How I Got an A* in A-Level Maths (Cambridge Student)

Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. My  name is Ray and I'm studying physical natural   sciences at Cambridge. So as you can expect from  this title, I got an A-star in A-level maths and   I'll be going through how. So just for context,  I did AQA maths, but that doesn't really matter   because as part of the new specification, it  means that all exam boards have more or less the   same content and same exam sort of questions and  styles and stuff. So the first thing you should   do is download your specification and just use it  to make sure that everything you cover during year   12 and year 13, you actually know. So you don't  get any surprises when it comes up in the exam   or anything. If there's something you haven't  covered, you can either search on YouTube or   go to your teacher and ask them about it and have  them teach it to you. So as part of the new spec,   you should be doing mechanics and statistics.   And for statistics, for some of the definitions   or keywords or whatever, I'd suggest making  flashcards to help you remember them. I had   to make a couple to remember stuff like  cluster sampling, stratified sampling,   the marking points for the random sampling method  and stuff like that. So the best way of revising   maths is of course to do questions, but you have  to learn the material first. And the main thing I   use to learn it, except from learning it in class,  were to use YouTube videos. So be ready to search   any of the topics you don't understand on YouTube.   Unlike subjects such as chemistry and biology,   where you will be finding videos just on that spec  or just for A-level, for maths, it really doesn't   matter because maths is maths. If you want to  find a video about binomial expansion or Pascal's   triangle or whatever, you just type that into  YouTube and you'll find some. It doesn't have to   be made by someone who teaches A-level maths. So  because of this, I used quite a lot of videos from   Khan Academy to help me make sure I understood  what was going on. But if you do want videos made   by maths teachers on everything from the spec,  then I would suggest Exam Solutions or Jack Brown.    Exam Solutions, you can go onto his website  and find all his videos there. And Jack Brown,   you can go to his A-level maths playlist and his  word document where he links all his videos to the   spec and use that. Don't feel the need to watch  all the videos though, just on the topics you need   to work on. And you can find that out by doing  exam questions and textbook questions. So the next

thing I did was to use a textbook for questions.   The one you have in school or online or something   should be fine. And don't set yourself the  unrealistic target of doing every single question   from the textbook. Because unless you're willing  to waste a lot of time, it's really not worth it.    Just do questions on the topics you're struggling  the most on until you get well enough at those.    And if you're not quite sure which topics you're  struggling on, I'd suggest going through each   chapter or each topic. And then doing the final  few harder questions from that textbook, chapter,   topic or whatever. And from that, from how easily  you can do those questions should give you a good   indication of which topics you need to work on.   If you're comfortable with that chapter or topic,   then just move on to the next and slowly go  through the textbook and see which topics you need   the most working on. But of course, doing tests  in class will be able to tell you this as well.    So then I'd suggest doing past papers. Try and  focus on doing the new spec past papers because

the older spec ones can get quite repetitive  and puts you in the false sense of security   that you're getting A's and A stars when in the  new spec questions you might be getting A's and   B's or C's. I did all of the new spec papers which  were released up to that point, including like the   practice set papers which were given to schools.   Because I know so far there's only been two actual   years of papers, the 2018 and 2019 papers. If you  do run out of new spec papers, I would suggest   going on Physics and Maths Tutor and doing the  Solomon papers. It tells you which ones are the   hardest of the Solomon papers and they're mapped  to the old spec like C1, C2, C3, C4. Doing a few   questions from the harder papers should set you up  pretty well for tackling some of the really tough   questions on the new spec. So whilst doing these  papers as mocks at school and doing them at home,   I would suggest developing the exam technique of  knowing when to move on to the next question or

when you're completely stuck. The general rule I'd  suggest is if you keep finding new ways of doing   the question, then keep at it. But if you keep  doing the same thing over and over, then just   move on and then come back to it later if you have  the time. And sometimes when you do come back to   it later, you do see something that you didn't  initially see and you see a mistake perhaps.    So it's always worth moving on. The questions, at  least from my experience in doing the 2019 exams,   they're not in order of difficulty as exactly.   So you have the harder ones towards the end,   but you have some easier ones towards the end. It  depends on what topic you're strongest at. So I   would suggest going and seeing all the questions,  at least during the exam, rather than saying, oh,   I can't move on because the questions past this  point are harder, which they might not be. But   most importantly, when you mark them, be sure  to ask for help from any of your teachers if you   don't quite understand a question or understand  how the mark scheme did something or just don't   understand the topic in general. As for the  calculators, I would suggest getting really

familiar with them. There are a few shortcuts  you can use to help speed up things during the   exam. And just playing around with them should get  you, should help you get a feel for it. Ask your   teachers because they should be quite familiar  with the new calculators from now. So this is   just a quick calculator trick, which I'm going to  be showing you. You can see this question, which   I've just completed over here, similar to quite  a lot of A-level questions. And here I have three   solutions. Now I can make sure that all these  solutions are right by typing in this equation   over here into the calculator. So 4 cos(x) squared  + 7 sin(x) - 7. Now, because we have an unknown   variable over here, x, it could have been A, B, C,  D, E, any of these. Because we have x over here,   if we press calc, then they'll ask us which  value of x we want to choose. So if I choose 90   and then press equals, I get 0. If I press calc  again and choose 48. 59, which I've rounded off,   we get a number very close to 0 because it's 10  to the minus 6. And if I choose 131. 41... we also   get a number very close to 0 because it's -4. 36  and so on times by 10 to the minus 6. So because   those numbers are very close to 0 or are 0, we can  make sure, well, we know for sure, that these must   be the solutions to this. So you can use this  for any, any number of unknown variables. So if   I choose A plus B and then press calc, it'll ask  me what I want to choose for A, so I could choose   2. What I want to choose for B, I could choose  5. That's going to give me 7. You can do it for   C as well, D, and then you can enter in 3, 4, as  many numbers as you want. So if you can get very   quick at doing that, you can quickly check your  answers and make sure you're right. Also, try and   be really familiar with the formula book. So when  you're doing papers, actually use it at home. And   then during your mocks and your real exams, you  should have no trouble in trying to find where   something is because you should know exactly where  it is by that point. I'd also suggest during year   12 and year 13, try and understand each topic  as much as you can, especially during lessons   like asking the teacher for help or questions  and stuff. Don't be afraid to do so because if   you end up just memorizing methods of how to do  different questions, if they change a question   slightly during the exam, it can trip you up  and throw you into a panic. And that's the last   thing you want to be doing during an exam. Also,  make a mistakes file. So for any common mistakes

you end up making when doing papers, just write  them all into a file. And then before any exams,   just remind yourself of those mistakes and to  look out for them. That's all from me. I hope   your revision and your exams go well. If you  want to see any of my other How I Got an A Star   videos for further maths, physics and chemistry,  you should find them linked below. If you have   any suggestions for videos I should make, like  trying to avoid silly mistakes, leave a comment   down below or if you have any questions about this  video. Otherwise, leave a like and subscribe to my   channel if you want to see more stuff. As always,  thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.