The Student Room Group

My journey to A*AA (hopefully)

So I saw a lot of people doing these kinds of blogs and I thought why not do one for myself, seeing as I really struggle to be motivated at home as I get tired very easily because of a couple of health issues, but I'm aiming for A*AA in Maths, Further Maths and Chemistry respectively....

My UCAS application was sent off today by my School when I found out my predicted grades are A*AB (A* in maths, B in further maths), which is kind of a let down because I got a B at AS further maths simply because I panicked in one of the exams, it's not like the maths is beyond me (I hope!) so I kinda wanted my teachers to understand that and predict me an A anyway, as that is my aim.

I struggle quite a bit with Chemistry due to a lack of knowledge in revising wordy subjects (I hope you get what I mean), I didn't revise at all at GCSE and turned out with mediocre grades, and in turn didn't actually learn the skills needed to revise for a worded answer type qualification. Luckily there is quite a bit of maths in my exam boards version (Edexcel) but it still an issue that I need to work on!

In the end I decided to apply to the following Uni's to do Maths (G100):

Cardiff : Required AAB predicted for offer
Exeter : Required AAB predicted for offer
Leeds : Required AAB predicted for offer
York : Required AAB predicted for offer
Nottingham : Required A*AB (A* in maths, A in further maths) for offer

Spoiler


My first choice out of all of them is probably Cardiff, just because of the location and how it's far enough away from home that I don't know anyone, but close enough to visit family if need be as well as the whole city life fiasco (I want to have a good nightlife when I go to Uni, so that's important to me).

But anyway, I'll try and upload updates daily on how I'm doing both in and outside of school, and hopefully this blog will help serve as a motivator for me to keep studying all those hours. Feel free to leave comments as I go

Peace
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 1
Today I had double f. maths and a maths lesson. We covered quite a lot in F Maths about further integration for C4 and now we've moved on to trigonometric integration, which I really suck at. I need to practice it a lot more. In Maths we are starting the iteration formulae for C3 but the teacher is going so slowly with it that I end up getting sleepy... we spent a whole lesson just finding a root via trial and error and then talking about it in graphical terms. I feel like we are going really slowly at the moment, which isn't a good thing.

At home I managed 2 hours of chemistry revision going over the beginning of the organic section and I think its all staying in my brain so I must be doing something right.

Until next time :smile:
Reply 2
Your predicted grades are looking amazing! I think you definitely have a chance at Nottingham too, just make sure your personal statement is strong :smile: I don't know much about A Level Maths but I wish you all the luck and I'll definitely be following your journey :h:
Reply 3
Original post by Amefish
Your predicted grades are looking amazing! I think you definitely have a chance at Nottingham too, just make sure your personal statement is strong :smile: I don't know much about A Level Maths but I wish you all the luck and I'll definitely be following your journey :h:


Aw thank you. I think my personal statement was very well suited to a mathsy audience seeing as I tried to replace words with ones that have a meaning both in maths and in the real world. For example I put about how I would be able to "integrate into academic life" etc if you get what I mean haha. I had just about every teacher in my school read it to make sure there were no mistakes and so it doesnt sound too corny/pretentious, so hopefully it should be fine!

I just saw your blog as well, studying Environmental Science at Manchester I think? Your grades all looked really high, and I think it's great that you're into volunteering as well :smile: I expect you won't need it but wishing you all the best.
Reply 4
Original post by _RobbieL_
Aw thank you. I think my personal statement was very well suited to a mathsy audience seeing as I tried to replace words with ones that have a meaning both in maths and in the real world. For example I put about how I would be able to "integrate into academic life" etc if you get what I mean haha. I had just about every teacher in my school read it to make sure there were no mistakes and so it doesnt sound too corny/pretentious, so hopefully it should be fine!

I just saw your blog as well, studying Environmental Science at Manchester I think? Your grades all looked really high, and I think it's great that you're into volunteering as well :smile: I expect you won't need it but wishing you all the best.


:rofl: that's really clever actually, I hope they click on your wordplay! It was difficult for me to get into Manchester to be honest, but now I'm here I really need to get myself together and actually apply myself :tongue:

Let me know if you get into Nottingham, that's where I'm from! :biggrin:
Reply 5
Today went better than most - I felt really comfortable with the topic we are doing at the moment in Chemistry and in Maths it was basically a triple revision session for me seeing as the class is doing M1 which I did last year for F. Maths, so yeah, popped the earbuds in and got on with S2 which actually went well (yay).

