Oxford MAT 2013/2014

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So I must have been /the/ only person who found the multiple choice questions harder than previous years. Ugh.
Question 3, I just gave a wishy washy explanation about the degree.

I found it harder than usual. Still trying to decide whether or not that was due to exam pressure or what though.

Any guesses on what would be enough to secure an Imperial offer?!

Reply 1041

jadoreétudier

Multiple choice was soooooooooo hard. I really didn't start off well. I think I've got around half marks in MC. Which is ridiculous when you compare to my usual 7-9 out of 10 in past papers.

Reply 1042

username638250

Original post by CD315

I found it harder than usual. Still trying to decide whether or not that was due to exam pressure or what though.

Any guesses on what would be enough to secure an Imperial offer?!

No idea on your question but...
the questions which would have been tricky to some extent:

1. Function summation
2. Remainder question (maybe)
3. Area bound by the line and curve
4. The STEP I question (1j) about the floor function

Reply 1043

username638250

Original post by jadoreétudier

Multiple choice was soooooooooo hard. I really didn't start off well. I think I've got around half marks in MC. Which is ridiculous when you compare to my usual 7-9 out of 10 in past papers.

You voted in the poll that you think you got 71-80! You've got nothing to worry about, really...
Same for MC. Hoping at least one of my guesses was correct, lol.

Reply 1044

dutchmaths

MY SUPER INTERESTING MAT STORY

Only started at ~9:40 because there was 1 inviligator for ~100 people and people with combined courses had to take weird combinations of admissions tests, like HAT+ELAT. I can't imagine preparing for several admissions tests, best of luck to all of you who had this!

Q1: Filled everything out, the last 4 were pretty much guesswork. Educated guesses though. Realistically, probably 6-8 questions, but there've been past papers where I unexpectedly got 40/40 on this part.
Q2: WHAT THE HELL WAS THIS QUESTION I DON'T EVEN. 5 points MAX
Q3: This one went pretty well. I understood the question after a while, my only worry is that I didn't make my thoughts clear enough. I'm fairly sure I'll get 10-15 points on this one.
Q4: Went okay. Again, I feel like I answered all parts correctly, but I'm very unsure whether my workings and explanation are thorough enough. 10-15 points probably.
Q5: This one just felt too easy. I feel like I missed something that would heavily complicate the question. For example, on the last question, isn't that just (1+2+...+8+9)*300=13500? Am I missing something? 15 points if it was as simple as it seemed, 0 if there's something I missed.

Overall, assuming Q5 was what it seemed, 59-85 points. It could have gone better, but I'm definitely not unhappy.

Reply 1045

31541

Original post by yl95

Yes. What the hell were we meant to do in the remainder question? I tried summing the functions to express them as one term then tried dividing one by the other to get a remainder (lol). Couldn't get anywhere.

I also had some fun with the bounded area one. Sledgehammer approach didn't work and I couldn't see any concise tricks!

Reply 1046

jadoreétudier

Original post by yl95

You voted in the poll that you think you got 71-80! You've got nothing to worry about, really...
Same for MC. Hoping at least one of my guesses was correct, lol.

No, 61-70. And I'm not even sure about that considering how bad MC was. Besides MC, I think I've got a minimum of 40. question 4 worked for me!

Reply 1047

dutchmaths

Original post by jadoreétudier

Multiple choice was soooooooooo hard. I really didn't start off well. I think I've got around half marks in MC. Which is ridiculous when you compare to my usual 7-9 out of 10 in past papers.

I agree so much. With the past papers I would usually immediately see most of them, or at least after a bit of trying out and messing around. This time I was just like :eek:

with about half of them, and ended up guessing something that seemed about right, which I'm sure is not going to net me a lot of points.

Reply 1048

gavinlowe

Original post by yl95

So I must have been /the/ only person who found the multiple choice questions harder than previous years. Ugh.
Question 3, I just gave a wishy washy explanation about the degree.

I think the multiple choice was harder this year than normal -- and I didn't have the stress of doing them under exam conditions. Also, that was the general consensus of the meeting when we reviewed the questions. I'm not going to tell you how many I got right :colondollar:

Reply 1049

IceKidd

Original post by CD315

I found it harder than usual. Still trying to decide whether or not that was due to exam pressure or what though.

Any guesses on what would be enough to secure an Imperial offer?!

i would say 65+ maybe (but none of us have any real idea)

Original post by yl95

haha i did that J question in a step 1 paper nearly exactly the same (think it was 2004 paper) and it had e^x instead of 2^x and jsut tried remmebering what i put for that.

i wrote nothing in the working out area because of it so it might look to them like i guessed it..should have written ''this is a step question already done'' lol. that must have been long to work out for a multiple choice q tho

Reply 1050

dutchmaths

Original post by CD315

I ended up writing out some weird expression for both functions, both of which were quadratics with the same a-coefficient. I then figured that dividing quadratics with the same a-coefficient couldn't result in another quadratic, so I crossed those out, then crossed the one out which just seemed too simple. Chance I have this one wrong >90%

Reply 1051

Noble.

Original post by The Integrator

how many a*s u get

At GCSE? Two. At A-Level? Three.

Reply 1052

jadoreétudier

Original post by gavinlowe

That makes me feel better! Are you a tutor?
Harder this year than normal? Can we say WAY harder than normal? If we did say that, we'd probably be exaggerating, but they just did not go well for me in any way.

Reply 1053

IceKidd

Original post by gavinlowe

Really. What did you think about the longer questions.

I personally felt the multiple choice questions were nearly all easy except about 3 (though im fairly sure i have less than 7 right!) But I found the longer questions (particularly 2 and 4 were harder than usual)

Reply 1054

BeltonianNewt

Original post by Tarquin Digby

So apparently this paper was ridiculously easy (relative to past papers anyway), can anyone confirm the rumor that over 70 will be required to get an interview?

Where did you hear this from???

Reply 1055

dutchmaths

Original post by Tarquin Digby

So apparently this paper was ridiculously easy (relative to past papers anyway), can anyone confirm the rumor that over 70 will be required to get an interview?

What makes you say that? I actually thought the MC questions were way harder than in past papers, and the open questions were about equally difficult. Obviously nobody here will be able to confirm that rumor, and I highly doubt there's any element of truth to it. The papers have probably not even been marked yet, so a cut-off score can't already be set, and even if it was, it probably wouldn't be common knowledge. Also, average scores have been around 50 for four years now. I really don't see any basis for this being true.

Reply 1056

username638250

Original post by dutchmaths

Lol he's trolling.

Reply 1057

ainsley94

From what I've gathered from other past poles and comments this test was at least 2 standard deviations in average less then the past papers. Im not sure why this one was so rigorous. As to the comment about the cut off being 70, this cannot be true.