2017 MATHEMATICS ADMISSION TEST

I'm gonna get raped, there's no doubt about it. What are you getting on past papers?

Had to go to sleep last night, but here's as much of [math] P_{32} [/math] as I can fit on my screen (it's way more than this)

Wow that's beautiful

Can someone explain the last question about (x8k, y8k) to me please?

[math] P_{20} [/math], with a smaller step size

Haven't been able to get more than 60, and even then I think it was too good to be true. Looking at the examiners reports was a mistake

Hey, birds of a feather flock together! Best I've gotten is 60 as well. Which college did you apply to? I've heard that the MAT is only the end-all if you applied to SJC.

>examiners reports
You mean the markschemes? Or are you referring to something else?

I applied to Baliol, didn't put too much thought into it to be honest with you though

Meant the General Admissions feedback on the site, should have been clearer. Goes into detail of the amount of people they accept every year and how they performed on the papers. Would steer clear of you can help it though

If it means anything, 60 is well over the lowest scores that Balliol has accepted in recent years. (See pic related)

I chose Keble because it's close to the maths building. Luckily for me, their lower cutoff is in the 45s too.

Oh wow, I hadn't looked at it. Are the statistics discouraging?

Forgot my pic

Wow, that table would have been very useful when applying. Gives me some peace at mind at least, thanks.

I'd say the statistics themselves are reasonable all things considered, but it did shake me quite a bit as I was revising. The freaking bar chart didn't help either, seeing it visually made it worse!

I still don't see what's going on wit x_8k and y_8k. Could someone help me out here?

see , when n = 8k the cosine and sine become 1 and 0 respectively.

Is there a test I can do to validate my independent study?
I think I should be about the level of someone finishing their undergrad.

>tfw you got in to do chemistry the year before they rolled out an admission test

>tfw did well at the interview and had 4 As at AS but didnt get in because of shit gcses in non maths or sciences
>tfw would have raped the admissions test and got in
>tfw at durham

Do they really say Doxbridge there?

doing the pat for jesus college
feel bad for you matfags the paper looks fucking awful

Good luck all. We're gonna need it.

the question is

can u think of what u just said on the exam without the internet ?

Well done bruv, you're a genius

GCSEs are gonna hold me back so hard I swear to god. I wish I had fucking tried back then now it’s been fucking me over ever since year 12. Anyways this MAT is gonna go shit I know it. Good luck MAT senpai!

That was tougher, but not as bad as I thought. How did you guys solve the geometry question? I had to use langrange multipliers since I didn't know how to do it their way

I agree, obviously wasn't easy, but there have been harder papers. Didn't do the geometry one in afraid.

Any chance any hero managed to get pictures of the paper?

Oh, you're a compsci applicant? I'm sure #5 was easy for you then!

I should've written my multiple choice answers on my hand so that I could check them once they release the exam :(

Holy fucking shit. What was that first log question? How on earth were we supposed to do that?

You mean the first long question? I tried making substitutions but got nowhere. Maybe Balliolanon was able to do it?

When you simplify down the logs using the logarithm rules, you get a quadratic equation. Can't remember which answer it was though, either c=1/b or b=1/c. Would like to see the question to double check though.

Ironically no! I answered (mostly), but my explanations are generally crap

Yes, i got that too. I meant the problem with the alphas. (Accidentally typed "log" instead of long). I got to 2(iii)à and didn't get any further.

There's no way I got more than a 50

Aha alright, for that I got to halfway through part C. a was a substitution, B and C ended up being geometric progressions that you could simplify, and I don't know about D. Think you should be fine desu, keep hopes up

What do you think you got? I don't think I got to 50 either.

Mid 40s being harsh, mid 60s being kind I think.

I got 80% on the PAT with minimal preparation a few years ago. Just wanted to let you know, because seeing everyone being nervous itt is making me feel very smug

Also to everyone thinking about cut-off scores: don’t. If you just barely make it past the cut-off you have almost no chance of getting in, you really need to be at least 10 percentile points above the average to have a solid chance of making it in

What IDE is that?

Cantab here,

U mad or wot m8?

Disgusting, Oxford East Anglia campus members are not welcome here

Does the PAT return scores? Because the MAT definitely doesn't

Spyder

You can get MAT scores after your decision I thought?

