Further maths for Comp Sci

Hi,
I’d like to study computer science at uni as I enjoy coding a lot since I was young. However, looking around uni websites, I’ve seen many “strongly encourage” further maths and I only take maths chem physics. I expect to get 3A* but would not having further maths make it challenging for me to get into the better unis seeing as how competitive comp sci has gotten recently? I’d like to apply to imperial bath cambridge UCL birmingham.

If you don't have Further Maths, I would say goodbye to Imperial because as part of the offer, everyone sits the STEP which requires Further Maths to be able to do and even then, you'll struggle. I do Further Maths and I'm struggling with the STEP II atm and there's one other level to it.

Certain Cambridge colleges are certainly more lenient with you not doing Further Maths and you will have to prove yourself elsewhere but given that the majority of the applicants would be doing Further Maths or equivalent, you would be a fool not to do it because you would sorta disadvantage yourself.

UCL - hit or miss. I don't know anyone applying for UCL CS but given it's a top 5 institution, you would be foolish not to.

Bath - You don't need it but if you do it, I believe that they'll give you a reduced offer for it. Also, your chances of getting the offer increase by a decent bit if you do it as well.

Birmingham - shouldn't be a problem. I think you should get in provided your personal statement is quality.

The issue is I'm not sure how lenient they will be. It's true that you don't need A level Computer Science to do CS at uni but those applicants usually have Further Maths so it's sorta compensated. If you do choose to do CS at a top uni, you'll not only have to learn all of the theory stuff from scratch, but also the Maths stuff as well which is heavily linked to Further Maths (vectors, matrices etc.), not to mention you'll be living without anyone there so you'll have to do stuff for yourself too like cooking etc.


if I were you, it might be a bit late and you'll have to catch up but drop Chemistry for Further Maths. Trust me, this is coming from someone doing Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry and Computer Science at A level - there is absolutely no link to CS or anything non-biological or non-chemistry related. I definitely think it's my hardest A level. It's all easy in year 12 but it steps up A LOT in year 13.

If you don't have Further Maths, I would say goodbye to Imperial because as part of the offer, everyone sits the STEP which requires Further Maths to be able to do and even then, you'll struggle. I do Further Maths and I'm struggling with the STEP II atm and there's one other level to it.

Certain Cambridge colleges are certainly more lenient with you not doing Further Maths and you will have to prove yourself elsewhere but given that the majority of the applicants would be doing Further Maths or equivalent, you would be a fool not to do it because you would sorta disadvantage yourself.

UCL - hit or miss. I don't know anyone applying for UCL CS but given it's a top 5 institution, you would be foolish not to.

Bath - You don't need it but if you do it, I believe that they'll give you a reduced offer for it. Also, your chances of getting the offer increase by a decent bit if you do it as well.

Birmingham - shouldn't be a problem. I think you should get in provided your personal statement is quality.

The issue is I'm not sure how lenient they will be. It's true that you don't need A level Computer Science to do CS at uni but those applicants usually have Further Maths so it's sorta compensated. If you do choose to do CS at a top uni, you'll not only have to learn all of the theory stuff from scratch, but also the Maths stuff as well which is heavily linked to Further Maths (vectors, matrices etc.), not to mention you'll be living without anyone there so you'll have to do stuff for yourself too like cooking etc.


if I were you, it might be a bit late and you'll have to catch up but drop Chemistry for Further Maths. Trust me, this is coming from someone doing Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry and Computer Science at A level - there is absolutely no link to CS or anything non-biological or non-chemistry related. I definitely think it's my hardest A level. It's all easy in year 12 but it steps up A LOT in year 13.

Further maths is quite a big differentiator between applicants for unis imo. Have you considered buying (or asking your college to) the Further Maths textbooks so that you can study it all by yourself. Should be doable with the right motivation and you can tell the unis about it as well. There’s also Government funded courses (eg with AMSP) designed for exactly these situations with keen FM candidates who want to do it at A level but hindered by school provisions.

If you don't have Further Maths, I would say goodbye to Imperial because as part of the offer, everyone sits the STEP which requires Further Maths to be able to do and even then, you'll struggle. I do Further Maths and I'm struggling with the STEP II atm and there's one other level to it.
Certain Cambridge colleges are certainly more lenient with you not doing Further Maths and you will have to prove yourself elsewhere but given that the majority of the applicants would be doing Further Maths or equivalent, you would be a fool not to do it because you would sorta disadvantage yourself.
UCL - hit or miss. I don't know anyone applying for UCL CS but given it's a top 5 institution, you would be foolish not to.
Bath - You don't need it but if you do it, I believe that they'll give you a reduced offer for it. Also, your chances of getting the offer increase by a decent bit if you do it as well.
Birmingham - shouldn't be a problem. I think you should get in provided your personal statement is quality.
The issue is I'm not sure how lenient they will be. It's true that you don't need A level Computer Science to do CS at uni but those applicants usually have Further Maths so it's sorta compensated. If you do choose to do CS at a top uni, you'll not only have to learn all of the theory stuff from scratch, but also the Maths stuff as well which is heavily linked to Further Maths (vectors, matrices etc.), not to mention you'll be living without anyone there so you'll have to do stuff for yourself too like cooking etc.
if I were you, it might be a bit late and you'll have to catch up but drop Chemistry for Further Maths. Trust me, this is coming from someone doing Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry and Computer Science at A level - there is absolutely no link to CS or anything non-biological or non-chemistry related. I definitely think it's my hardest A level. It's all easy in year 12 but it steps up A LOT in year 13.

hi, this might be off-topic but I am choosing my levels now and want to do computer science as well. I thought of choosing maths, CS and Fmaths(if my GCSE grades are good enough). some schools require to pick 4 levels so I picked physics as a 4th subject? but I am also interested in biology which is not related to cs. people say physics goes well with cs. In your case,you didn't do physics but did chemistry, what would you say? thanks !

