Are CIE (Cambridge) papers very hard???

Hi,

I have heard that CIE papers are very very hard. Nobody scores good grades in A level with CIE.

Does anybody have ant experience that s/he would like to share???

And especially tell me how hard the papers are for further maths.

Thanx

Reply 1

coffeym

smart_123_2

From reading the website and sample papers, they are a good bit harder than A-Level, certainly in the sense that the syllabus for normal maths encompasses several topics studied at Further Maths on other boards. In this respect, they are what A-Levels should be: not dumbed down :wink:

" Nobody scores good grades in A level with CIE."
I'm sure plenty of good, well prepared candidates prove to be very successful with CIE.

Reply 2

dreamer*girl

I did CIE biology. I thought I would get at least a C and I got a D! So I guess they are tough :s-smilie:

Reply 3

Xexxhoshi

Oh lucky me, I was on the CIE board for my IGCSEs and A Levels in an international school in Spain. x.x;

Somehow I managed to get ABBB as you can see in my sig. >_>

But yeah, they are somewhat harder, not to mention you can't (to my knowledge) do the exams modular style, the History exam was one single 3 hour paper with 4 45-min questions, and that was it. You'd come out with one grade. If you wanted to improve it, you'd have to retake the whole exam over again. Apparently I would have got an A in English Lit but an A in CIE Eng Lit is a complete bitch to get. Not to mention they're all old fashioned on the CIE board too.

Dunno if the CIE board A Levels are what you're after though. >_>