FML I failed this exam, I wanted to go to Ox so bad

somebody comfort me, i took it today and my anus was not prepared

w-wait just a second, that's it?
this was on our test for physics in my slavic shithole

1.[25 pts]
[math]f(x)=\frac{e^{-\frac{x^2}{2}}-cos(x)}{x^4}:x\in \mathbb{R}\setminus\{0\}\\
x_n=\sum_{k=0}^{n} \frac{1}{\sqrt{n^3+k}}:n\in \mathbb{N}[/math]

a)Compute [math]\lim_{n\to \infty}x_n[/math]
b)Compute [math]\lim_{x\to 0} f(x)[/math]
c)Compute [math]\lim_{n\to \infty}f(x_n)[/math]

2.[25 pts]
A particle with charge [math]q[/math] traveled into magnetic field with [math]\overrightarrow{B}=(0,0,B)[/math] with the velocity [math]v_0=(v_{0x},v_{0y},v_{0z})[/math]. Consider only the Lorentz force.
a)Determine forces applied to the particle
b)Determine velocity of the particle
c)Determine trajectory of the particle

Looks like a photo of a Lovecraftian half-bred Veeky Forumsizen from above desu.

It usually doesn’t, the only reason I got mine was because Oxford emailed my school about it and they told me. Probably because I was from a school that doesn’t send many people to Oxbridge, they always try to get more people to apply from those

Those questions aren’t any more difficult though, especially 2 is very easy.

The point of the MAT and PAT isn’t to use a lot of subject specific knowledge, the test is done more than half a year ahead of even graduating from highschool. It’s just there to get the idiots out of the selection process before doing interviews, and to see who can actually do all of the questions correctly within the time given. The questions are supposed to all be completely new, forcing students to actually use their knowledge in a different context than what they’re used to

Those questions are FAR easier than the one in the OP.
The first question is Calculus 1 and the second question is Physics 1xx: E & M

The OP is logic which is certainly more difficult than memorization.

Only if you ask, and if the webpage is right, they only tell you once the next UCAS cycle starts, so I wouldn't think that most people would be bothered at that point.

Fair enough. How did the rest of your application go?

Maybe britbong highschools are burger-level, since that test is solvable by people who didn't even finish highschool. It's laughably easy. You tell me uni-level knowledge on entrance exam to uni is easier than that?
The math problem on our exam required the use of
>squeeze theorem
>taylor polynomials
>heine-cantor theorem
The physics? You're trolling if you think a regular highschooler can do it "easily"

leaving out vector notation
[eqn]F=q(E+v\times B), E=0 \Longrightarrow F=q(v\times B)[/eqn]
multiplying by velocity, you get
[eqn]F=(qBv_y, -qBv_x, 0)[/eqn]
congratulations, you have aquired 5 points
from [math]F=ma[/math] we get
[math]\frac{d^2x}{dt^2}=\frac{qB}{m}\frac{dy}{dt}\\
\frac{d^2y}{dt^2}=-\frac{qB}{m}\frac{dx}{dt}\\
\frac{d^2z}{dt^2}=0[/math]
let [math]\omega=\frac{qB}{m}[/math], then
[eqn]\frac{d^3x}{dt^3}=-\omega^2 \frac{dx}{dt}[/eqn]
we want our solution to look like
[eqn]v_x=\frac{dx}{dt}=Acos(\omega t)+Bsin(\omega t)[/eqn]
5 free points because you only get the rest of them if you solve it completely
[eqn]v_y=\frac{dy}{dt}=\frac{\frac{d^2x}{dt^2}}{\omega}=-Asin(\omega t)+Bcos(\omega t)[/eqn]
[eqn]v_z=\frac{dz}{dt}=C[/eqn]
for [math]t=0,v=v_0[/math] we get
[math]A=v_{0x}, B=v_{0y}, C=v_{0y}[/math]
and the velocity is
[eqn]v_x=v_{0x}cos(\omega t)+v_{0y}sin(\omega t)[/eqn]
[eqn]v_y=-v_{0x}som(\omega t)+v_{0y}cos(\omega t)[/eqn]
[eqn]v_z=v_{0z}[/eqn]
integrating the velocity vector over time, we get the tracejtory
[eqn]\int_{}^{}dx=\int_{}^{}(v_{0x}cos(\omega t)+v_{0y}sin(\omega t))dt[/eqn]
for [math]t=0[/math] we get
[eqn]x=x_o+\frac{v_{0y}}{\omega}+\frac{v_{0x}}{\omega}sin(\omega t)
-\frac{v_{0y}}{\omega}cos(\omega t)[/eqn]
[eqn]y=y_o+\frac{v_{0x}}{\omega}+\frac{v_{0x}}{\omega}cos(\omega t)
+\frac{v_{0y}}{\omega}sin(\omega t)[/eqn]
[eqn]x=z_0+v_{0z}t[/eqn]
so the trajectory of the partical is spiral

You think logic, which is the first thing you learn in highschool math, is harder than this? You suck at it then.

