This discussion is now closed.

Check out other Related discussions

Cambridge Applicants for 2012 entry

I'm going to apply for Physical Natural Sciences. Have no idea about the college yet, I'm going to visit this month so I'm kinda hoping one will feel right! I'm a bit worried because I haven't done chemistry A Level though and it seems like everyone I've seen applying has :s-smilie:

Don't worry about that.

I have a friend who got an offer for Physical Nat sci. She is doing only 1 science (chemistry), maths, further maths and economics.

You want to be a physicist, I suppose? I have another friend who got offer from Cambridge, he wants to specialise in Physics. He has M, FM, P, Economics and AS chemistry (he took AS Chemistry in year 13, and his offer does not include it)

This link shows that if you have A Level Physics, A Level Mathematics and AS Further Mathematics, it's still very good

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 81

TimmonaPortella

21

Original post by Joseph1994

Law at Magdalene :smile:

Good choice, sir.

Reply 82

squareroot1764

1

Original post by Hermione17

Don't worry about that.

I have a friend who got an offer for Physical Nat sci. She is doing only 1 science (chemistry), maths, further maths and economics.

You want to be a physicist, I suppose? I have another friend who got offer from Cambridge, he wants to specialise in Physics. He has M, FM, P, Economics and AS chemistry (he took AS Chemistry in year 13, and his offer does not include it)

This link shows that if you have A Level Physics, A Level Mathematics and AS Further Mathematics, it's still very good

I want to be a Physicist yes, and all this is very reassuring, thank you! :smile:

Reply 83

hdiriaur

4

Original post by squareroot1764

I want to be a Physicist yes, and all this is very reassuring, thank you! :smile:

I am in the same position wanting to study Physical Natural Sciences or perhaps Engineering. I don't know whether I want to apply but when I picked my A-levels (Maths and further, Physics and French) I was worried that I didn't choose Chemistry, but I don't think it has much impact on your application really as long as you have 2 other sciences.

Reply 84

laura94

13

Original post by nibbler12

Not good advice; I'm a firm believer in the pooling system and I wouldn't advise applying to a "weaker" college just so you can get in. Will you enjoy it there? It's the wrong reason to be applying there. Clare and Selwyn are great colleges and worth applying to, by no means the most mega competitive.

I just liked it when I visited :smile:

Reply 85

maths134

13

So has everyone visited the colleges to have a look around ?

Reply 86

nibbler12

1

Original post by laura94

I just liked it when I visited :smile:

And that's the right reason to apply there.

Reply 87

Eat.Sleep.Row.Repeat.

8

I might as well join this thread :smile:

I'm looking at doing Veterinary Medicine at St Catherine's or Queens (depending on my AS results!) :biggrin:

Reply 88

kerily

15

Wow, you guys are keen! I hadn't even started to think about colleges until I went to the open day last summer :awesome:

At the moment, focus on wider reading and doing as well as you can in your AS. If you have questions about maths/interviews/'aaaa I come from a state school, will they automatically hate me?'/applying with disabilities, feel free to ask me! :smile:

Reply 89

Mc^3

2

Original post by ilovedubstep

Hi I will be applying for maths for 2012 entry. I'm not sure which college I want to apply for, but I keep hearing all these rumours about Trinity being impossible to get into, especially for maths. Can anyone confirm/refute this?

It's a particularly competitive college, and it is also seen as being especially good for maths: the sheer number/ quality of its maths fellows is fairly ridiculous! For this reason, it often attracts many of the very best maths applicants, so the very top people at Trinity are likely to be truly exceptional. However, they make an unusually large number of maths offers (c.60 I think), and so you don't need to be as ridiculously good as their best applicants to get an offer. Although it may attract a disproportionate number of strong applicants, this shouldn't put you off applying to Trinity. Personally, I didn't apply there just because it seemed too big! It might pool a greater percentage of maths applicants than most colleges, but the difference between Trinity and any other college is unlikely to be huge. If you really like it when you look round, then don't let the reputation put you off.

EDIT: Oh, and if anyone has queries about maths/Emma, I guess you could ask me. Or kerily. Or cpdavis... There are quite a few of us! Or Zoedotdot for Emma...

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 90

ilovedubstep

9

Original post by kerily

Wow, you guys are keen! I hadn't even started to think about colleges until I went to the open day last summer :awesome:

At the moment, focus on wider reading and doing as well as you can in your AS. If you have questions about maths/interviews/'aaaa I come from a state school, will they automatically hate me?'/applying with disabilities, feel free to ask me! :smile:

What wider reading would suggest for maths? Are there any books that you could recommend that are more textbooky in that they will actually teach me something as opposed to historical books like fermat's last theorem.

