Edexcel Alevel Further Maths (for oxford physics)

did those modules prepare you for the pat well?

Yeah I finished a-levels this year and took the PAT in year 13 in November 2014. I'm sure you know you have to apply before October 15th for both Oxford and the PAT. I had done C1-3, M1, S1 and FP1 by the time I took the PAT although we had learnt a good deal of C4 by November.


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I'd say so, although there was a geometry question I had no idea how to do, other than that, the maths side was not too dreadful, it's the physics half you want to concentrate most on.

also did you end up doing well on the pat

I did A2 Maths, FM and Physics and AS French and German.
I have no idea how I did score-wise, enough to get an interview (I think the cutoff was about 53%) but I thought I'd got about 40/100 when I left, they only tell you your score if you ask them after they hand out offers.


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Ok i am doing Physics chemistry maths and AS further maths. I could not get into biology into my school cause my grade was a bit too low. But i didnt really want to do it i want to do physics in oxford or any good uk uni so i dunno if bio would help. I want to know what's the best AS maths combination to do physics at oxford? What i chose for my AS further maths was D1 S1 and Fp1

for my regular maths i am doing c1-c4 and m1 and m2
i am also doing this with the alevel reforms so all the exam after two years.
Any physics university students or anyone with a know how please comment

Yo I did the PAT in 2014 (November). Unfortunately I didn't get an interview, my Physics was fine, but my Maths let me down! If I had better prepared myself for the stuff to come up, I would've nailed the maths (some q's I left out because I had no idea how to solve them). So I'll pass my wisdom down.

For the Maths, know C1, C2, M1, S1 (only the probability. The probability in PAT can be done without S1, I managed to do it just fine, but just in case you need to brush up), C3 (especially differentiating harder functions like with the chain rule, sketching exponentials and different graphs etc), and SOME of C4. Notably the integration topics (this is key, comes up a lot), partial fractions (really easy) and doing the binomial expansion. The one in C2 is different to the one in C4, the C4 one is better for the PAT because you don't need a calculator.

Hope that helps!

so is that the only c4 topic

Integration, partial fractions AND binomial.

so are you an oxford student

Not yet, I start next month.


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but you got accepted? sweet good job

Thanks, all the best for next year, I'm sure you'll nail it!


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Thank you
btw did s1 really help because i heard that it was just elementary probability? i would need to get a tutor for s1. would i need to learn the whole book?
also how useful was fp1