I graduated from there a while ago, so pretty well I’d say

Yeah the test isn’t that hard, here’s the 2016 paper

www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2011-02-14/pat_2016_paper_pdf_21115.pdf

>since that test is solvable by people who didn't even finish highschool

That’s the point, the test is taken before you finish highschool. Finishing it in the time given is sufficiently difficult to reduce the number of applicants to 2.5 per place though, and to give some info on their intelligence as well. The interview then gets more difficult, as you will have to solve similar problems in front of the tutors, but now you only have a few seconds to think per question. They also often give you a real world examples and you have to know how to relate this to your subject, which apparently many people struggle with

I think this is better than asking questions which are just a test on whether you rote memorized university level knowledge, which give a giant advantage to people who can afford tutors and attend better highschools

We take entrance exams 6 months before finishing. You have to score 80/100 to even be considered for acceptance. The harder the problem gets, the less points it's worth and there are 10 questions- 5 math, 5 physics.
My variant had contour integrals on question 4, which was worth 15pts. No, we do not learn contour integrals in highschool, so the only way you can pass is if you either
a) know how to compute contour integrals
b) are capable of deducing how to solve them within the timeframe
In other words, only people that were doing everything they could during their childhood end up passing the exam. I come from a very poor family, both my parents are alcoholics, i spent my childhood in old soviet books i found in the dumpsters just to not end up like them and i still only got 92/100. There were children who were taught by the best tutors and they couldn't pass, the exam doesn't give advantage to them. It gives advantage to people desperate enough to get to uni-level knowledge during highschool.
It is not about memorization, do you even study physics? Or math? You actually have to know how to apply both.
Now that i am in and taking classes, i can see how batshit insane the exam is for a regular highschooler. Question 8 was from Landau's relativistic volume, it actually is insane that there are people capable of solving it in highschool.
I could do this retarded oxford exam in my sleep, so could any of my classmates. How could you even fail it? It doesn't require you to be enthusiastic about any subject, it is just "apply this simple concept in a new environment". How could you possibly fail to do that is beyond me. I really hope the interview is much more difficult to pass and requires you to actually know something extra about the field you're applying to.
Suma sumarum i'm glad i am where i am and i feel foolish for ever looking up to western academia. For grad, burger unis are amazing. For undergrad, i am in the best environment there is.

Where do you go?

One of the two russian unis that aren't shit for physics- MSU
I still want to go to the US for post-grad (rutgers preferably) because the idiots here are more excited about LQG than strings...

If you want to see the exam variant i got, i can post the rest of the questions here. Maybe someone can solve the last two- i couldn't.

>There were children who were taught by the best tutors and they couldn't pass, the exam doesn't give advantage to them. It gives advantage to people desperate enough to get to uni-level knowledge during highschool.

If you’re smart enough or motivated enough you’ll get in either way, but for people who are just ok it’ll definitely make a difference whether they had a tutor teaching them about this stuff.

Good for you that you would be able to do the PAT easily, maybe you would have gotten in easily as well. I should say that the grafing on it is very harsh, I had finished it in less than half of the time and went over each question twice again but still only got 80%, so generally scores are lower than you would expect from looking at the questions.

The interview was more challenging than the test, mostly because the professors would just give you more difficult questions if you could easily answer the initial ones, and expected you to figure out completely new applications in a few seconds. It still wasn’t that bad though. They say that most successful applicants enjoy their application process, which I would say is probably true.

I should say, I am now doing a Masters in my home country outside of the anglosphere and am actually finding that to be much more intellectually stimulating than what I did at Oxford, so I can agree with you that those Universities aren’t the nonplusultra people claim them to be. The actual exams once you were in were pretty hard though, I have seen many people who used to be best in their highschool fail or even get kicked out

Would like to see those questions if you can post them

>I am now doing a Masters in my home country outside of the anglosphere and am actually finding that to be much more intellectually stimulating than what I did at Oxford

You don't think this could have something to do with Master's level content being generally more intellectually stimulating than Bachelor's?

Also, why did you go do undergrad at Oxford and a Master's in a (presumably) less prestigious university? Surely it would make more sense to do it the other way around?

