I know this is an old video, but I was also hoping to apply for a few maths and economics courses next year along side E&M. Would making my personal statement 50% maths and 50% economics damage my chances at being offered an interview at Oxford?
Do you have the link of other personal statements laying around still by any chance? I go to a public school outside of the UK and have no access to any good personal statement databses.
@@bb-jj6zg The thing I did was just find whatever I could on mainly studential. It's not super useful for figuring out what to put in your own PS considering that most of the stuff you put should be *personal*, but it at least gave me a good idea of what a personal statement should ideally look like! I will say though, for oxbridge in particular, your entrance exam is the main thing they look at and the rest is a bonus pretty much. Know a dude who got a B in Further Maths and got into CS at Cambridge just becase of his absolutely expetional exam results, so focus on that to improve your oods
The numerical score (not the percentage nor fraction of questions right) is calculated on a curve based on how EVERYONE did for that particular year's exam. You cannot say for certain what your score will be, and it does not matter either because the threshold at which interviews will be offered will vary from year to year based on test difficulty and how many candidates scored in the top x percentile. Best to focus on aiming for a perfect score!
I messed up the mental maths for Q42 - so I made an educated guess: I got £2.25 for the total, I guessed £1.50 would be the other total (which I didn't get), so 2.25 - 1.50 = 0.75 hehe. Def not a recommended method!
You know what answer is not LEDD. I get it but what you said was wrong as you said ledd computer doesn’t have enough memory, it has. Actually is it’s more expensive than elovon. I get it. Btw what you are doing is extremely helpful to so many people. Thanku you very much.
Sorry, there was a small mistake here. The Ledd laptop meets the requirements, but I mistakenly eliminated it. However, between Ledd and Elovon, you have to choose the CHEAPEST option, because that's in the second paragraph of the question. The cheapest option that meets this person's requirements is NOT Ledd.
Great question - this is due to rounding. You can see in the question that it states 'rounded to the nearest 0.1g'. This would lead to inprecision in using smaller values like salt (0.2g). There's typically 1.4g of salt in 100g of oatcakes, 1.4/7 (for 21 oatcakes total) gives you 0.2g per oatcake, but 1.4/8 (for 24 oatcakes total) gives you 0.175g per oatcake, which would be rounded to 0.2g in the table. This is one of those where you can also double check your answer by multiplying the energy (53kcal) by the number (i.e., 7 or 8) to verify your answer. Multiplication is arguably easier than division so that's why it's used to check the answer.
@@bob820 My advice is just to remember to assess ALL the information given in a question. Was the information about all the values rounded to 0.1g an extra (and surpurfluous) detail? Or was it critical information?
This is by far the most helpful thing I've watched this summer. Everything I wanted to hear was in this video! I'm currently doing my first past paper but I would like to watch your workshop now, what do you think is the best way to approach revision after watching your workshop?
Have to come back here to say thank you so much for this channel and all your videos, helped me get an interview offer for PPE! Showing that Section 1 is merely a case of learning the 7 Critical Thinking question types, and then using as much of your time as possible on Problem Solving, completely changed my outlook on the TSA and I was able to go into it much more positively. I suppose after a few past papers, I should have thought a bit more about the patterns myself, but you’ve spelled it out really well in this video and in your workshops. I only wish more people found out about these TSA tips - knowing exactly how to attack the TSA gives a (slightly unfair) advantage for those in the know - but I suppose it pays off to do have a good look through RU-vid tips. I’ll give it my best in the interview, though I’m sure there are many others much brighter than me; I’m happy whatever happens. Thank you once again and I hope it’s good news now and in the future for everyone else :)
@@samjames8006 Congrats, Sam! May i please know your TSA score? I’m also planning to apply for PPE and would really appreciate it if you could give me some tips regarding the process of applying to Oxford.
Just got a rejection before interview :( Thanks anyways for all the help! I probably failed the TSA but it certainly wasn't because of this workshop, it was excellent!
Sorry to hear that - I know how upsetting a rejection before interview is. I hope you were at least able to take some value away from the TSA, even if it was merely educational value. Your journey to uni doesn't end here so keep working hard!
@@youyouxue Thanks for your kindness! I definitely was able to take away some good things from the TSA, for one thing AP exams will feel like a piece of cake in comparison and also I feel like improved my ability to asses arguments! I don't regret going thru the application process it was well worth it.
