Oxbridge applicants 2018 part 2

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Hopefully this is in time!

Yup. May be some small consolation to those unsuccessful, and add to the joy for those with a yes, to realise that far more no's than yes' were received yesterday. Though may not feel like that on MN. At DDs school last year 17 applied and she was the only one with an offer (roughly half got interviews). Made for a very strange offer day for her. I've been following this thread from the start and its been fascinating, informative and supportive, I do hope it continues especially as DD yet to go - deferred until 2018.

Oh, by the way, someone from last years Oxbridge thread was pooled to Murray Edwards and loves it - you may want to have a look back

kaiserschmarrn 3 places to start with for STEP info:

Admissions testing service www.admissionstestingservice.org/for-test-takers/step/about-step/ - these are the people than administer STEP - dates and past papers etc can be found here

STEP Support Programme maths.org/step/. This has been designed to help students whose school cannot provide much support with STEP. (Disclaimer - I work on this)

Stephen Siklos' book www.openbookpublishers.com/product.php/342/advanced-problems-in-mathematics--preparing-for-university?342/advanced-problems-in-mathematics--preparing-for-university. Available as a free download, and there is some general blurb about STEP at the front. Stephen has been "in charge" of STEP for quite a long time - he organises the paper writers, reviewers and markers (as well as writing some of the questions himself).

Also it might be worth having a look at the Further Maths Support Programme - they might be running some STEP/problem solving events in your region.

I can't claim Passando's expertise, but would point out there are plenty of organisations and individuals out there who will happily relieve you of vast quantities of cash in the name of STEP prep. :o

It is certainly harder to do the work - and find the motivation - independently, if your school does not provide the support/have the expertise. But on the web there are loads of free resources, structured programmes, chat rooms and mentor support (on Passando's links) and this kind of self-directed study is the most excellent preparation for the Cambridge maths course, which, incidentally, requires a lot of hard work. This I guess this is one of the reasons they find a good correlation between STEP performance and success on the course and therefore continue to significantly over-offer and select on the basis of STEP; though it makes for a very challenging year for prospective students (and their hovering parents)! Good luck!

Yes, we are really blessed that local university does step prep for free for interested sixth formers. DS attended free maths lectures and seminars twice a week at the uni after school for much of lower sixth and last term. Is unlikely step will be in his offer, but he will do the prep classes anyway, as he thinks it will be fun and beneficial for next year.

A star Physics, A star Further Maths, and A Maths is actually A stars in them all, isn't it. You can't get an A in maths and an A star in Further Maths.

Aww thanks

DD's boyfriend is at Oxford so they spend a fair bit of time shuttling between the 2. There is a bus which takes ages but goes between the 2 cities. Last term DD went twice on a Saturday, returning on Sunday afternoon and the boyfriend (plus another schoolfriend) came a couple of times to her.

Last year as DD's offer came from a college she didn't really know, she was a bit reluctant to accept it straight away. We went there to have a look at half term in February. Everyone was so friendly, it was brilliant and she's obviously happy there. The college was fine about it, so if yu are able to get there, it may be worth taking a look.

DD has joined an Oxford Offer holders group on Facebook. Seems a brilliant way to start connecting with potential friends - she's been chatting to people on her course and in her college.
I'm certain there will be a Cambridge equivalent.
It's run by the outreach people so all official.
Think she saw a link on TSR.

I can't claim Passando's expertise, but would point out there are plenty of organisations and individuals out there who will happily relieve you of vast quantities of cash in the name of STEP prep.

You should be very, very careful about parting with money for STEP prep because it is not usually effective. The key is for the student to go through the process of solving STEP problems by themselves, supplemented by help from the links above. Very few of the people who are themselves good at STEP, did Cambridge Maths etc are working as STEP tutors.

When I was a PhD student, I was offered quite a lot of money by a rich London family to tutor in STEP. The student didn't do enough work between meetings - he seemed to think that just meeting with me was going to do some kind of magic - and he didn't get the grades required. By contrast I have supported students from low achieving schools on STEP (for free) and needed to give little input because they were using the available online resources and studying hard by themselves.

BTW I wouldn't say that the Cambridge maths course is harder work than other Cambridge STEM courses. The issue is that most maths students are used to doing virtually no work at all for school maths, and in this sense university level maths comes as a shock, not just at Cambridge.

Thanks Passanda, User and Roisin for your advice on STEP. After seeing all the specialised places offering STEP tuition, it would be very easy to get drawn into throwing money we don't have at the situation and using up valuable thinking time on something that wouldn't be very effective. It's good to know that we aren't doing dd a disservice by not going down this route.

I'm not entirely convinced dd is going to take up her Cambridge offer. She is still genuinely torn between that and her other top choice.

GeorgeTheHamster
You can't get an A in maths and an A star in Further Maths.

