University of Oxford offer-holders' thread 2015

Literally took the words out of my mouth, that's absolutely it.

Yeah.. I can't think of a similar subject. It's pretty unique. I kinda wish I was doing M4, seeing as I find mechanics enjoyable now. I'd rather do that than D1 ._.

Oh god... are you doing D1 this year? Worst unit ever, utter waste of time.

Yeah, it's horrendous. Fortunately it doesn't have to count towards either of my maths A levels, but I suppose it's best to be safe. Well I say that but I didn't revise for the mock and that went horrendously
I'm really bad at it; I can't bring myself to practise anything
Did you do it last year? How did you cope?

D1 is fairly easy in terms of the content, you just need to learn stuff, it's just boring. One thing though - timing. I never have timing problems in any maths modules, I usually finish in 30 minutes-ish. D1 though... in my D1 exam last year, I was THAT CLOSE to running out of time. Messed up the last question in the panic, the only reason I got 98 UMS was because of low grade boundaries and some sneaky last-minute method-mark grabbing techniques.

I ran out of time in the mock even though I skipped a couple of parts :L yeah I do need to just learn it.. I wish it was a module you could wing; that's usually my technique haha
One of my classmates actually enjoys D1 he always defends it when we complain about it well I guess he is going to do compsci, but even so...

I ran out of time in the mock even though I skipped a couple of parts :L yeah I do need to just learn it.. I wish it was a module you could wing; that's usually my technique haha
One of my classmates actually enjoys D1 he always defends it when we complain about it well I guess he is going to do compsci, but even so...

D1 is the bomb.

D1 is to CompSci what learning a formula booklet is to physics. At least for my specification, 90% of the content was basically learning how to implement an algorithm carefully, and learning the benefits. The only section that really required interpretation was linear programming and that was basically nerfed from the Edexcel D1 module. It's an insult to claim that's computer science - I've read computer science books and they're bloody hard, the first chapter was enough to put me off the subject for ever! If we actually learned some of the logic behind discrete mathematics then that'd be great but we don't ):

Anyway, pure modules are nicer I bloody love calculus.

tbh I think Computing A level is even worse than D1. We don't cover nearly enough theory. The stuff on encryption is especially pathetic; we haven't even learnt an example of public key encryption.

Pure modules are great. Calculus and complex numbers, what more could anyone want?
I can't wait to do complex analysis, it looks awesome. Why can't university just start now? D:

So jealous that you get to do complex analysis. I really, really envy some of your physics modules. If I could do an Earth Sciences and Physics course I would because I'd desperately love to do the complexity, fluid dynamics and atmospheric physics modules (you'll probably see me in some of those lectures if I have the time). But there are just too many parts of physics that I'm just not interested in :/

D1 is the bomb.

Agreed

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D1 is fairly easy in terms of the content, you just need to learn stuff, it's just boring. One thing though - timing. I never have timing problems in any maths modules, I usually finish in 30 minutes-ish. D1 though... in my D1 exam last year, I was THAT CLOSE to running out of time. Messed up the last question in the panic, the only reason I got 98 UMS was because of low grade boundaries and some sneaky last-minute method-mark grabbing techniques.

The key problem with D1 is that it's so easy to trip up by making a tiny little mistake. In my actual exam, the reason why I ran out of time was because I was so fanatic about going through my algorithms a billion times to make sure I'd not made a silly calculation error. Don't do that, make sure you don't fall behind in time.

Can you share some 'method mark grabbing techniques'?
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If you do enough past papers, you sort of get the feel of what gets you method marks. When I realised that I wasn't going to have enough time to answer it properly, I firstly had to get over the panic (which was the hardest part) and then I just tried to think the question through rationally and just make sure it looks like I know how to answer the question. I remember that in my panic I had basically scrawled all over the page and the entire thing was unintelligible but I scribbled some notes on what I was doing and made sure my actual method was distinguished from the rest of the crazed writing.

Did you find it harder last year?


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