Mathematics Applicants 2012

how dare you!

think of it like this, you put the hard work in now, and through university, working life will be a lot more enjoyable.
talking of stereotypes, theres so many people i know who frown on academic excellence, i mean people try and abuse me for reading books lol.. but they're the sort of people stuck in dead end jobs going no where..

Tell me about it, so many people at my school look down on me for being intelligent :s It's pathetic I've learnt to tolerate it...

In a way, i cant wait to leave college, as all the 'cool' people have got nothing and they dont even realise it

So I think it will be like that at university, so I guess you just have to look for friends outside your course.

2) The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking.
Simon Singh.

really don't think that's the case at any university tbh. oxford seemed like it was full of normal people. some (very few) of the other people at the open day seemed a bit keen/weird but maybe i'm just not used to being in a room full of southern accents

Not to be rude.... but why are people doing 5+ AS's with less than outstanding GCSE results, im not saying its not possible but im pretty damn sure the two are correlated. If you can do them all AND get 90+ ums on all of them, congrats but it seems a little bit questionable. Tbh I wonder why the school would let you do them all in the first place ... but as I said before if you do well in them all good on you.

I'm doing six as levels.
What counts as outstanding GCSEs?

Well I dont consider mine to be 'outstanding' (7A*'s, 4A's, C). I would say all A*'s or mainly A*'s (say one or two A's in there). Thats my opinion anyway.

Further Additional Maths

those are pretty damn good to me. I think 5 ASs are stressful for anyone. Especially when doing subjects like chemistry (which require loads of memory work together with understanding) or essay subjects (maybe its because I was always better at maths/science than the general essay subjects).

Cambridge/Oxford, Warwick, Imperial, LSE... I live in Oxford so I'm not sure whether I should apply there. I'm going to go to some open days so that I can form some more opinions.

Aha thanks, I suppose its difficult for everyone and I personally only do 4 (lol and gen studies) but im going to continue with them all next year. It just seems like anyone and everyone is doing a ridiculous amount of AS's to try and compete but surely 4 very high AS's > 5+ average ones. I suppose if you can pull of 5+ high marks then thats brilliant aha and then im screwed =p.

You do understand that LSE doesn't offer maths as a stand-alone course but with finance/economics and that Imperial doesn't offer maths with finance. potential personal statement problems?