The Student Room Group

WJEC AS Maths Raw Mark Boundary for A

I'm sitting AS Maths in a few weeks and need to get an A at least in AS for the university I'd like to apply for, I've done really well in GCSE/Additional Maths (A*,A* and distinction) for context (and got over the past year from September to January on half papers 74%, 81% and 77%) but I'm really confused what the grade boundaries for AS Maths are.

I thought grade boundaries depended on the paper but my Maths teacher says that 80% is always for an A and 90% in A2 is always needed for an A* (which I would evidently prefer to get but may not happen). However, my friend's been told that the actual raw mark in Maths is more like 40-50% for the past years by his teacher, which ties in more to what I saw at GCSE and other AS subjects.

I'm really confused now how to calculate UMS marks to Raw marks and presumably only teachers can see raw mark
boundaries, so I know 80% is what I should aim for but I don't even know what the grade boundary is. Does anyone else know?

Edit: looking online (e.g. Wales Online from 2023), presumably https://portal.wjec.co.uk/ can be used to convert raw marks to UMS but it needs a login which I assume only applies to teachers because I can't login with my Microsoft Account (school/personal), which just seems really bizarre, should I speak to a teacher about it and see if they could access it?

FINAL EDIT: for anyone who may have the same issue as me, you can use the website https://services.portal.wjec.co.uk/MarkToUMS/default.aspx from the WJEC to see raw mark grade boundaries. for A Level Maths it's "GCE June" + your year (pretty sure only 2019 and 2023 have papers) but as an example 73/120 marks for Unit 1 Maths (Pure) is an A and anything above 80% marks is full UMS.
(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 1

Sorry you've not had any responses about this. :frown: Are you sure you've posted in the right place? :smile: Here's a link to our subject forum which should help get you more responses if you post there. :redface:

Reply 2

Original post by fqriewiings
I'm sitting AS Maths in a few weeks and need to get an A at least in AS for the university I'd like to apply for, I've done really well in GCSE/Additional Maths (A*,A* and distinction) for context (and got over the past year from September to January on half papers 74%, 81% and 77%) but I'm really confused what the grade boundaries for AS Maths are.
I thought grade boundaries depended on the paper but my Maths teacher says that 80% is always for an A and 90% in A2 is always needed for an A* (which I would evidently prefer to get but may not happen). However, my friend's been told that the actual raw mark in Maths is more like 40-50% for the past years by his teacher, which ties in more to what I saw at GCSE and other AS subjects.
I'm really confused now how to calculate UMS marks to Raw marks and presumably only teachers can see raw mark
boundaries, so I know 80% is what I should aim for but I don't even know what the grade boundary is. Does anyone else know?
Edit: looking online (e.g. Wales Online from 2023), presumably https://portal.wjec.co.uk/ can be used to convert raw marks to UMS but it needs a login which I assume only applies to teachers because I can't login with my Microsoft Account (school/personal), which just seems really bizarre, should I speak to a teacher about it and see if they could access it?
FINAL EDIT: for anyone who may have the same issue as me, you can use the website https://services.portal.wjec.co.uk/MarkToUMS/default.aspx from the WJEC to see raw mark grade boundaries. for A Level Maths it's "GCE June" + your year (pretty sure only 2019 and 2023 have papers) but as an example 73/120 marks for Unit 1 Maths (Pure) is an A and anything above 80% marks is full UMS.

Thanks for sharing the link! Did you find out the raw mark/percentage for an A in AS?

Reply 3

Original post by study23!
Thanks for sharing the link! Did you find out the raw mark/percentage for an A in AS?

yeah, for pure maths in 2019 it's 73/120, for applied 42/75 :smile:

Reply 4

Original post by fqriewiings
I'm sitting AS Maths in a few weeks and need to get an A at least in AS for the university I'd like to apply for, I've done really well in GCSE/Additional Maths (A*,A* and distinction) for context (and got over the past year from September to January on half papers 74%, 81% and 77%) but I'm really confused what the grade boundaries for AS Maths are.
I thought grade boundaries depended on the paper but my Maths teacher says that 80% is always for an A and 90% in A2 is always needed for an A* (which I would evidently prefer to get but may not happen). However, my friend's been told that the actual raw mark in Maths is more like 40-50% for the past years by his teacher, which ties in more to what I saw at GCSE and other AS subjects.
I'm really confused now how to calculate UMS marks to Raw marks and presumably only teachers can see raw mark
boundaries, so I know 80% is what I should aim for but I don't even know what the grade boundary is. Does anyone else know?
Edit: looking online (e.g. Wales Online from 2023), presumably https://portal.wjec.co.uk/ can be used to convert raw marks to UMS but it needs a login which I assume only applies to teachers because I can't login with my Microsoft Account (school/personal), which just seems really bizarre, should I speak to a teacher about it and see if they could access it?
FINAL EDIT: for anyone who may have the same issue as me, you can use the website https://services.portal.wjec.co.uk/MarkToUMS/default.aspx from the WJEC to see raw mark grade boundaries. for A Level Maths it's "GCE June" + your year (pretty sure only 2019 and 2023 have papers) but as an example 73/120 marks for Unit 1 Maths (Pure) is an A and anything above 80% marks is full UMS.

