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A*A* in maths + further maths A level - ask me anything

Student of '23, Edexcel boards. Ask me anything maths related or just A levels in general. My modules for further were decision 1 and mechanics 1 :smile:

Also to add, I did further maths in 1 year, rest of my school did it in 2. (Did further at same time as normal maths, just chose to do the whole course in 1 year)
(edited 1 year ago)

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What mark did you get in maths, and what are your opinions on the ridiculous jump in Edexcel's maths grade boundaries this year?
what is your favorite prime number
Reply 3
Original post by toxicgamage56
What mark did you get in maths, and what are your opinions on the ridiculous jump in Edexcel's maths grade boundaries this year?


I ended up getting 273, and I asked for my individual paper scores back, paper 1 was somehow my best. I personally had a feeling that boundaries were going to increase, as overall I thought these papers were a bit easier than past papers, but I feel like the jump itself is quite big from 2019. It was inevitable but not to this degree is all I can really say, but you can't really blame the exam boards. It was a certain percentile of people who were going to get an A*, and that's about it. It was just the overall performance of students.
Reply 4
Original post by the bear
what is your favorite prime number

1.





I'm kidding.
Reply 5
What was your strategy when revising maths ? To clarify, did you practice a bit of maths everyday and if so what resources did you use ?
Did getting these grades come as a shock to you or did you anticipate it? (Specifically for further maths considering how difficult the papers were this year)

And what are your plans for the future?
(edited 1 year ago)
Original post by LKemmett
I ended up getting 273, and I asked for my individual paper scores back, paper 1 was somehow my best. I personally had a feeling that boundaries were going to increase, as overall I thought these papers were a bit easier than past papers, but I feel like the jump itself is quite big from 2019. It was inevitable but not to this degree is all I can really say, but you can't really blame the exam boards. It was a certain percentile of people who were going to get an A*, and that's about it. It was just the overall performance of students.

Wow 273 is great, full marks were in sight for you! Yeah, I could tell the papers were easier this year but I was on board with everybody predicting the boundary for an A* at 220-230. I am so goddamn lucky to get 246 after I literally didn't answer the whole differentiation question at the end of paper 1 lol. Are you planning on tutoring kids maths to make some cash (bc I sure am)?
Reply 8
What was your strategy when revising maths ? To clarify, did you practice a bit of maths everyday and if so what resources did you use ?


People liked Jack brown / TLmaths but I never watched his videos myself

Edexcel only, watch bicen maths on youtube. He's amazing, helped me fill that gap from A to A*.

The only thing I did was questions. When I ran out of past paper questions, I'd find questions that people had made themselves with solutions, and also the ones in the textbooks and all of them. I did nothing else other than questions, no note taking or anything. I personally think that in order to get good at maths, you need to look at a question and automatically dissect it into things you've been taught, just try and apply everything you've learnt in class (if the teaching has been right at least). There is some stuff that schools don't teach, and thats where the resources come in.

In terms of website, I used PMT, alevelmathsrevision and madasmaths. Madasmaths were very unique questions.

I didn't do maths everyday, but around 4/5 days. Sometimes it would only be 30 minutes, other times 8 hours. A good idea would be to repeat a question that you got wrong a few days later and see if you remember how to find the solution to the question and not just the answer itself. Hope this helps.
What were your thoughts on that damn series question in the core pure 1?
Reply 10
Original post by PixiePresents
Did getting these grades come as a shock to you or did you anticipate it? (Specifically for further maths considering how difficult the papers were this year)

And what are your plans for the future?


Maths, I'd expected an A*. Although I didn't revise normal maths content in year 13 (don't do this), I still expected an A*. For further maths, I was split between a high A and low A*, but ended up getting 30 above the A* boundary. I asked for my paper scores back from my school exam officer to see that I got 96% on core pure 2, which was funny. I found mechanics 1 and core pure 1 to be the most difficult, yet I somehow scored above 60 on both of them, but seeing that A* was still fairly suprising.

I'm doing MMath at University of Bath, would've loved to go to Warwick but we don't wanna get onto the topic of my third subject. Kinda screwed me, but Bath is still an amazing place for maths. Might see if I can go Warwick for my Msc though.
Reply 11
Original post by toxicgamage56
Wow 273 is great, full marks were in sight for you! Yeah, I could tell the papers were easier this year but I was on board with everybody predicting the boundary for an A* at 220-230. I am so goddamn lucky to get 246 after I literally didn't answer the whole differentiation question at the end of paper 1 lol. Are you planning on tutoring kids maths to make some cash (bc I sure am)?


Great job, any sort of score like that can get you places for sure. I wouldn't call yourself lucky, you fully deserved success. I was thinking of tutoring but to be completely honest, I'm an extremely lazy individual. That's about it, but if I wasn't this lazy I would recommend tutoring whilst your at university too, just don't let it get in the way of your studies. Regards to the 220 - 230, I see how that would've been possible but I had more of a realistic approach rather to a lot of people on this platform who are saying low boundaries because they are coping.
Reply 12
Original post by TypicalNerd
What were your thoughts on that damn series question in the core pure 1?

