Am I good enough for A Level Further Maths?

Hi! Today I had my sixth form interview and was immediately told that my grades are not good enough for me to take four a levels (german, physics, maths, and further maths) and that I will never be able to handle the workload. My predicted grades are as follows:

English Lit: 7
English Lang: 8
Maths: 8
Further Maths: 7
Biology: 8
Chemistry: 7
Physics: 8
RS: 7
Art: 7
German: 9
History: 8

I’ve also just gotten the Gold certificate on the IMC.

Am I good enough for Further Maths A Level in addition to my others? My schools requirement for it is a grade 8, but now I’m feeling worried about if I can manage it or am good enough.

Hi! Today I had my sixth form interview and was immediately told that my grades are not good enough for me to take four a levels (german, physics, maths, and further maths) and that I will never be able to handle the workload. My predicted grades are as follows:

English Lit: 7
English Lang: 8
Maths: 8
Further Maths: 7
Biology: 8
Chemistry: 7
Physics: 8
RS: 7
Art: 7
German: 9
History: 8

I’ve also just gotten the Gold certificate on the IMC.

Am I good enough for Further Maths A Level in addition to my others? My schools requirement for it is a grade 8, but now I’m feeling worried about if I can manage it or am good enough.

For my A levels, I do Maths, Further Maths, Computer Science, Chemistry and EPQ (big regret doing EPQ but no regrets doing 4).

My GCSEs:

Maths - 9
English Lang - 9
Physics - 9
Biology - 9
Chemistry - 9
Computer Science - 9
Latin - 9
Spanish - 9
English Literature - 8
RS - 8

Now, I understand that you want to do Further Maths at A level but you must first consider its relevance to you. Is Further Maths relevant to what you want to do in the future? If you want to pursue a STEM course (excluding medicine and anything Biological) at a top university, take it if you want to. If not, then don't waste your time with it. I wanted to study Computer Science at a top university (and in God's grace, I will meet my offer from Imperial) so it made sense that I took Further Maths. Initially, I did Biology over Further Maths because I was unsure about the field of further study I wanted to pursue but then 2 months in, my thoughts were cemented and I wanted to do Computing. Also, I got bored of how easy A level Maths was and how mind-numbingly boring Biology was so I wanted a challenge so swapped to Further Maths.

While getting a gold on the IMC is indeed impressive, it doesn't mean that you can survive Further Maths because the UKMT challenges and A levels test different things. A levels test how well you know stuff and UKMT tests your ability to problem solve with Maths - it's a different kind of Maths. My scores in IMC allowed me to qualify for the Olympiads in Year 9 and 10 and I don't think that the Olympiads helped me in any way with Further Maths so there really isn't any correlation between the two.

Now, in terms of whether you can manage it, that's entirely up to you and how much work you are willing to put in. Having almost finished the entire course, I expected it to be far more difficult than it is but others are finding it harder. I would say that the hard part of Further Maths actually comes from the Core Pure 2 rather than Core Pure 1 and the optional modules you elect to take up (you need to take two optional modules in addition to CP1 and CP2. I'll let you do further research into the modules themselves because I don't want to influence your decision too much. And for reference, I am doing Further Stats 1 and Further Mechanics 1, which is what our school forced us to do. Given the choice, I would have picked Decision 1 and Further Stats 1 because the hardest stuff in Decision is covered in AS level Computing, at least it was for us.).

I would say that AS level Further Maths is easier than Year 2 Normal Maths in terms of the content covered so year 1, you should be OK, provided you put in the work but Year 2 Further, no one can get away without doing any work.

Thank you so much for all the advice! I’m looking at going into nuclear engineering in the future, so think that Further Maths will be something both beneficial and enjoyable for me. Well done with the offer from Imperial by the way!

Hi! Today I had my sixth form interview and was immediately told that my grades are not good enough for me to take four a levels (german, physics, maths, and further maths) and that I will never be able to handle the workload. My predicted grades are as follows:

English Lit: 7
English Lang: 8
Maths: 8
Further Maths: 7
Biology: 8
Chemistry: 7
Physics: 8
RS: 7
Art: 7
German: 9
History: 8

I’ve also just gotten the Gold certificate on the IMC.

Am I good enough for Further Maths A Level in addition to my others? My schools requirement for it is a grade 8, but now I’m feeling worried about if I can manage it or am good enough.

If you're getting gold in the IMC then there's got to be a good reason why you're not on track for a easy 9s in maths and FM. Any idea what that is? Do you feel you work hard enough and revise well for tests?

I’ve only just started revising properly for my maths, so could be the reason that I only got an 8 in my mock. My teacher is shockingly bad and my whole class is suffering because of this in further maths, so to be honest I definitely need to work on that on my own. A 9 would be fantastic in my GCSEs but I’m feeling like it’s impossible at the moment when an 8 felt like a massive achievement. Any tips for pushing into the top?

I’ve only just started revising properly for my maths, so could be the reason that I only got an 8 in my mock. My teacher is shockingly bad and my whole class is suffering because of this in further maths, so to be honest I definitely need to work on that on my own. A 9 would be fantastic in my GCSEs but I’m feeling like it’s impossible at the moment when an 8 felt like a massive achievement. Any tips for pushing into the top?

In that case, I'd definitely take it. If you want to get into Oxbridge and/or Imperial and other esteemed universities for Nuclear Engineering (I'm not too sure about good universities for this because I don't have any friends who want to do this), you more or less need Further Maths. They may not say it explicitly in the requirements but that's because they can't as not every school offers it. If your school offers it, you need to take it essentially - it's an unwritten requirement.

You will get people saying that oh you can get by with just maths but you have to realise that the number of people that get in with just Maths are very few.

Let me quote an example of an esteemed university for CS.

I believe that for CS at Durham, about 73% of the applicants who end up with offers do Further Maths, even though they don't mention it on the entry requirements as a requirement which is a bit coincidental don't you think?

Thank you!