Invitations are sent out last week of November. You have approximately 2-3 weeks to prepare, depending on your subject. However, there isn't much to "prepare" for - interviews are about how you think, and not necessarily what you know.
Thank you very much for all the work you've done in making this process more accessible. Do you have any tips on what to do in the days leading up to the TSA and managing the stress/anxiety?
To know when to stop studying. Seriously. No one is going to see significant improvement in one week, especially the last week before the exam. We discussed other stress-management techniques in Workshop V, so please take a look.
There is under a week until my exam and I am getting scores fluctuating between 37-42, do you have any tips on upping this in the final few days in order to secure an interview? Timing is not an issue but I tend to make the mistakes in the final sections of the test.
I’ve been stuck on a score of 22/23 despite reviewing where I’ve gone wrong, I really need to improve this score if I want an interview. What tips would you give because I really need to improve
We have less than one week left before the 2021 TSA on 4 Nov 2021. If you want the honest answer - I don't think there's much you can do to significantly improve your score at this point. Memorisation of the seven critical thinking question types is perhaps one of the easiest ways to gain points and complete the test faster. I have also provided links to the five workshops, and it may benefit you to watch all of them.
to be fair the 90 minutes doesn't seem like enough, but I've found that practising critical thinking questions a lot helps? So if you practise doing 25 timed CT questions and try to do them as quickly as possible, you're giving yourself more time to do the problem solving questions which usually take longer. Aiming to finish 25 CT questions in 20 minutes-ish would give you a really good amount of time to attempt all the PS (but it usually takes me more like half an hour and I find I still have time to do most of the PS so don't worry too much: the quicker you do them the better, but you don't want to rush too much because you might make mistakes). Also, if a question seems like it's going to take ages, or you have to do a load of maths, just leave it and move on - all questions are worth the same amount of marks so you don't want to run out of time to do some of the easier questions by spending ages on one maths one.
Can you please do a quick section on the matching argument other than the one you have already done. I there is very little coverage on the matching argument questions which have weird structures.
Just took it and feeling pretty good about it! Only had to guess on 3 of the PS ones at the end, way better than my practices!! Hope to see you sometime later this month for interview practice!
for 1:11:33, here's how I simply did it wit just 3 equations. call bicycle: w, tricycle: x, tan: y and uni: z. We need to find just x. Then it follows logically these 4 equations: (1) w+x+z+y=7 (2) w+x+z+2y=10 (3) 2w+3x+z+2y=14 (4) w+x+2y=9 multiply (1) with -2: -2w-2x-2z-2y=-14 add now new (1) with (3): Most cancels out and left is: x-z=0 Multiply (2) with -1: -w-x-z-2y=-10 add now new (2) with (4): most cancels out and left is: -z=-1 <=> z=1. Insert z=1 in x-z=0 <=> x-1=0 <=> x=1. =======
Yes, absolutely. However, we have assigned past *TSA* papers for now. I think BMAT papers can be saved for later practice when you completely run out of TSA practice questions. Quality over quantity, it's not about doing the most number of questions, but about your strategy.
2017 Q43 from 3:20:00 is most definitely a bonus question for the very smart. This is hard to do under time pressure plugging O U A in and out of equations. You definitely need a full clean piece of paper to solve this xD
@@didier9164 Yeah, I tried setting up 3 equations by myself and managed to solve it way quicker in just 5 lines. It's all about the order in which you plug in and out.
Oh my god this is a life saver for me as a US applicant!!! No one in my school has ever even applied to uni in the UK much less gone to Oxford, so I largely had to figure out UCAS with free support programs offered online. I was totally at a loss for how to improve for the TSA, I was just doing practice tests and hoping I had a good day on test day, but this series looks like it’ll prepare me well beyond that! THANK YOU!
thank you for these videos. Do you know how the quantitative section in the UniTest by ACER compare to the problem solving questions in TSA (Oxford)? ACER barely provide any prepare material for the UniTest, so I found this, but have no idea whether its representative for the questions in the UniTest.
I have no idea what ACER/UniTest is. What I *can* tell you is that the only "official" questions are provided by Cambridge Assessment, the writers of the test. There are hundreds and hundreds of practice questions available. Practice is about quality, not quantity. You can do every practice test available and learn nothing if you don't focus on the structure of the test and your solving strategies.
@@youyouxue yeah I know that- and thanks for the reply. Since Cambridge Assessment is involved in making the UniTest, do you think the tsa questions are worth practicing, are they going to be similar?