Goals for tonight:
- Finish writing up notes from chemistry lessons today
- Attempt Chemistry homework (9 mark calculations question)
- Watch a YouTube vid on Catalysis
- Relax

I already did 3 hours of Maths revision in lesson time so I think I can take a break for now x)

Until next time!
Reply 6
Sorry for not updating as and when buuuuuuuuuuuuuut.............. I got an offer from Exeter today of A*AB :biggrin: I enquired to them whether this means I will still be accepted with AAA (i.e: equivalent grades) but they probably won't reply until tomorrow.

Of today's list of stuff to do I have finished writing up my notes from Chemistry, and finished the 9 mark calculations question as well. I'll watch the video on Catalysis before I go to sleep so I can have sweet dreams about chemical reactions and the like :wink:

See you tomorrow :smile:
Reply 7
Today's lessons were good, tackled some difficult sampling questions in Stats 2 to finish off the chapter and then finished off the trig integration of C4 as well! I had an email come up on my phone midway through the lesson detailing my details for Cardiff Uni's SIMS (which is there private applications service, I think) and also received in the post a letter saying how I've been invited to an Offer Holders Day..... but where is my offer? :/

I rang them in the end because it was driving me crazy and they said on the phone someone from the main office had to go home and so my offer hasn't actually been updated on Track or something, so I should wait 3-5 days before ringing up again to see what's up. So yes, I do have an offer from Cardiff, but no, I don't know what it is.. oh the joys of anxiousness. Fingers crossed for that unconditional but I very much doubt it (cries)...

Goals for rest of the day:

- Revise trigonometric differentiation in C4
- Finish a C3 past paper
- Watch another 30 minute Chemistry vid on something to do with Transition Metals

Peace out for now :biggrin:
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 8
I just received an offer from Nottingham :biggrin: @Amefish

They gave me an offer of AAB with A in Maths or A*AC with A* Maths A Further Maths. I'm so psyched, I thought their standard offer was like A*AA or AAA so I feel as though I've been given a reduced one. Cheers to that :colondollar:
Reply 9
Today was so tiring like fml... I didn't even do a lot but I'm exhausted.

Had double Chem and Maths, we are still finishing up Transition Metals in chem and there is so much to learn. Lots of specific reactions, conditions, colours and precipitates.. joy.

In Maths I was told to just self-teach the Iteration Formulae (despite doing this at home last week) and work on questions by myself whilst the teacher helped the rest of the class on the most recent Functions test. It was pretty boring in all honesty, I wish we sped up more.

I also got another offer today from Leeds which was:

AAB including f maths or
A*BB including f maths.

Another good offer, think this one might be reduced as well? I don't actually know the standard offer Leeds gives for my course, maybe I'll look into it.

I'll save tonight's work for tomorrow seeing as I don't have to go in. I'm far too exhausted to do anything intensive at the moment :frown:
Reply 10
So yesterday I received my offer from Cardiff on Track and it turned out to be AAA/A*AB Could be better, could be worse.

With this I definitely know that Cardiff will be my firm and I’ll have Notts as my insurance. Just need to wait for York to get back to me and then I can reply to the decisions.

Also starting new medication today to try and help with my constant tiredness so hopefully revision will start back up in full, but tonight I am planning on revising Integration by parts and some trigonometric differentiation if I can manage it. We shall see🤷*♂️
Reply 11
"yeah ill try update you guys daily" yeah right robbie its been 5 days!

So I got a new puppy and thats kind of taken over my life but school is still going fine, had a parents evening where I was called "the model student" twice (what?) and am currently 2 days away until my Offer Day at Cardiff Uni which I still need to book the train tickets for...

I have an C4 integration (trigonomeric, recognition, substitution and by parts) test later this week so looking forward to that, I get super competitive with tests against everyone else (even tho they dont know Im thinking of it that way lol) so it'll be interesting to see what score I get at the end of it :smile:

see yaz soon x
Original post by _RobbieL_
"yeah ill try update you guys daily" yeah right robbie its been 5 days!

So I got a new puppy and thats kind of taken over my life but school is still going fine, had a parents evening where I was called "the model student" twice (what?) and am currently 2 days away until my Offer Day at Cardiff Uni which I still need to book the train tickets for...

I have an C4 integration (trigonomeric, recognition, substitution and by parts) test later this week so looking forward to that, I get super competitive with tests against everyone else (even tho they dont know Im thinking of it that way lol) so it'll be interesting to see what score I get at the end of it :smile:

see yaz soon x


Been a while, where have you been?

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