Should I drop Further Maths AS?

Hello,

I'm doing this year at AS:

Maths
Further Maths
Economics
History
Geography

I want to do economics at UCL, Warwick or any other Russel Group.

The only two unis that ask for FM are LSE and Cambridge.

In my maths mock, I got 96% A
In my history mock, I got 75% B
In my geography mock, I got 87% A
In my economics mock, I got 82% A

And in my FM mock, I got 45% E

I'm struggling with FM and I don't want to end up with a poor grade come the end of it.

Should I drop it, or devote loads of time on improving my grade?

Thanks

Firstly, you don't need FM for Cambridge (it's useful, but not essential). You're doing five AS Levels so you could afford to drop one. Further Maths definitely is useful for Economics but obviously there's no point if it's taking up an excessive amount of time that could be spent perfecting your other subjects. What units are you getting the low marks in in FM?

I'm doing FP1, M1 and D2. We did a mock in M1 and I got an E. I have been getting Us, Es and Ds in my FP1 units.

Hmm. What do you want to do? Why do you think you're finding Further Maths so much more difficult than Maths? It's something worth considering because I can assure you that A2 Maths is more difficult than all of those units.

Honestly, I've think it's just that, admittedly, I'm quite lazy and haven't committed a lot of time to the units.

I want to be an investment banker.

I have just got onto the Durham Progression Scheme, whereby I get a bursary and whatnot, and my offer is reduced to ABB.

Would you say I wait until March, revise more, do a past paper on my own and see if I'm finding it easier?

Thanks

Definitely don't wait until March to revise. The only way you're going to get better is by practise and with the best intentions in the world, you're not going to go from Es to As overnight. If laziness is the problem then you're going to have to tackle that because Maths is a subject that you literally can only get better in through lots and lots of practise.

I agree. I meant that I'd revise from now and make those Es into Bs and As. And if, by March, I can't get Bs or As, then I'll just drop the subject

Oh right, okay. Sounds fair enough. Do try though because if you do want to go into IB, as you probably know, you do need to be on top of your Maths skills. And whilst Further Maths might seem hard now (it was hard for me too last year) it gets a whole lot harder later on. You can't jump over the later hurdles unless you jump over the earlier ones so try to get it sorted out if you can. Good luck