Madz Journey to A*A*A*A*A 2017/2018

what made you wanna do med?

If you're keen on joining the army, you can get a 'free ride' through Uni + a dozen other perks by registering your interest with your local Army recruitment Agency.
Medicine Scheme ( http://www.army.mod.uk/join/38414.aspx#38414 ) You'll be obliged to work for 4 years with the army once you've graduated and got your GMC License.

You won't know your BMAT mark when applying to Oxford because they only accept November BMAT. Your GCSEs are good, but for Oxford, you'd ideally need at least 9 A*s. You genuinely need to be hitting 7s in the BMAT to stand a chance, and that is very difficult lol. If you manage to get the grades your aiming for at AS/A level, you should really consider Cambridge instead. Oxford is a MASSIVE risk.

Well done so far . Lets work together ro do well in our exams . Here is my post please check it out https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5010456

5 A-levels? Wow! I'll end up with 5 by the time I leave college (Maths, FM, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science), but I did some early so at no point have I ever been studying more than 4 at once.

How's the workload? Also, since you're clearly good at maths, are you doing stuff like the Senior Maths Challenge or British Mathematics Olympiad?

I'm not really that good at Maths xD I can just solve questions. We are doing the Senior UKMT in November and I think if you get the gold you get to the British Olympiad. Not sure how it works but I am hoping for a gold. Sadly though, I seem to get a silver every year because I end up flopping on the harder 16-25 questions.

Cambridge is one option too but I would really like to go to Oxford. I didn't know they only accepted November BMAT so I guess it is a massive risk. I still have 1 year to decide so I might rethink and evaluate other options really after visiting the different colleges.




Will do

The requirement for the Olympiad is top 1000 which is usually higher than the Gold requirement (I think it tends to be in the region of 105 out of 125). There is also the Senior Kangaroo which is easier to get into.

The SMC questions are quite different to A-level questions. Whereas many A-level questions can be solved by "plug-and-chug" (making plenty of use of the calculator's functions to check answers and be super-confident), the SMC questions usually revolve around spotting a certain trick (for example, expressing something as the difference of two squares). If you see the trick it takes 30 seconds; if you don't see it, it takes you 15 minutes.

At the open day they said the reason why they don't use September BMAT is because it's hard to compare with November right now, so they may still change their policy but I don't think they'll change this by next year. Out of interest, why do you prefer Oxford to Cambridge so much?

Yeah, our teacher did tell us about there being high requirements. He doesn't want us to get into Kangaroo though because he thinks it's a waste of time. Nevertheless, I intend to practice loads of past questions so I can get as much practice in before the exam as possible.

I've never taken Kangaroo so I'm not familiar with the questions, but restricting the answers to integers between 0 and 999 seems like a pretty limited way to assess ability. Good luck!

are you an arab by any chance as you took gcse arabic?

Yeah, our teacher did tell us about there being high requirements. He doesn't want us to get into Kangaroo though because he thinks it's a waste of time. Nevertheless, I intend to practice loads of past questions so I can get as much practice in before the exam as possible.




I think it's just the location and everyone fantasises about Oxford. I like the area of Oxford more than Cambridge. There are a lot more things to do over there I guess and since I live in Reading, it is quite close to my home and I would rather stay at home. Cambridge though is quite far from here and I could commute everyday. I also met with a few oxford and cambridge med students and I just liked how the oxonions were talking about life compared to cambridge.

Eh fair enough lol, but I think there are a fair number of people who fantasise about Cambridge instead of Oxford as well lol. I like both, I won't lie, I slightly preferred Cambridge based off how it looks lol, I really liked the river going through the middle of the city, but in the end I just picked the one I have a slightly better chance at (Oxford).

Are you currently studying at Oxford or have you applied to Oxford?