Oxford MAT 2013/2014

This is actually the first valid point I've heard. Of course, that's the risk, but that's why I was pretty specific in my PS.

yeah, i guess nervousness is just an automatic feeling after an exam. i'm so happy that i completely finished question 4 though.

It isn't flawed. They know about other topics, but they aren't going to "out of the blue" test you on them. Tutors come up with their interview questions in advance, and carefully pick topics that doesn't require much knowledge (so they can teach you quickly) and questions you on it to gain some insight into your understanding and thought process. However, if you're in an interview and the tutor reads you're interested in something and decides to test you on it, the questions are not going to be so carefully picked and they're going to be picked in a much less "A-Level applicant" mindset, so they could unfairly pick quite advanced questions within that field without realising you'd need to do a significant amount of reading to get to a point where you could understand it.

How specific can that be ?still leaves a significant chance of that happening. It's basically a gamble, if you pull it off you'll stand out. If you don't you lose credibility.
I noticed that you mentioned partial differential equations. What books and stuff are you referring to for that topic?


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In regards to "assuming we wouldn't know what we mention in our PS" - well souktik couldn't remember what connectedness was, which is a fundamental, basic concept in metric spaces. If someone wrote on their PS that they have been self-studying metric spaces and it turns out they don't understand what connectedness/compactness is, it doesn't look very impressive to a tutor.

Panicking can happen with any topic, not just topics you self-studied.

I still can't remember. I'll certainly be uncomfortable if they venture outside open/closed, convergence, completeness, continuous mappings, etc. By the way, what's the idea behind proving problem 2 with open sets? Is there any similarity to the analysis-like method?



That's a valid point, but I'll personally get more nervous if they ask me stuff on metric spaces (which, as I mentioned in my PS, I just started before getting caught in school and olympiad work again) than combinatorics, number theory, calculus or even basic problems on real analysis. As you're absolutely comfortable with Fourier, Relativity and the other topics you mentioned, this doesn't apply to you. But there's always a limit to how much you've been exposed to in any topic and unless you're very specific in your PS, there's a risk of the tutor expecting more. This won't happen with standard topics as the tutors know how much you're supposed to know.

Sorry, I was actually thinking of another question when I gave the hint on the last page or so.

For continuous $f : R \rightarrow S$ and $g: S \rightarrow T$:

The way of doing the second problem using open sets is by saying for any open subset $W \subseteq T$ by continuity of $g$ we have that $g^{-1}(W)$ is open in $S$, hence by continuity of $f$, $f^{-1}(g^{-1}(W)$ is open in $R$. Hence $(g \circ f)^{-1}(W)$, which equals $f^{-1}(g^{-1}(W)$, is open in $R$ whenever $W$ is open in $T$, so by definition of continuity in terms of open sets $g \circ f : R \rightarrow T$ is continuous.

Much nicer than messing around with $\epsilon$s and $\delta$s - which is how you'd prove this for a real function in analysis.

My answer for part 1 is
A a
B c
C d
D b
E d
F d(wrong, it should be a)
G d
H b
I b
J b

Do you agree with me?

Why isn't part F d?

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GUYS DOES THE ADMISSiONS TUTOR HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR MARKS FOR EACH QUESTION? I SCREWED UP MULTIPLE CHOICE BUT DID MUCH BETTER LATER.

what was the answer to 1G?

I guess we agree to disagree (that it is a gamble). I was specific to mention in which context I learned stuff. For example, PDEs for QM, so I'm guessing they realize mainly Schrodinger's equation for example. I actually used books and the internet. But my main book was Strauss. You can buy it for like 10 bucks online I believe.

Thanks, but I need to get introduced to just a little bit of group theory for a problem set anyway. Yeah, it'll be pretty disappointing if it turns out that I've messed up the MAT and I don't get an interview.

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I'm not saying dint learn new things, I'm saying don't learn new things expecting that to help you in your Oxford interview

Computer science applicants..what were your answers to q6..

I just got:
ii) Alice:3 and Bob:2
iii) Alice is 4

Correct me if I'm wrong

I just got:
ii) Alice:3 and Bob:2
iii) Alice is 4

Correct me if I'm wrong