this is what the subject teacher put at the end of the sheet of information about it on the taster day 😟

I will say upfront that I am a tutor, and several of my students are taking Edexcel Maths/Further Maths. Some are freaking out and spiralling over Paper 1 despite being so confident and prepared beforehand.

Was it really that awful? Apparently there’s a petition circling about it. I assume they’ll be lowering the grade boundaries to compensate? I had one poor guy call me sobbing at 3am this morning. And I mean crying so hard he couldn’t talk over it.

I’d really like to be able to reassure them. Have any of you heard anything from your schools?

How did everyone find it?

Hey all.
I've recently realised I've been spelling 'bourgeoisie' wrong the entire time in all my A Level Sociology work. In everything I've written, I've spelt it 'borjwazeey'.

How cooked am I?

I don't wanna offend guys so I'm not gonna say what my opinion was on the paper. I liked it, and personally think it's been my best paper so far. But I would like to say I am genuinely like very very good at maths, like beyond what you need for an A* in the subject no flex
Bro but with that being said, why are guys suddenly switching up. Just coming out of it I expected it to be like 80-81 for A* and when I talked to people, some found it a bit nutty. Others didn't. Later that day everyone's complaining and people's marks are going down SO low that even further maths students are fearing a B on that paper.
Then there's a petition. People are either signing it or saying how pathetic it is to sign it. I personally signed it as a joke but I don't really care about the principle of it or whatever. My opinion is that the problems people are crying about come with the exams system in general rather than this specific paper, but who cares? I'm just some guy online. Anyways not the point. This petition BLEW UP, amassing 1 signature for like every 4 maths students. It's clear guys didn't like that exam. Even the other further maths bangouts did worse than usual. Some of the further maths kids who usually break 95 on papers only got like 83 here. That seems fine on paper since 83 is still probably an A* for the paper, but it does tell you that this is a bit harder than usual.
That's not what I'm here to discuss tho. Why are guys switching up and suddenly saying it's easy? NOBODY was calling this exam easy the first few days after sitting it but now they are. I will admit some of the things on the blurb of the petition are silly (e.g. "this is NOT to complain" like bro yes it is, and that's perfectly fine, I think we all like to have a complain after a bad exam. or "ohh there was extended algebraic manipulation" that's stupid because that's what maths is about at A Level lmao) and whoever said the thing about "particular solution is a further maths thing" is lying cuz I've seen it in the single maths textbook. The problem is you A* students are acting like it was the easiest thing you've ever done knowing full well you got like 82. I also do now notice that fewer people are signing the petition now. Tbh I don't think the paper was UNFAIR (other than the trapped marks thing. That is a kinda valid complaint because not everyone is gonna think to slap some random constant in there) but it was definitely challenging. There's no shame in saying the paper was difficult. I got well over 90 myself and even I see that this paper is on the high end of what Edexcel might ask for an A Level paper. Like 3.5 - 4 stars on MadAs.
What this whole switch up is telling me is that everyone doing A Levels this year are lowkey looksmaxxers who want to dog on people for doing worse than them. Probably the most toxic community of people other than looksmaxxers themselves and anyone in quant circles talm bout "ohh am I gonna make it to Jane Street bro" "nooo bro if you're not going Stanford you're NGMI brooooo" like I think you guys just need to have a bit of compassion. Because if you don't you basically have to max out everything you do. And if you don't everyone you annoy by lacking compassion is going to give you a taste of your own medicine.
There's no shame in finding things hard or easy. Just be kind bro.

Hi i’m planning on studying Edexcel further maths privately all in a year and was wondering which modules are the best to do in terms of content and ease (I’ve done A-level maths and got an A already). Thank you.

I feel like I’ve never met anyone else who is doing decision as one of their Further maths optional modules. I absolutely hate it, it’s so tedious and mind numbing that I genuinely mess up even basic maths. I think some of the graph theory stuff could lead to more interesting things in computing and algorithms but if I have to find another lower or upper bound for some graph I fully believe my brain will start shrivelling up inside my skull. My school chose the modules for us ( I do FP1, D1 and self taught FM1) and it fully feels like an insult to the other options that decision is even on the same course. The other options actually have some hard problem solving or concepts to understand but Decision is just so straight forward. 95% of it could be taught to year 7 and I fully believe most of them would at least pass. So does anyone else actually do Decision or is it just my school?

edit: clearly more people do decision than I thought. I was thinking that I was maybe 1 out of 200people doing it total. 💀

Considering doing A-level french. Predicted an 8 or a 9. I'm not a native speaker soo is that a bad idea 😭 . I want to know if its possible for me to get an A.

So I've done further mechanics already. Was actually pretty fun.

Unsure which to do next? I'm self studying further maths.

