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A* in maths

Please only give constructive advice here.

I really want an A* in maths, I know it's very hard to achieve but I really want it!! It's around 69/75 right?

What can I do in order to achieve this?

I have have until the 16th (C3) and the 18th (C4)

do you think the papers will be like last year? I heard the papers yesterday were difficult

Reply 1

Old_Simon

It is so weird how a lot of students ask this type of thing just a few days before the exam. According to the spec a full module requires 65 hours of "directed study". Thus in a week you could do all of it. Exam Solutions and past papers are your best way forward.

Reply 2

TenOfThem

Original post by londonbaby18

People who understand the spec have a chance of gaining an A*

People who don't - don't

So that is the answer - ensure you fully understand all of the concepts - that has nothing to do with being able to do text or past paper questions - it is all to do with UNDERSTANDING why rules work and how it all fits together

You can expect questions to include any knowledge from GCSE and AS

Reply 3

Old_Simon

I always struggle to understand why people get so hung up on concepts. In Maths exams we get given questions which require answering. Understanding can not be tested in an abstract or any other way which is divorced from that. Understanding is simply inferred from a correctly answered question. It goes without saying that the student needs to know the underlying maths methods but at A level a huge formula book is provided. The true significance of this obvious fact is rarely mentioned in this forum or elsewhere at all. The number of formulas a person really needs to know for each module is very small. The word "concept" does not appear in the spec to my knowledge, nor in exams nor in text books. If concepts were important in isolation then the proofs of the rules of calculus, and finding the leading derivatives from first principles would be in the spec. But they aren't.