It is technically possible to get an A in Maths and A star in FM (but very unlikely. For an A in maths you need 80% averaged over all your modules with an average of 90% in C3 and C4 combined (and C3/C4 cannot be using for your Further Maths). For an A* in F maths you need 80% overall and an average of 90% in your best 3 A2 units. So if (for some reason) you had a bit of a disaster in C3/C4 but then did really well in FP2, FP3, M2 (or something) then it could happen. Seems V unlikely though!

(This is what happens for the current OCR spec anyway - not sure what will happen with the new one!)

what on earth was my autocorrect doing there? I clearly meant Pallando

I would second the caution over paid-for STEP courses (as mentioned by user and roisin, I am not sure how useful they are. STEP questions are designed to be non-routine and non-standard, so being shown how to tackle a range of STEP questions will not necessarily help you tackle the next one. However, working through questions yourself (with the various on-line support) will give you practice in solving unfamiliar questions.

As user says, a lot of maths students (and probably most oxbridge candidates) are not used to finding Maths difficult, and so have not developed the resilience/problem solving skills etc that they need to do STEP. The SSP foundation assignments are (supposed to) gently-ish introduce these students to hard questions and gradually ramp up the difficulty.

The advantages that (most - not all) Private schools (and some state schools) have are:

They have experience of STEP, so can point students to resources etc possibly starting in Yr 12

They have more able students, top set might all be on course for A star GCSE so they can do more stretching work with them (so hopefully these students have found maths difficult at some point before STEP).

They have more students doing Further Maths, so may be able to separate out a whole class. Usually this means that these students will have covered the whole single Maths A-level by the end of year 12 (and have done C3 and C4). This means that they can then start trying STEP I and STEP II questions (whereas other students will have to self teach C3/C4 if they want to try STEP questions before the end of Year 13).

OYBBK I taught in secondary schools for 15 years - I've been called a lot worse...

wJust to clarify for user19283746, who may have missed the tone of my post: I do not agree at all with the concept or the need for paying £££ to companies who claim they can help with STEP.

If you post the phrase STEP Maths on Twitter, you will receive contacts from some of these groups. They are not all charlatans, but generally they are all very expensive; and as pallando explains, working out how to get into and through the problems yourself is the trick. And you can do that yourself, with the help o free online resources.

It would be great to find ways to level the playing field for those who don't have the early advantages described above by Pallando. UKMT, Olympiads and the UKMT summer schools and mentoring scheme are great, for this.

UKMT are great! I suspect though they miss quite a lot of potential target - the ones who are close to getting into an olympiad, but don't. The kangaroos don't really provide the same incentive, so for many extremely bright kids, their only ukmt contact is a one off challenge paper each year, which provides nothing like enough depth of thinking.

The FSMP and other initiatives are also great, but don't capture kids early enough in their maths education.

I have vague thoughts for solutions, but I've just seen the time. It's also a classic derailing of oxbridge threads

Kitten, my daughter had been very unsure as to whether to take up her place. It is an enormously individual decision, depending on the subject, the applicant and the other universities which offer places on the course. There is also the matter of getting the necessary grades

I dealt with it by saying when her offer letter arrived. 'Congratulations. Of course you don't have to go if you don't want to.'

I really did not want to carry the potential blame for influencing her in any way.

My daughter's mates all advised her to accept the Cambridge offer.

I think she found the first term quite a lot to cope with, but came home saying she reckoned she had made the right call.

By the second term, she began to enjoy herself and feel that she had settled in.

I'm not entirely convinced dd is going to take up her Cambridge offer.

For this specific subject there is a big gap between Cambridge and the no 2 (presumably Warwick?). The depth of the Cambridge course is not comparable to that at Warwick.

(Roisin, I knew you were not advocating using STEP tutors or agencies. Just thought I would reinforce this.)

Oddly I was at University of Warwick yesterday - an event where I was making up my mind about possible post-graduate study. The campus is gleaming with new money but I found it oddly soul-less. Lots of signs about how the parking has been contracted to private companies, and people busily hoovering up nasty messy leaves. Student body extraordinarily white and privileged looking. The building I went to had a bizarre feeling of sterility. Like a film set. I actually had more of a 'this is an alien planet' feeling than I do in Cambridge.

Which doesn't mean that that it isn't a place where people really enjoy studying when they are young. This is the perspective of a jaded middle-aged woman.

We visited Warwick for an open day, and DD wasn't impressed. She wasn't impressed with York either. She preferred city locations as they have more character.

I'll have a chat with her to try and understand why she is prevaricating, but I will respect her decision either way. It may well be that it's such a big decision that she needs time to really affirm that's the direction she's heading in.

Maybe I went a bit too far with our discussion about how great her second choice is (Warwick :) ) in the lead up to Wednesday in order to soften any potential blow

Don't get me wrong. The university at Warwick clearly does have a lot going for it. (Thriving busy campus, state of the art facilities.) Leamington, where a lot of students live, is a splendid place.

I had just wanted to like it because I wanted to want to do this particular post-graduate course. And in the end I just couldn't see myself there.

As a point of reference for anyone lurking worrying about the offers being given out for Cambridge maths, dd has a standard offer.