I would say that Biology is fine - while it's not directly linked to the course, it is a preferred subject according to many of the top universities (PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS THE RECOMMENDED LIST, which is a list of subjects that the universities advise you to take which usually is Maths, Further Maths, Computer Science and Physics (in that order)) so the fact that you don't do Physics shouldn't be any real disadvantage. You have the A level required to apply to basic CS degrees (Maths) and you're also doing CS and Further Maths as well so you should be fine.
If you stick with things you enjoy, you'll be alright. I mean, it will motivate you to do well so go for Biology rather than Physics, where you'll be picking a subject out of a need to do it rather than you actually wanting to do it.
Chemistry is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. It's actually my hardest A level (I'm not joking either) and Idk what I'm going to do. I'm so fortunate Imperial only asked me for an A in Chemistry because if I got asked for A*, I would actually be super upset and probably just give up. It has no link to the other 3 subjects I do.
Physics goes reasonably well with CS but not that well at the same time because they don't cover the electrical aspects of Computer Systems in A level CS, while it does give you a decent understanding about transmission-related things such as parallel transmission, serial transmission etc.
Final comment: I know you didn't ask this but whatever happens, DON'T DO AN EPQ IF YOU ARE AIMING FOR THE TOP, TOP UNIS AND YOU ARE APPLYING WITH 4 A LEVELS. If you drop an A level, then pick up EPQ but otherwise, don't bother. It will waste your time, none of the top unis actually give you an offer with EPQ in (I'm talking Oxbridge, Imperial, Durham, Edinburgh, Manchester, etc.) and you also have an NEA in Computing which is a massive time sink. It's only worth 20% of an A level but people write anywhere between 100 pages and 500 pages (500 is relatively uncommon but not unheard of - just look at some reddit posts if you don't believe me. My own was 150 pages and the highest in my year was 350 pages but people have written way more than that). Other NEAs have a page limit or a character count like English Language where I think it's like 2000-2500 words but Computing has nothing but you spend way more time on it.

I got rejected from Bath for comp sci (predicted 3A* plus an A* in Cyber EPQ plus loads of coding experience and some comp sci related work experience). I think this was probably due to not doing FM. I've read since that Bath do a 'pathways to Bath' thing that they like applicants to have done. I didn't do it as I wasn't aware in time but it might help you if you want to go there.

I got rejected from Bath for comp sci (predicted 3A* plus an A* in Cyber EPQ plus loads of coding experience and some comp sci related work experience). I think this was probably due to not doing FM. I've read since that Bath do a 'pathways to Bath' thing that they like applicants to have done. I didn't do it as I wasn't aware in time but it might help you if you want to go there.

Thanks for all the information! I guess I will pick biology as I enjoy it more. I am actually still thinking about further maths cos as would you say there is a big gap between gcse maths and alevel Fmaths? And do you feel more confident doing maths because of fmaths? Also I heard that for fmaths, there is a topic called decision which is similar to cs. But not many school do decision maths so does it really helps? Sorry if I am asking too many questions 😅

Thanks for all the information! I guess I will pick biology as I enjoy it more. I am actually still thinking about further maths cos as would you say there is a big gap between gcse maths and alevel Fmaths? And do you feel more confident doing maths because of fmaths? Also I heard that for fmaths, there is a topic called decision which is similar to cs. But not many school do decision maths so does it really helps? Sorry if I am asking too many questions 😅

There is a massive gap between GCSE Maths and A level Further Maths obviously. If you are getting a grade 8 or 9, take Further Maths but realise that it would be an upward struggle. the content isn't bad but it's just how much of it there is and the difficulty of the exam questions in comparison to the textbook.
If you are getting a grade 8, I would do a bit more research before rushing into it because you will struggle more than you think. To give you a bit of context, I got a clean grade 9 (3 marks off full marks in the Edexcel iGCSE) and I'm currently struggling a little bit with it so make sure you look into it. If you are getting grade 9 in Maths, still do a bit of research but I think it's more doable at this stage.
As for being more confident with Maths, 100% but when we were doing Maths, I didn't find it hard at all so I was confident to begin with. And yes, decision Maths does exist but my school forced us to do FS1 and FM1 otherwise I would have dropped FM1 for D1.

This guys scaring you about further maths for no reason. It’s not a jump doing further but it is different. The way you tackle problems in maths is what matters and actually, I think if you put the work in, an A* in Fmaths is easier than in normal maths.

This guys scaring you about further maths for no reason. It’s not a jump doing further but it is different. The way you tackle problems in maths is what matters and actually, I think if you put the work in, an A* in Fmaths is easier than in normal maths.