Thanks for this - WJEC is so confusing. Would you agree that the raw grade boundaries for an A (2019) are
Unit 1 61%
Unit 2 56%
Unit 3 56%
Unit 4 54%

Reply 5

Original post by ellend5
Thanks for this - WJEC is so confusing. Would you agree that the raw grade boundaries for an A (2019) are
Unit 1 61%
Unit 2 56%
Unit 3 56%
Unit 4 54%

yeah that seems about right! i haven't double checked but my teacher told me that it was 80% for an A and 90% for an A* but that must mean UMS (which adds up) so it's such a relief to know that the boundaries are lower.

Reply 6

How did you find the exam? I thought the AS Pure was so much worse than past year ones. Like the 10 marker at the end and logs especially! I was same situation as you too (smae gcse/add maths grades), and I think I could get an A maybe not full UMS. But overall I think they did us dirty haha 😂

Reply 7

Original post by study23!
How did you find the exam? I thought the AS Pure was so much worse than past year ones. Like the 10 marker at the end and logs especially! I was same situation as you too (smae gcse/add maths grades), and I think I could get an A maybe not full UMS. But overall I think they did us dirty haha 😂
yes i totally agree, all my other subjects have been so nice as well! idk what the wjec are playing at, the grade boundaries will just be really low and it’ll knock peoples confidence 🙄. its not like we’re expected to do additional reading at a level, which honestly is the only way the binomial expansion/last question on tangents could be done. even people ik who spend their entire free time revising maths said they couldn’t do it.
hopefully all my formulae were enough to get an A!!

Reply 8

Original post by fqriewiings
yes i totally agree, all my other subjects have been so nice as well! idk what the wjec are playing at, the grade boundaries will just be really low and it’ll knock peoples confidence 🙄. its not like we’re expected to do additional reading at a level, which honestly is the only way the binomial expansion/last question on tangents could be done. even people ik who spend their entire free time revising maths said they couldn’t do it.
hopefully all my formulae were enough to get an A!!

Omg I put so many formulae on the last question that I thought were relevant cause I couldn't get the answer😂 I was so annoyed too cause I know how to do part b. I saw someone on tsr say the put y=mx for the tangent into the y's of the circle (as c would be 0 going through the origin), which is so smart but I never would have gotten in a million years haha.

Most of my subjects have been ok, apart from Further Maths Pure which was quite literally the worst exam I've seen - I think WJEC has somethign against Pure maths this week!

But yeah hoping the boundaries will be lower, because they weren't very nice on that paper haha

Reply 9

Original post by study23!
Omg I put so many formulae on the last question that I thought were relevant cause I couldn't get the answer😂 I was so annoyed too cause I know how to do part b. I saw someone on tsr say the put y=mx for the tangent into the y's of the circle (as c would be 0 going through the origin), which is so smart but I never would have gotten in a million years haha.
Most of my subjects have been ok, apart from Further Maths Pure which was quite literally the worst exam I've seen - I think WJEC has somethign against Pure maths this week!
But yeah hoping the boundaries will be lower, because they weren't very nice on that paper haha
Me too, I didn’t mind part b)i but b)ii i was so confused, i was going to do substitution but the only way I could think to do it would’ve taken ages and only got one answer so that makes a lot of sense. I can just imagine the moderators comment though 😭
The GCSE paper was also really hard (numeracy non calculator) from what i’ve been told, but someone else ik did the same exam on an English exam board and said it was scarily easy.

Reply 10

Original post by fqriewiings
Me too, I didn’t mind part b)i but b)ii i was so confused, i was going to do substitution but the only way I could think to do it would’ve taken ages and only got one answer so that makes a lot of sense. I can just imagine the moderators comment though 😭
The GCSE paper was also really hard (numeracy non calculator) from what i’ve been told, but someone else ik did the same exam on an English exam board and said it was scarily easy.

😭 they really like maths students don’t they