The Student Room Group

a level maths?

how much of the gcse content for maths is similar to a levels? or is it completely new stuff?
Reply 1
The maths A-level assumes your GCSE knowledge to be perfect. There will be some familiar bits at the start, like quadratics and simultaneous equations, equations of straight lines, the simpler bits of vectors, equations of circles (although that is expanded on a bit) but... that's about it.
You will usually have to take applied modules as well, like statistics and mechanics, but that depends on your exam board.

Speaking of which, do you know which exam board is offered by your school for A-level maths?
(edited 4 years ago)
Reply 2
if you're thinking of taking A level maths

don't
Original post by n.345
if you're thinking of taking A level maths

don't

i second this one
i mean a lot of the maths, pure maths anyway, will be a step up from GCSE. you'll use your gcse knowledge, but it'll get quite a bit harder. tbh you don't actually start learning new content until like chapter 9 or something lol.

pure maths is fun.
mechanics is complete sh*t. stats is ok.
80% of the year 1 AS book for edexcel is gcse stuff. my class literally skipped more than half the book because of it. i mean the first chapter literally goes over solving quadratics its a bit ridiculous really. and also, a level further maths is the only a level that assumes you know how to solve a quadratic without showing your working....
Reply 6
Original post by Sinnoh
The maths A-level assumes your GCSE knowledge to be perfect. There will be some familiar bits at the start, like quadratics and simultaneous equations, equations of straight lines, the simpler bits of vectors, equations of circles (although that is expanded on a bit) but... that's about it.
You will usually have to take applied modules as well, like statistics and mechanics, but that depends on your exam board.

Speaking of which, do you know which exam board is offered by your school for A-level maths?

probably edexcel because thats what we're doing for gcse


Original post by n.345
if you're thinking of taking A level maths

don't

lol why?
Reply 7
Original post by lilTrain
probably edexcel because thats what we're doing for gcse



lol why?


Probably because A-level maths is a difficult A-level and it requires a lot of practice in order to get the top marks. It's entirely possible to do well in it, though, and I think the Edexcel textbook does a good job explaining topics.

Also, turns out actually all the exam boards do use the same core specification, so exam board doesn't really matter (although they will differ in the style of questions).

The applied topics you will come across in single A-level are statistics and mechanics, and the questions in those will be quite different to what you're familiar with regarding those topics.

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