It probably would be worth discussing with a teacher or someone who knows you better but there is a standard list of supercurriculum ideas at
https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/files/publications/super-curricular_suggestions.pdf
but there are many things you could do.

Its worth bearing in mind that there are something like 6 people apply for every place (in maths) and a fair proportion go through to interviews. So the interview and its tests and then the step exams are the real differentiators, not your personal statement. So you could

•

Work through the step foundation modules (and maybe the mat (livestream) / tmua stuff) https://maths.org/step/ and associated stuff at mmp https://maths.org/

•

The enrichment section at https://www.drfrostmaths.com/downloadables.php? has a mix of mat/step/ukmt resources. Bowlers interview questions booklet is relevant as is some of the ukmt stuff.

•

Watch some youtube like tomrocks, veritasium, 3Blue1Brown ... to get exposed to maths content

•

You dont say what books youre reading, but a mix of pop maths / history / problem solving or recreational maths is useful background. If there are exercises in the book do (some of) them and simply reading maths is rarely enough.

•

Think a bit more rigorously so what famous / simple proofs are used to underpin gcse/a level maths. So how are pythagorean triples generated, circle/multiple angle trig relationships, how did calculus develop (from archimedes ideas ...), ...

•

Do a bit of looking into basic number theory, counting/combinatorics, ...

•

Work though previous ukmt/ritangle/... competitions.

The above is less about padding out your personal statement (but hopefully you find it interesting and you can describe how you find it interesting ...) rather getting better prepared for interview (tests) and step exam. It does take time to learn how to do harder questions and get exposed to ideas on the border of the a level curriculum and Ii almost goes without saying that your predicted grades have to hit the level required for the application.

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 4

dtamang

1

Original post by mqb2766

It probably would be worth discussing with a teacher or someone who knows you better but there is a standard list of supercurriculum ideas at
https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/files/publications/super-curricular_suggestions.pdf
but there are many things you could do.

Its worth bearing in mind that there are something like 6 people apply for every place (in maths) and a fair proportion go through to interviews. So the interview and its tests and then the step exams are the real differentiators, not your personal statement. So you could

•

Work through the step foundation modules (and maybe the mat (livestream) / tmua stuff) https://maths.org/step/ and associated stuff at mmp https://maths.org/

•

The enrichment section at https://www.drfrostmaths.com/downloadables.php? has a mix of mat/step/ukmt resources. Bowlers interview questions booklet is relevant as is some of the ukmt stuff.

•

Watch some youtube like tomrocks, veritasium, 3Blue1Brown ... to get exposed to maths content

•

You dont say what books youre reading, but a mix of pop maths / history / problem solving or recreational maths is useful background. If there are exercises in the book do (some of) them and simply reading maths is rarely enough.

•

Think a bit more rigorously so what famous / simple proofs are used to underpin gcse/a level maths. So how are pythagorean triples generated, circle/multiple angle trig relationships, how did calculus develop (from archimedes ideas ...), ...

•

Do a bit of looking into basic number theory, counting/combinatorics, ...

•

Work though previous ukmt/ritangle/... competitions.

The above is less about padding out your personal statement (but hopefully you find it interesting and you can describe how you find it interesting ...) rather getting better prepared for interview (tests) and step exam. It does take time to learn how to do harder questions and get exposed to ideas on the border of the a level curriculum and Ii almost goes without saying that your predicted grades have to hit the level required for the application.

oh wow, Thankyou so much for this, It helps a lot.

Maths

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