A lot of people complained about the matrices question too, but I loved that question

Regards to the series question, don't even get me started. I think I lost a majority of my marks on that one, can't remember how the parts were split up but I left that until the end. Now looking back at it, I wouldn't say it was hard, it was more of just knowing where to start your approach. Props to anyone who got high marks on that question though, it was probably the least answered question out of all the papers.
Original post by LKemmett
Maths, I'd expected an A*. Although I didn't revise normal maths content in year 13 (don't do this), I still expected an A*. For further maths, I was split between a high A and low A*, but ended up getting 30 above the A* boundary. I asked for my paper scores back from my school exam officer to see that I got 96% on core pure 2, which was funny. I found mechanics 1 and core pure 1 to be the most difficult, yet I somehow scored above 60 on both of them, but seeing that A* was still fairly suprising.

I'm doing MMath at University of Bath, would've loved to go to Warwick but we don't wanna get onto the topic of my third subject. Kinda screwed me, but Bath is still an amazing place for maths. Might see if I can go Warwick for my Msc though.

I didn’t go through normal maths content much in year 13 either, except for a few days before the exams (which could have went very wrong). Congratulations on your amazing grades! 30 marks above the A* boundary is incredible, honestly I anticipated a B (or an A if lucky) after I had finished all 4 FM exams because of how bad I thought I had done but method marks seemed to have saved me somehow.

Maths at Bath is amazing and something you should be proud of! Did you take an admissions test for it?
(edited 1 year ago)
Original post by LKemmett
A lot of people complained about the matrices question too, but I loved that question

Regards to the series question, don't even get me started. I think I lost a majority of my marks on that one, can't remember how the parts were split up but I left that until the end. Now looking back at it, I wouldn't say it was hard, it was more of just knowing where to start your approach. Props to anyone who got high marks on that question though, it was probably the least answered question out of all the papers.

I thought the matrices were much worse than the series question, but in hindsight I don't think the maths in CP1 was actually that bad - the exam just felt a lot more time pressured than normal.

The only part of the series question I know I definitely got wrong was the very last part, because I unthinkingly tried to evaluate the sum by using n = 12.5 or something similar.

I presume your overall mark in FM was well over 80% from the sounds of things?
(edited 1 year ago)
Original post by LKemmett
Great job, any sort of score like that can get you places for sure. I wouldn't call yourself lucky, you fully deserved success. I was thinking of tutoring but to be completely honest, I'm an extremely lazy individual. That's about it, but if I wasn't this lazy I would recommend tutoring whilst your at university too, just don't let it get in the way of your studies. Regards to the 220 - 230, I see how that would've been possible but I had more of a realistic approach rather to a lot of people on this platform who are saying low boundaries because they are coping.

Yeah, you called me out, I was definitely coping lol. I was also too lazy to tutor but I'm not passing up £15/hr. I'm feeling financially sour after turning down an extremely profitable degree apprenticeship in favour of university, that's all. Well done on your high marks though, where are you headed in terms of uni and subject?
(edited 1 year ago)
Reply 16
Original post by PixiePresents
I didn’t go through normal maths content much in year 13 either, except for a few days before the exams (which could have went very wrong). Congratulations on your amazing grades! 30 marks above the A* boundary is incredible, honestly I anticipated a B (or an A if lucky) after I had finished all 4 FM exams because of how bad I thought I had done but method marks seemed to have saved me somehow.

Maths at Bath is amazing and something you should be proud of! Did you take an admissions test for it?

I'm glad you got suprised. Thank you though. No admissions test, but I did take the oxford MAT exam, got like 60 on it but didn't do too well in the interview.
Original post by TypicalNerd
I thought the matrices were much worse than the series question, but in hindsight I don't think the maths in CP1 was actually that bad - the exam just felt a lot more time pressured than normal.

The only part of the series question I know I definitely got wrong was the very last part, because I unthinkingly tried to evaluate the sum by using n = 12.5 or something similar.

I presume your overall mark in FM was well over 80% from the sounds of things?


Feel like CP1 was just a paper where you needed to stay calm and just figure out what the question was asking and the strategy, maths itself wasn’t that hard. Couldn’t do that myself though just started panicking under time pressure and got 60% lol, pulled it back with 90%+ on every other paper to get the A* relatively comfortably when before yesterday thought it was 50/50 whether A or A*.

Think grade boundaries in both maths and further maths were very fair. Tough CP1/CP2/FM1 compared to previous years reflected. In normal maths did feel that they were the easiest papers yet, other than a couple bits in the stats that weren’t very clear and would’ve been surprised if they were much lower. Feel like much of the surprise was that the Covid years disguised the natural increase you’d expect in the grades year on year from a new spec + them making papers more accessible since 2019.
Reply 18
Original post by TypicalNerd
I thought the matrices were much worse than the series question, but in hindsight I don't think the maths in CP1 was actually that bad - the exam just felt a lot more time pressured than normal.

The only part of the series question I know I definitely got wrong was the very last part, because I unthinkingly tried to evaluate the sum by using n = 12.5 or something similar.

I presume your overall mark in FM was well over 80% from the sounds of things?


I suppose it's just a matter of opinion with how good we are at certain topics and the understanding. The 1st exam time pressure was beyond me, thats true. All the other exams were fine in terms of time, but that first one... I get you completely.

I also did what you did for the last part, I remember now.
(edited 1 year ago)
Original post by LKemmett
1.





I'm kidding.


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