How to: study for A Level Maths/Further Maths

Hello, Reader!

In celebration of me firming an unconditional offer to study Mathematics, meaning that I’m officially going to university in September, I decided to share my tips for getting through A Level Maths and Further Maths! 

As I mentioned in my “how I survived A Level Art” post, at the end of my GCSEs I decided that I wanted to study Graphic Design at university. After thorough research into uni requirements, I found that all I needed to choose for my A Levels was one art-based subject, which meant that I could choose any A Levels I wanted for the remaining two (or three, really). I asked myself what am I interested in and what am I good at and Maths was the first thing that popped up. I mean, firstly I decided that I wanted to study Art, Maths, English Lit and Philosophy but Art and Philosophy clashed in my timetable so I had to think of a plan B. Without thinking too much about it I decided to go for Further Maths instead of Philosophy, and I never regretted it. That’s the story of how I ended up doing two Maths A Levels. The thing is that it always came naturally to me; not to say that Maths was always easy but I didn’t struggle to form connections between topics which made it easier to understand as a whole. That is to say that although I came out with two qualifications, I treated Maths and Further Maths as one A Level because the content overlapped and followed on from each other. 

Despite the workload I absolutely loved it and, unlike Art or English, I would actually do it again. Perhaps it was because my teachers were so helpful and I went to every lesson with a smile or perhaps it was simply because of how fascinating I found the content. Either way, this doesn’t mean that extensive revision wasn’t necessary- quite the opposite, because I was soaking up so much new information that the basics kept escaping me… and without a strong foundation, everything falls apart. 

Every time I finished a unit, I began creating my revision notes. I know I say this in every post about studying, but if you want to know more about how to make effective revision notes, make sure to check out my post about it! I followed that same structure for Maths notes: collect information, organise information, create revision notes. The problem I found with this, in Maths specifically, was picking out only the most important information… in my head, everything was important. I decided that I will squeeze each topic onto one side of a page. Sometimes, this was easy and a topic would barely fill up a half of the page and sometimes I’d have to really plan out the layout for all the info to fit. Here’s an example of a page with some of the main features I used throughout all of my notes:

This page is from Further Pure 2, first order differential equations. It might look a bit confusing, but the important thing is that you can see the elements all together on one page. The layout is clear and readable and certain parts stand out more than others, in order of importance. This is so beneficial because, as I said, there’s so much information that it’s difficult to find what you need at a glance if everything is in one colour but at the same time you can’t really cut out the examples and explanations because they display how the methods and concepts are used. So, it’s not just about looking cute - colour coding is functional! 

Although they’re my favourite part, the revision notes are not everything: no matter how well you know the content, you need to know how to apply it. I lived and breathed Maths past papers in year 13. At any given moment, you could be about 80% certain I was doing a Maths paper. For most of the units, I’ve genuinely completed every practice paper available on mathsandphysicstutor.com, some more than once. There are so many resources available, there’s really no excuse. Even more important than doing the past papers is correcting your mistakes and reviewing the past papers to spot any errors you tend to make. This will give you an indicator of what you need to pay extra attention to in future papers so you won’t repeat the same mistakes.

I know that the Maths A Levels are slightly different now, but I’m sure you can apply these methods to your own studies! After all, the techniques only differ slightly between different subjects anyway - and Maths is still Maths. 

Good luck!

Love,

Agnes xox