Maths at oxbridge

Hi there , I am In year 13 and take maths , further maths , bio and chem . I am planning on taking a gap year and doing then applying to maths at Cambridge or Oxford. Which further maths modules should I take ? I am definitely doing mechanics , so should I pick between stats and add pure? I slightly prefer add pure , but I have heard that add pure is insanely difficult and grade boundaries are high as well? Which should I pick for the easiest combination ( considering grade boundaries and general difficulty ), and will not doing add pure be a disadvantage to studying maths at oxbridge ?

Reply 1

Muttley79

20

Original post by Fermat42647

Hi there , I am In year 13 and take maths , further maths , bio and chem . I am planning on taking a gap year and doing then applying to maths at Cambridge or Oxford. Which further maths modules should I take ? I am definitely doing mechanics , so should I pick between stats and add pure? I slightly prefer add pure , but I have heard that add pure is insanely difficult and grade boundaries are high as well? Which should I pick for the easiest combination ( considering grade boundaries and general difficulty ), and will not doing add pure be a disadvantage to studying maths at oxbridge ?

Some colleges don't like gap years for Maths - have you checked?

Do the modules you feel most comfortable about.

Reply 2

melancollege

Universities Forum Helper

18

Original post by Fermat42647

Hi there , I am In year 13 and take maths , further maths , bio and chem . I am planning on taking a gap year and doing then applying to maths at Cambridge or Oxford. Which further maths modules should I take ? I am definitely doing mechanics , so should I pick between stats and add pure? I slightly prefer add pure , but I have heard that add pure is insanely difficult and grade boundaries are high as well? Which should I pick for the easiest combination ( considering grade boundaries and general difficulty ), and will not doing add pure be a disadvantage to studying maths at oxbridge ?

In terms of admission, it is my understanding that they don't have a preference as most students do not get a significant choice regarding which options they are taught. I would choose whichever you're most comfortable with and whichever you can get the best support with.

In terms of relevance to the Cambridge Maths course:
> Further Pure seemed the most immediately relevant to the course as much of its content is covered in first year so it could be beneficial to have covered beforehand. I have seen some STEP III questions that use some content taught in Further Pure, such as vector cross products, though these are of course optional to choose.
> Further Mechanics was similarly useful but there is an Introduction to Mechanics course in first year for those that hadn't covered much Mechanics before (if I'm recalling correctly, the international baccalaureate has little mechanics in its Maths courses and instead in its Physics courses, which is not required for admission). It would also potentially open up some STEP questions, though I didn't focus on the mechanics questions so I can't advise too much.
> Further Statistics may have some relevance to the Probability course taught in first year but may be more relevant to the Statistics course taught in second year (which I didn't take, nor did I do any FS modules so I can't advise that well).
> The Further Decision modules didn't seem to be too relevant to any of the mandatory aspects of the Maths course, though it seems that it may help with intuition for Optimisation which is a second year* course.

This is my understanding of how the Further Maths modules would help with various aspects of the Maths course once here in Cambridge, not for admissions. For some context, I did Edexcel Further Maths, studying FP1 and D1 at school but taught myself FM1 as I didn't like decision maths. I didn't end up sitting the exams as I was the 2020 cohort but I did sit STEP.

*Optimisation is often lectured at the end of first year but examined in the second year. With recorded lectures, it seemed fairly common to study it over the summer. It is also a shorter course and has fewer questions on the exam as a result.

Maths at oxbridge

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