British Astrophysics Olympiad (BAAO) Round 1 2025

How did you find it? I though Q1 was alright although I spent half the time on it. Q2 was harder and then I could barely get anywhere with Q3

How did you find it? I though Q1 was alright although I spent half the time on it. Q2 was harder and then I could barely get anywhere with Q3

I was able to do the paper cus I got top gold in BPhO r1 (only gold in Astro r1) and had a similar experience. Ofc anyone who sees this, remember that the paper cover said not to discuss specific details until 2nd February publicly

Oh thanks I forgot about that, I'll check back after then or when we get the results. Are you in year 13 by the way Ecrendis?

Ye I am. I had y13 mocks so my Astro r1 prep was eh for me to only get a gold on it as well as since I already got told that I got a top gold in BPhO r1, I didn’t really care as much for Astro r1. Tho I am really surprised I messed up that much on the paper to not even get like 40+ marks or whatever the boundary was for a top gold

does anyone know when the BAAO 2 results will be released? There is no information about this on their website.

Well I’ll just reply about bpho r2 anyway. I found it significantly easier than all the past papers so the boundaries for silver and gold are most likely going to be extremely high. And I fumbled the Oxford admissions test hard so I got rejected and I’m waiting for a response from Durham which would be my firm if I get an offer

oh that's unlucky, I got my Durham physics offer the other day so I'd have thought yours would be soon? I am going Oxford but Durham would have been my second it looks very cool.
Yeah grade boundaries will be super high we'll just have to see how high

are you doing physics or something else in oxford?

oh that's unlucky, I got my Durham physics offer the other day so I'd have thought yours would be soon? I am going Oxford but Durham would have been my second it looks very cool.
Yeah grade boundaries will be super high we'll just have to see how high

I got my Durham physics offer just yesterday which will be my firm but I’m acc forever going keep remembering how hard I fumbled my chance for Oxford. It’d be funny if I got into like camp but not Oxford. Tho realistically, I doubt I did well enough to get camp.

Yep I'm doing Physics at Worcester. How about you?

oh that's unlucky, I got my Durham physics offer the other day so I'd have thought yours would be soon? I am going Oxford but Durham would have been my second it looks very cool.
Yeah grade boundaries will be super high we'll just have to see how high

I'm in year 12 so still not quite at that stage. I also wanna try applying to oxford for physics so do you by any chance have any tips for the process? or anything you'd be okay with sharing like grades or supercurriculars kind of thing

78+/ 114 was needed this year for a gold damn. As expected, quite higher than previous years. I got a silver on BPhO R2 which I’m happy with considering my maths was just not good enough for some of the qs which I couldn’t do tho I do kind of wish I got a gold.

Do **** loads of pat prep, and then do interview prep after the pat before you (hopefully) acc get an interview. Do all the past pat questions and Professor Povey's Perplexing Problems is really good for interviews if you pretend like you're in an interview. I was getting 4A* but comp sci is slipping cus it doesn't really matter so just get the grades. As for super curricular I got into work experience at Diamond light but I think that was much less important, like just get really good at physics

Do you know if BAAO is out yet? Usually they release both at the same time