Edexcel C3,C4 June 2013 Thread

Hey I didn't sit it year but it's kinda hard to avoid all the Edexcel bashing last night if you're in sixth form. It just seems absurd to me that people would blame the exam board for giving a "harder" paper. Obviously I hadn't sat it so I couldn't really comment, but everything in there is on the syllabus, and if surely if you've studied well then you'll get a good mark? They can't expect the exams to be the same every year otherwise people would just learn to the exams and that defeats the whole point of the subject...
Sorry about the rant it's just after seeing people on twitter send letters to Edexcel with ridiculous points like "people doing mechanics modules would have been at an advantage because there were vectors" Seriously? So is it unfair that I'm doing Maths whilst doing Physics?

Anyway bro how did your C3 go? Good by the sounds of it?

A quick question in C4, can you put In2 outside the integral sign?

People easily jump on the bandwagon when it suits them and most of em on facebook are demanding a free resit, lmfao they got no chance of that happening. 0% possibility. Many people on here actually did alright and got in the 60's (raw mark).

Basically, I'm on a gap year now and I did C2 and was also entered for this C3 exam. I pretty much aced C2 (not trying to sound cocky in any way, but according to Arsey, I got 74/75 for it) and yet I was only 2 ums off an A in maths overall last year (I scored 74 ums in c2 all the way back in june 11) so I'm pretty certain that my C2 score will easily get me my A overall. My mum forced me to enter for C3 because she wanted me to be on the safe side

Anyways, yeah I did turn up to the exam yesterday, did very little revision tbh, I don't even know why I bothered turning up to the exam, but yeah I just wasn't in the zone for the exam because of the such little revision I did. It was a hard exam, even more so for me But yeah I was so relieved to know that I wasn't counting on c3 to bring my overall grade to an A !
Phew!

The funny thing also is that the last question had nothing to do with mechanics, you obviously had to think hard, but it was easy stuff like SOC CAH TOA from GCSE which may have tripped people. The question required no knowledge of M1. I will admit though, not every single candidate knows about the speed = distance/time formula, but then again, they could have easily derived that formula from the units of velocity (ms^-1).

It truely amazes me as to how many people on the social networking sites seem to think that Maths exams are always about memorising stuff and just following a certain pattern or a bunch of rules. The pure art of maths, comes from applying your knowledge to unknown questions. If you had sound knowledge of C3, then the questions are defo do-able (specifically referring to the last page).

Worst part about the C3 paper was that I couldn't answer Q1! Looking back now I knew what to do but oh well. I'm with everyone else for the rest of the paper


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Seriously, I know it sounds nasty but Edexcel should not do anything about it. For maths, revising from past papers is still one of the best things you can do in terms of maths revision but it doesn't mean rely on what's come up in previous papers to come up in the following exam. Also, for a while now, the C3 exam has always been marginally easier than C4 so I think they're trying to make C3 as hard as C4.

Nice one on your C2 man! I mean that's 100/98ums, depending on what the grade boundaries will be like, which is sweet. Yeah it's perfectly acceptable to say it was a very hard exam, like I had a friend who was resitting, he said it was a harder paper, but didn't warrant the amount of complaints from people. For people going for A's in maths who have just about scraped the A boundary in AS maths, they should not go in with the mindset of "I'll make up for the extra ums in C3 and 4" and do what you did, which was dominate the C2 exam

Exactly, I think people are just trying to find things to complain about. Obviously it sucks if you need an A/B for your uni offer but there's no point in wasting time writing letters to complain about it when you could be trying to revise more for C4 to make up for lost ground. You know how pretty much all the maths papers from edexcel this year are replacements? I had an M3 earlier on this week which everyone in my class thought was harder than the previous ones, I think I probably screwed it up but I'm not going to complain about how I've never seen this style of question before, it was purely down to me not being prepared enough for it.

I didn't mean to insinuate that people didn't revise well enough. There is a clear distinction, however, between those that have been able to work through the paper using their mathematical reasoning and those that have learned the techniques by rote: the latter, apparently almost everybody who sat this exam, are the ones complaining the most.

Which question was FP1 material? Regarding the last question, that had nothing to do with mechanics -- it was one of the typical Rcos(a+x) questions with some GCSE trig thrown in. If you failed to recognise that then, while this is harsh of me, I doubt your true ability as a mathematician.

You seem to not realise how the grade boundaries work. If you get an A in any paper then you will be awared 80+ UMS, so I don't know why you think that scoring an A in this exam would be less valuable than a B in the last.

I don't do further maths, no.

The bolded part is complete and utter bull****, this paper was nowhere near the level of AEA.
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I did not say that it was AEA questions, what I said was my teacher feels like they were of that style and could easily have been found (adapted) on those papers.

Also I disagree completely with your comment about it someone from the outside checking it and being objective - yes they will be more objective, but they haven't done it under timed conditions. It's all very well to say "oh these questions could be the last question on any previous exam"- yes, you usually have one difficult one at the end of the exam. Not several, in the same time. In comparison to other papers it was drastically different! You may look at the paper and say it is not as hard as we are making out, fair enough, but for you to say that it was not drastically different to all of the papers up until this point is, quite frankly, insulting.

The way you are dismissing this, and essentially saying that we should just get over it is extremely patronising.

. I do further maths and took that c3 it contain no mechanics or further maths the last question had a scenario which looks like mechanics but you should have answered the questions asked not worry over the back story. All the questions were on syllabus and the other questions that I've heard people struggle on have appeared in past years just very rarely.

Guys, in partial fractions, I normally use substitution to work them out but could they say to us to use the equating coefficients method??

Guys, in partial fractions, I normally use substitution to work them out but could they say to us to use the equating coefficients method??

They never specify a method to work out partial fractions, it's always just "Express this in partial fractions". It's useful to know both ways though, and equating coefficients can be easier when working with 3 fractions

I don't quite understand your point here. You've done all the other past papers at home or in school, this is nothing like sitting for an exam for real. People always think their paper was the hardest, exam pressure makes all the difference here.

Which questions were particularly hard, anyway? Maybe part (a) of question 3 (though honestly, everyone should know that sin[x]=cos[90°-x], this is basic stuff), and the question with the mechanics context may have been a bit confusing for some. Doesn't seem too much different from your ordinary paper. It was more difficult than average, sure, but not significantly so.

I don't really care if you feel insulted or if you think I'm being patronising. It quite simply wasn't "drastically different". If anything, others could say they're insulted by your claim that the papers they sat for were significantly easier.

My point is if doing all the papers and all of the questions in the textbook and trying my uttermost to understand the concepts and not route learn was not enough to do well then I don't know what else is.

And yes - what you are saying about exam pressure is what I'm saying.... how can you up the paper like that after 9 years of papers with a few tricky questions per paper to this where, obviously not yourself, but the majority of people who sat the exam found the mjority of questions extremely difficult and then just say they'll compensate with UMS conversions.. because some people will have dealt with the pressure better than others and clearly they'll be the ones who get the high grades.

Basically what I am saying is that I feel like using the resources they provided me with did not adequately prepare me for the exam. I feel like the difference in difficulty compared to the other, easier paper that we were originally going to sit was huge, and I feel like the fact that some people sat the other paper is unfair as they didn't get as stressed out while doing the paper.