Reply 91

kerily

15

Original post by ilovedubstep

What wider reading would suggest for maths? Are there any books that you could recommend that are more textbooky in that they will actually teach me something as opposed to historical books like fermat's last theorem.

A Concise Introduction To Pure Mathematics - Martin Liebeck. Perfectly easy to follow, and I think ICL use it as a first-year undergrad textbook as well.

That said, you don't need wider reading for maths. It does give you something to discuss at interview and on your personal statement, and I would recommend that you discuss some specific area of maths on your PS, so you can show that you actually are motivated to learn about it outside the school curriculum. But it's not as essential as it is for a humanities-based subject; I didn't have a single book on my PS and it didn't hold me back. :smile:

Reply 92

Mc^3

2

Original post by ilovedubstep

What wider reading would suggest for maths? Are there any books that you could recommend that are more textbooky in that they will actually teach me something as opposed to historical books like fermat's last theorem.

Sorry to charge in, but this is really good: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Concise-Introduction-Pure-Mathematics-Chapman/dp/1439835985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299937386&sr=8-1 It's a textbook, but is fairly easy to self-teach from, has lots of exercises, really short chapters and is very thorough! For other textbooky things, you could try some of the suggestions here: http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/admissions/readinglist.pdf Can't say I'm really a big fan of "Yay, let's do some maths without numbers" books, of the generic Marcus du Sautoy, Ian Stewart, Simon Singh genre :biggrin:

I didn't get asked about anything I'd read at interview, it was all just maths! So doing interesting questions is probably the best thing to do... Whether this comes from learning new material/ trying STEP papers/BMO/maths challenges/other stuff doesn't really matter

EDIT: It appears I was beaten in the rush to suggest the same book!

Reply 93

Schnecke

1

Original post by ilovedubstep

What wider reading would suggest for maths? Are there any books that you could recommend that are more textbooky in that they will actually teach me something as opposed to historical books like fermat's last theorem.

'A Very Short Introduction to Mathematics' is pretty good for showing you some interesting things without just going on about the lives of mathematicians etc (trust me I read plenty of those kind of books and they got pretty dull). Less mathsy but a brilliant book is Hardy's 'A Mathematician's Apology'. If you actually want a textbook then I'd recommend 'Further Pure Mathematics' by Bostock and Chandler (if you're lucky your school might have a copy), it has some good stuff in that you probably won't cover at A-level.

Reply 94

ilovedubstep

9

kerily

-

mc^3

-

How would I know before buying that textbook whether is was out of my grasp. The way my school structures our exams is weird.

basically we do only as maths in lower sixth and then in upper sixth we do the full further maths A level and the rest of maths A2. So at the moment I only have knowledge of S1, C2, C1, M1 and C3 (i.e. no further maths). Do you think I would be able to cope or is it impossible to tell?

Reply 95

kerily

15

Original post by ilovedubstep

How would I know before buying that textbook whether is was out of my grasp. The way my school structures our exams is weird.

basically we do only as maths in lower sixth and then in upper sixth we do the full further maths A level and the rest of maths A2. So at the moment I only have knowledge of S1, C2, C1, M1 and C3 (i.e. no further maths). Do you think I would be able to cope or is it impossible to tell?

Oh god, don't buy it, it was like £30 on eBay! Go to your local university instead and try and get it out - far cheaper. (My local university is Hull, which doesn't actually have a maths department, and yet had a copy of it - it's definitely worth a try presuming that you have some sort of university locally.)

You'd be fine with it. It does have complex numbers, I think, but they're not too hard to gain a basic knowledge of - the main thing is reading it through slowly and making sure you follow what's going on logically.

Reply 96

TheDannyManCan

6

Medicine at Emmanual :smile:

Looking forward to applying!

Reply 97

ViennaWaits

Theology at Newnham... :smile:

If I can get up the courage to apply! :biggrin:

Reply 98

chaz1992

15

If it wasn't £9k a year, i'd of probably re-applied.

Reply 99

MinpoloD

6

Hi there

I'm hoping to apply to Murray Edwards College for natural sciences (physical).
I'll probably be applying under the special access scheme as my GCSEs are not quite the amazing A*/As you need for Cambridge. This is due to the fact I was going through quite difficult circumstances during those two years and the 'first' year of AS which lead to me dropping out and restarting my Alevels this september (2010)

However now i've got my results from the january exams i'm not so sure i'll make the grades needed for cambridge :frown:

Cambridge Applicants for 2012 entry

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you