The Student Room Group

How hard will Higher Maths be given the problems of last year?

After the grade percentage got dropped to 70% and the SQA have issued statements about complaints or whatever, I guessed the paper would be slightly less challenging in order to bring the grade boundary back up a bit this year? I hope they don't alter the format or something though. :s-smilie:

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Reply 1
Still to try the 2012 papers...Looking forward to it. :colone:
Reply 2
Original post by JackoGeddes
After the grade percentage got dropped to 70% and the SQA have issued statements about complaints or whatever, I guessed the paper would be slightly less challenging in order to bring the grade boundary back up a bit this year? I hope they don't alter the format or something though. :s-smilie:


Yeah I heard the drama about it, i think it was that head one person on the SQA board or something quit and five other people walked out... :s-smilie: Luckily it should be okay for this year, i dont know when they make the papers for the exam but if it was after when the new person was appointed then hopefully it would be easier cause the head of maths at my school knows the person who is now appointed and apparently she had strongly disagreed about how they did it last year
Reply 3
Original post by nerd434
Last year's paper wasn't actually as bad as everyone made it out to be. Paper one was a lot easier than previous years, it was just the last few questions of paper two which were difficult. Granted, they were worth around twenty marks but you could still scavenge at least ten marks irrespective of whether you could actually solve the problems.


One thing is for sure, usually there is a very hard question at the end of paper two but for some reason they instead did two for some reason and etc, did my second prelim for maths recently and the last question was actually not too bad it was one of the b^2-4ac but with lots of k's in the equation
Reply 4
I say the higher paper last year and I have to say it was horrible. I have been told that the questions tend to work in sequences so that the question type is only repeated every few years so I would say that you could hopefully get a paper without the logs question which was the worst part!
Reply 5
I was the opposite I completely freaked out when I saw the question and couldn't do it but I thought that paper one was very easy and the rest of paper two was harder than normal but it was possible to do!
Reply 6
Original post by nerd434
I know the feeling. There is nothing worse than panicking when you see a question and having your mind go completely blank at the most simple of questions. Thankfully, for me, I learned that in the prelims and not the finally exams :smartass:!

Now I go into exams with the credo, "There's always another route if this doesn't work out", that way I never feel under any particular pressure to perform...


That is a good plan! I will need to try that with my exams this year :smile:
Reply 7
Original post by Swizzel
I was the opposite I completely freaked out when I saw the question and couldn't do it but I thought that paper one was very easy and the rest of paper two was harder than normal but it was possible to do!


Found my marks out today and i got a B which is absolutely brilliant cause i got a D in my initial prelim and once more my friend who is a genius at maths got 99.2% losing out on only one mark altogether (she got full marks in paper 1 but lost out on a mark in paper 2) Wish I was like her at maths haha
Reply 8
Original post by MC1723
Found my marks out today and i got a B which is absolutely brilliant cause i got a D in my initial prelim and once more my friend who is a genius at maths got 99.2% losing out on only one mark altogether (she got full marks in paper 1 but lost out on a mark in paper 2) Wish I was like her at maths haha


i was so happy when I got an A cos I thought I had done so badly after I freaked out and panicked! I should of done better though seeing as I'm going to be doing maths at uni!
Reply 9
Original post by Swizzel
i was so happy when I got an A cos I thought I had done so badly after I freaked out and panicked! I should of done better though seeing as I'm going to be doing maths at uni!


Haha I was just happy, our class did considerable well in comparison with another. The person who got the most in that class got something under 90%.. Are you wanting to get into mathematics? Cause that what my friend is doing (the one I mention earlier) shes wanting to go to oxford which is very ambitious but luckily she got into their summer school this year
Reply 10
Original post by MC1723
Haha I was just happy, our class did considerable well in comparison with another. The person who got the most in that class got something under 90%.. Are you wanting to get into mathematics? Cause that what my friend is doing (the one I mention earlier) shes wanting to go to oxford which is very ambitious but luckily she got into their summer school this year


I've been accepted to maths at Glasgow so I'm starting their in September! Going to Oxford is amazing I'm no where near good enough for that! :smile:
Reply 11
I was the only one in my class that got an A in the prelim :biggrin:


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Original post by Swizzel
I say the higher paper last year and I have to say it was horrible. I have been told that the questions tend to work in sequences so that the question type is only repeated every few years so I would say that you could hopefully get a paper without the logs question which was the worst part!


Thinking on it now, our paper wasn't actually THAT bad. IMO it was harder than 2011, but 2009 was still harder than it. I screwed up the last two questions (although, the sequences one was cause of a sign error :tongue:) and the log question I just kinda went... 'No.' too, but in all honesty it wasn't as horrible as people said it was. It was just a little different :smile: And you forget, they might not get a hard log question, but something far worse could come up... like a circles question..

Original post by nerd434
I actually found the last question on Logarithms fairly straight forward; it was just equating the two graphs and applying the laws of logarithms. I did, however, have a bit of trouble with second last question :ashamed2:...


It wasn't the last thing you wanted to see in your paper, when time was running out. I never thought to multiply out the bracket at:

Spoiler



Looking back, question 6 was the hardest question in the paper. I think I'm gonna try it again just now actually :tongue:
Reply 13
Original post by Jack--
I was the only one in my class that got an A in the prelim :biggrin:


Posted from TSR Mobile


16 people in my class got A's, 6 got B's and 5 got C's, we only have two weeks left until study leave and after telling us our marks my teacher was like "WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A TEA PARTY" shes rather crazy and eccentric haha
I done the higher maths paper last year and was the most horrendous thing I've ever done. Paper one was just a normal paper but paper 2 was really weird; the layout and the types of questions. The recurrence relation with the sin totally threw me, couldn't even prepare for it or anything. Question 2 was hard for being question 2. They usually don't really go into hard problem solving until question 4/5 but 2, c'mon!!

I don't think anyone can really make a judgement on this years paper, maybe only if its the same writer(s) then you might assume it will be just as hard
Reply 15
Original post by Swizzel
I've been accepted to maths at Glasgow so I'm starting their in September! Going to Oxford is amazing I'm no where near good enough for that! :smile:


Well done for getting it!! :biggrin: hope the course goes well for you
Reply 16
I failed the exam last year! however when i do 2012 back now after working hard and getting 85% in the prelim this year, the only difficulty was the last 2 questions in the fact they were worth 20 marks (usually you'd only drop 12-13 for not doing the last 2)

hopefully it's relatively similar to the past years, how are you guys finding studying? i'm just doing papers 2008-12 over and over again, i'm at the point now where i get almost 100% in paper 1 unless a really hard log one comes up and can usually get the first 5 paper 2 and struggle with the final ones, really hoping I can get a comfortable A, i've worked so hard since like february considering my grade last year :smile:
(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by nerd434
To save you doing the same papers over and over again, here are all of the Higher Maths papers from the year 2000. You have to scroll down a little!


PRSOM dude, that website's awesome even if I'm sitting SG not Higher. You are a lifesaver !
Reply 18
Original post by nerd434
To save you doing the same papers over and over again, here are all of the Higher Maths papers from the year 2000. You have to scroll down a little!


i hate the structure of the old ones, start giving them a go though :smile:
Original post by Swizzel
I was the opposite I completely freaked out when I saw the question and couldn't do it but I thought that paper one was very easy and the rest of paper two was harder than normal but it was possible to do!


This is how most people find Higher Maths. I completely bombed paper two.

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