Harris Westminster Entrance Exams

How did you guys like the open day? I remember some students coming into our classes whilst they were going on and they looked so nervous

Yep, same mine is at 9-11am, what time is yours?

Mine is at 9-11 too but it's okay as I don't live too far away. What examinations have you picked? I feel like the times given are based on the exams.

That's cool! I chose to do Physics and Geography , what about you? Ahh that's clever of them ahaha

Oh, it seems like I must be wrong about the time thing aha, as I'm doing Drama & Theatre studies and History.
Did you go to the open day? What did you think about it?

Ahh, perhaps it was just on a basis of who applied earlier got earlier times? Those are cool subjects! Yes I did, I found it to be really good academically but the building was so officey like and it didn't really feel like a school environment, but it was good! What did you think?

They started after the first half-term of last year, and they've been going on since then. They last the whole of lab, on Tuesday afternoons (so about 2 hours, and sometimes they go on for an hour after school, based on how much we're enjoying ourselves ^^). They're not compulsory, though, so I still have lab available if I have something urgent to do. There is one year 12 who does them with us this year, yeah.

Cambridge, Imperial, Warwick, UCL and King's College London. They gave me a lot of help, though I can only really speak for the Maths department. I should tell you each person in the school is assigned a personal mentor, that they can go to for support concerning UCAS.

Three people (including me) applied for Maths at Cambridge, and we were all given plenty of advice when writing our personal statements - over the Summer between year 12 and 13 I was emailing my Maths teacher weekly with some work on it, and he'd respond with specific, helpful feedback. Also, we each had some interview preparation, including a couple of practice interviews.

Wow! That's really helpful! I think I remember seeing you on one of the open days in a maths room. You were working on bmo problems with a somalian guy and you were joking around saying how he just beat you 😂😂What do you need to 'qualify' for the lab sessions? Is it based on smc results? I want to read maths at uni and so it's great hearing from someone who is in that position.

Yeah, I'm really grateful for it. Haha yeah I remember that, he did beat me in the SMC (but I beat him in the BMO, heh).There's not really any "qualification" as such, although the three of us doing it at the moment did get the highest scores. It's largely based on whether you're motivated enough to spend all of lab doing some pretty difficult maths, almost every week.

They gave me a lot of support. There were afternoon sessions every week with one of the maths teachers (initially they were about BMO1 but after that we focussed on STEP); I was in a group of 3 or 4 students. Yeah, we went through past problems, and he (the teacher, a Hungarian guy, absolute legend) would go through the techniques that come up a lot in them, and really show us the kind of mindset you need when you're tackling the problems.

You have to do a lot of work on your own just going through the papers if you want to do well on STEP, no matter how good your teacher is, but having someone who really knows his stuff to guide you really does help.

So how would you sum up the maths department in terms of helping you get into oxbridge? Btw, your essay on Euler's proof for the Basel Problem is simply brilliant!

Mr. Hrasko! Ridiculously intelligent -- it's a shame he does more admin work nowadays more than teaching maths. Thanks a lot for this! As long as there's a member of staff who I can come to if I have any difficult (which I'm sure I will), then I'm more-than-happy.Thanks again

Do you think our candidate numbers are in order of who applied first? Because I applied quite quickly but my number is in the 2000s 😂
And I liked the look of the place, although the library was a bit small. The students that showed me around were really nice, and so were the ones that I talked to. Overall it was pretty nice.

Depends what you define as being worth it?
Also, isn't a Saturday only until 1pm?

Nope, I was going to but I just really couldn't be bothered so I just applied to a different sixth form

Applicants: I thought you'd find this both interesting and useful. Here are the list of CP (cultural perspective) courses that are offered. We have 4 CP periods each week, one of which will be a free period and the other 3 being in actual CP classes.





(choose one from each block -- no more than 3)

Hi, haven't really written very much on here but I applied a couple of months ago to study Economics, Philosophy, English Lit and Politics. Doing my interview on Politics and my exams on English and Philosophy. Kind of bricking it to be honest, been reading Mere Christianity for Philosophy and reading more in depth on Utilitarianism/Cosmological Theory/Moral Status etc, and learnt a few more interesting literary techniques for English but that's about it. Anyone have any idea how many questions they ask for either of my exams (philosophy/english)?