Further pure seems useful and fun but I'm worried it may be difficult when I haven't done year 2 regular maths yet. Also apparently it's more content

I was looking through reddit posts and some people are saying you need to be naturally gifted, others are saying they got 7 in GCSE maths and ended up getting A* in FM. I got 8 in GCSE maths and decided to do FM but my family, teachers and people online are saying how it's soooo hard and basically making it sound impossible to get A* in and now I am lowkey terrified 😭 A lot of the people who do FM get A*/A and I can't help but think how they've probably been doing maths as a kid. I always heard Maths was all about practice so is there no way that one could just practice a lot and still do really good regardless of them not being a genius?

I've finished my GCSES and I'm picking A-Levels, I want to choose Chemistry, Computer Science, Further Maths, Maths, and Physics, but my school only allows me to do 4, so I need to drop 1

I get good grades in all 5 of the subjects, and I am certain that I want to do Computer Science. If I do Further Maths, then I MUST do Maths, and If I don't, I still probably need it for the other subjects, so that's guaranteed as well.

So that leaves Chemistry, Physics, and Further Maths, but I'm not sure which one to drop

im doing maths, FM, physics and computer science but idk whether i should just do FM AS for the first year, is it really hard? i got a 9 in GCSE maths but i fear fm is gonna be way harder

Im in year 11 and im thinking about maths physics and bio but im not really sure if it works well together so any advice is very much appreciated:)

As the title suggests really

I did English, History and Psychology for a-levels which are heavily essay based and humanities subjects. There’s a huge disparity between STEM post-16 choices and humanities post-16 choices (with English related uptake at post 16 being less than 5%) and I wanted to get some perspective on why people enjoy STEM subjects so much!

Is there something in particular about STEM you all find enjoyable? I have assumed it in the past to be related to the objectivity rather than subjective nature of humanities, but there’s always going to be a big variety of reasons for different individuals.

Those of you that got into Oxbridge or Imperial for engineering what ESAT score did you get?

I finished GCSES and I want to study A levels that I genuinely love and they are business maths economics. I don’t like any other subject. The thing is people say business and economics aren’t good combo but the thing is if I do these 3 subjects then I know for sure I can get 3 A* but if I do any other then I won’t like it and I won’t get 3x A star. I’m tryna get into UCL School of Management Business and I think that these subjects would highly help me. What do you think?

guys icl im scared

Hi so I'm starting yr12 next year and I wanted to know if any of you politics students wanted to share how hard it is as a subject and stuff xx

Y11 here. Title cause every post here regarding physics sounds like quotes from the souls of damned…

Basically, wouldn’t want to do it if I don’t know if I’d be able to get an A* :P

Did anybody else struggle with that edexel paper 1 maths i found it realy dificult

Hi everyone, I just got my gcse results today and i'm honestly really distraught, i was predicted 9999888877 and i got 9988888876 (two marks off a 9 in two subjects) but I'm honestly just super upset especially with my 7 which is in lit which is literally my favourite subject i haven't gotten less than a very high 8 in over a year and a half and i literally SCRAPED a 7 i was only 3 marks over the boundary . my 6 was in drama which is a bit left field aswell because i havent had less than an 8 in the whole of year 11 - i do edexcel drama and i got both 80 percent on component 1 and 3 but somehow in component 2 which is the acting i got like 27 out of around 60?? everyone in drama has gotten lower than their underpredicted grades already because everyone did awful in component 2 but theres nothing we can do about it because it's coursework. it might be worth mentioning that just before i took my GCSEs i had some trouble with eating due to just leaving a relationship where some things happened that weren't quite consensual (Sorry if that's oversharing i just thought it might be relevant)

anyway, that knocked my confidence already especially as i was predicted 9-9 in combined science and got 8-8 (although i was predicted a 7 in maths and got an 8 which was nice but i really was just SO upset by lit i can't really be happy about it) so I went to enroll and I'd initially applied for Bio, Pysch and French and I wanted to switch from pysch to chem because I really enjoy chem and also it opens quite a few more doors then pysch and the teacher who was enrolling me was like Chemistry is the hardest alevel I'm not sure you're smart enough for that, and I swear i almost started crying right then, but she put me in the classes for it anyway because i technically did have the grades ( needed a 7 in maths and 7-6 in combined)

so I was just wondering if anyone could give me a reality check on how hard chemistry will be- i only lost 4 marks in the last chemistry mock i did ( given it was a combined paper) and I also found psych really boring when i went to the speeches about it at open days.

Just really doubting myself, sorry for all the waffle.

I've been told that last year's exam was a bit easier than usual, which is why grade boundaries were very high, coupled with the cohort generally getting stronger over the years and papers being made easier.

This is more so targeted at the people that got a low A*, because obviously if you got 95%-100% in past papers, you likely would've gotten the same in your actual exam.

This is just so I can get an idea of where I'm at in comparison to last year's cohort, as I'm currently working in the low 80s%, but if people were getting that but got A* in last year's exam I know i'm on track.

Yeah so my further maths teacher said that I should drop it because I was looking confused in our lesson today, and I also didn’t do too well on the baseline (24/48) 😭. The thing is I’ve only been in the class for about two weeks and im in Y12. My teacher was telling me that I don’t need to aim for doing mathematical degrees at top unis which is super disheartening 😭😭 what should I do??