessons and so did most of the year 13s. It's so peaceful and useful when nobody's around...

Question of the week: asdfghjk I have no idea. Ask me one.

Song of the week: