On the road to 9s and A*A* Maths/FM

In year 12, I'll be focusing on STEP Maths (STEP1-3) and will be taking AEA for a second time next year. Apart from STEP, I'll also focus on problem solving and will really start doing Olympiad Maths a lot. Also, an admission guy from Imperial came to my school and told me he'll be inviting me to some sort of online course or something for mathematicians to learn about partial differentiation, fourrier/laplace transform and other higher level Maths (also number theory; modular arithmetic in detail and other stuff) so I'll be continuing that next year.

Yeah, those 3 are looking to be my main 3! I quite enjoy Computing but the Computing departmnet at my sixth form is not that good - they don't teach that much so the highest scorer in AS was like 50%.

Yeah that's true. I may end up retaking some modules if I do badly in them but my school is only putting me in for it if I can do well and to be honest (this may be impossible), I'm aiming for 100 UMS in most modules (apart from mechanics as I often make very silly mistakes as my Physics isn't that great).

Well you have plenty of time to improve it and imo mechanics is the easiest part of step but maybe it's just because I've done more practice problem solving for physics rather than pure maths. I do still question the wisdom in doing maths+fm in year 11 but I guess only you know you and if you can handle it then you're probs suitable for maths at cambridge. I was going to apply for maths but in the end I went for natsci partly because I find maths quite hard and partly because I really like and am good at the physical sciences too. You never know how your tastes might change in 2 years, you might end up wanting to do compsci, engineering or science- who knows!

any tips on French and practicals?

Thank you and I found it pretty good. I unfortunately got question 15 wrong as I'm not that good with diagrams but I'll start preparation for the Olympiad. What about you?

Hey

I'm currently in year 11 and my exams start in 3 months so I may as well start this thread now in order to monitor my progress and see if I get what I'm hoping for... the real intensity begins now

Completed Qualifications:



What I'd like to get this year:



Class tests:



Extra stuff:


What I want to do:


Stress:

For French, my school did a memrise on all of the vocab. This vocab. is available in the specification. I do Edexcel.

I also bought the revision guide and I work throgh the workbook accompanied by past and specimen papers.

The UKMT on Thursday was ok. I answered Questions 1-15 100% correct, Question 16 I didn't answer, Question 17-22 correct, Question 23 can't remember my answer, so don't know if correct or not, Question 24 correct, Question 25 ran out of time answering. I did the Cayley Olympiad last year, hoping to get the Hamilton this year.

Thanks.
Have you got any reply from UKMT yet?

For me, M3 is quite hard (and mechanics is just hard to self-teach). I found C1-C4, FP1-FP3 relatively easy to learn because all the content and questions are available (examsolutions and Professor Leonard teaches all the Calculus in an amazing way; amazing guy!).

I think S1-S2 is fine since it's just calculator work but I'm finding mechanics pretty hard. My Physics background is pretty shaky but I find decision even harder as I just find it boring unfortunately. What modules are you doing?

Yeah I wouldn't really worry about your gcses other than the ones you are continuing for a-level. I guess getting a decent grade would be nice but I'm sure your smart enough to get an okay grade without needing to put in too much time revising. Honestly in a month or so, all you'll be doing with your time is doing maths past papers anyway XD. How far along are you with fm teaching? I'm about half way into fp2 and 3 atm and doing so many integrals and differential equations- I love it!

Bro this is an amazing thread!!!. I found the advice you gave for English and Maths extremely useful could you please help me out with computer science. I am on the AQA Board, and our teacher focused too much on the NEA and we are cramming in the theory now to catch up. Good luck for your GCSE's I'm sure you will ace them, I'm doing GCSE's in Computer Science, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Maths, English Lit and Lang, Religious Education, French and Graphics hoping to achieve the following:

Maths - 9
Biology - 9
Chemistry - 9
Physics - 9
Computer Science - 9
English Lang and Lit - 7,7
Graphics - A*
Religious Education - 8
French - 5

:-) :-) :-) :-)

Totally following! Xxx

For science:

Resources:

- mygcsescience
- chemsheets subscription
- CGP workbook and revision guide
- Chemistry: https://www.youtube.com/user/MaChemGuy/playlists
- Physics: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrPhysicsA

What to do:

- watch mygcsescience video on topic x and complete their worksheet
- watch topic x video on machemguy/drphysicsa (for chem/phys)
- complete chemsheets topic sheets (for chem)
- go to your revision guide and read the extra information not included
- complete revision guide questions at bottom of page + end of topic
- complete CGP workbook questions
- complete past paper questions on topic x
- complete new spec questions on topic x (specimen/ask teacher)


English:

Resources:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kjkKXPb90c8hdlXGZGPi80mvJ6niW-uT_9xvM5Efz1A/edit#slide=id.g1db289179e_0_65
- https://www.youtube.com/user/mrbruff/featured
- http://thebicesterschool.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Poetry-Support-Booklet.pdf
- https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AD-SAwajglJ-Yys&id=51748E8C9497D753%213926&cid=51748E8C9497D753
- http://www.poetryessay.co.uk/aqa-power-and-conflict-poems.html
- http://www.carshaltonboys.org/_site/data/files/files/curriculum/year%2011%20revision/english/lit/D95D01402AE3773102A227025C60DDA1.pdf

English Lit:

- watch MrBruff videos for quotes; context; analysis (and make notes)
- read these as well as his sample paragraphs
- write sample paragraphs to main topics of plays e.g. social responsibility, character essays for AIC
- get your teacher to mark these (write as many as you can for each main topic of a play/book)

English Lang:

- watch Mr Bruff videos for Lang paper 1/2; his grammar playlist (be able to identify adverbial phrases; concrete/abstract/proper nouns; dynamic, active, emotive, onomatopoeic verbs etc (and learn techniques)
- practice writing paragraphs for questions 1/2/3/4 and section B (creative writing; persuasive stuff etc)

I'm doing FP2-3, M1-2, S2 and D1.
I did C1-4, FP1 and S1 in year 10 averaging about 95 ums.
I believe STEP is changing next year because of the new spec.

Woah thanks! This is awesome good luck and I'm definitely following!

Yeah that's true xD

I've started Further Maths self-teaching beginning of January. I've covered FP1-FP3 which I loved! Calculus for me is one of my favourite parts - reduction formulae (deriving and using) are quite fun. If you want any help with FP2/FP3 (especially the Calculus), I recommend Professor Leonard's lectures. He taught me all the calculus in FM in about week (from FP1-FP3). He is a legendary teacher.

So far this year I've covered C1-C4, S1-M1, FP1-FP3. I've got S2-M2-M3 to learn. I will also start AEA practice next month. I'm hoping that by time April comes, I'd have finished Maths and FM as well as AEA (hoping for a Distinction this year).

Hmm yeah m2 and 3 might be hard especially since you wont have covered the basic ideas of the physics behind it yet or at least you probably wont have applied it to actually solve problems. Shame this is the last year of modular as otherwise you wouldn't have to be in such a rush haha. That said a lot of m3 is just applying c4 calc to mechanical systems. S2 is also quite easy although I find it hard to pay attention to all the details and get a really high mark in the past papers. But yeah nice thing with fm is that as long as you get 90 in 3 of the a2 modules (fp2-3,s2,m2 and m3 in your case) you get the A* (assuming you average 80 over everything) so I'm sure if m2 and 3 don't go super great it wont be a big issue.