You seem like you're kind of a dick desu.

If you're just ok you're not getting to any serious uni, tutors or not. It makes adifference in that you might do better than other ok kids, but ultimately, you're just ok. Our exams killed even brilliant kids because they didn't get to the important stuff in their self studying. It's a bit of a shame, but that is the proccess here- you have to give it everything you have or you're going to drop out. The pressure only ever increases, Zorich for instance gives open problems as a take-home excercise.
I doubt i'd have gotten in, my english isn't even remotly good enough to study abroad. I also have attitude problem and, after seeing the exam i would have embarrassed myself in front of the professors by berating it. But the interview system seems very good, i can't imagine mediocre people getting through. What is the droprate in oxford? We have around 70% per semester in the first 3 semesters and then it goes down to about 20% after all the unmotivated people drop out.
I don't know why people are surprised they go from "the best in class" to "just someone between the mid and top", it's pretty much guaranteed you'll be in class with people more brilliant than you, especially if you're on a good uni.
Alright, i'll post them in a bit
It's just me being disillusioned by ivies. Though i do have an unpleasant personality when it comes to these matters.

>You don't think this could have something to do with Master's level content being generally more intellectually stimulating than Bachelor's?

No, the Masters can be done right after the bachelors courses without even doing the actual bachelors degree. I know what courses and options there were, and they weren’t much better than the bachelors courses. The academical atmosphere at Oxford (at least in physics) is really stuffy and stuck up, with not very much innovation going on. They’re planning to completely change the physics curriculum in a year or two, or at least that was the plan just before I graduated. That may fix a lot of issues, but at the moment it just isn’t all that great. They seem to try and be academically excellent purely by having hard exams, not by having students doing research, running interesting projects, having an entrepreneurial scene etc. Oxford itself is a great place, don’t get me wrong, and the students are hardworking and smart for the most part, but there are plenty of issues

>Also, why did you go do undergrad at Oxford and a Master's in a (presumably) less prestigious university? Surely it would make more sense to do it the other way around?

Bad grades due to lazyness and a lack of options to specialize in what I wanted to specialise in at Oxford. My current Uni is less prestigious, although it’s definitely top 20 for physics so not some giant drop

Made a PAT thread > but I'll guess it's better to ditch it and discuss it here.

do you reckon that with a PAT score just ~5 marks above the threshold (I'm estimating I got 50-55), but excellent GCSEs and an A* in A2 Maths I stand a chance? Oxford's PhysPhil has been my dream for a long time and I have been preparing for ages.

Also, here is my answer to the stars question. Anyone get anything similar?

>If you're just ok you're not getting to any serious uni, tutors or not. It makes adifference in that you might do better than other ok kids, but ultimately, you're just ok.

You know what I mean, people whoa re good enough to have a chance but not good enough to get in easily. Those people are most affected by other factors such as tutoring, wuality of schools etc., which matter less to the outcomes of the very smart or the mediocre students who won’t get in anyways.

> Zorich for instance gives open problems as a take-home excercise

Ours were nice and solvable, but hard enough so people often wouldn’t finish all of it. You were encouraged to read beyond that though

>after seeing the exam i would have embarrassed myself in front of the professors by berating it

The only face to face contact you have with professors after that is the interviews, where the test isn’t even mentioned

>But the interview system seems very good, i can't imagine mediocre people getting through. What is the droprate in oxford? We have around 70% per semester in the first 3 semesters and then it goes down to about 20% after all the unmotivated people drop out.

Yeah the interviews are excellent at weeding out the unenthusiastic or mediocre applicants, our drop out rates were very low. Like 10-20% max over the entire length of the course. If you can’t cut it, you probably won’t even get in in the first place

>I don't know why people are surprised they go from "the best in class" to "just someone between the mid and top"

Not even between mid and top, I knew a guy who was best in his school, skipped a year and got kicked out after the first year at Oxford due to failing his exams. Even the worst people in a course were often top of their class before, that’s just a result of the high level of selection I guess. But yeah, noone really expects that, so many freshers arrive being all “Oh I’m the best at physics out of anyone I’ve ever met”

I'll first post the math questions, since they are more concise
3.
Given
[math]N=\{ (x,y,z)\in \mathbb{R}^3;x^2+y^2

Physics and Philosophy unfortunately is usually harder to get in than just Physics, although that will really depend on how many places there are in the first place. The last statistics are from 2015, so maybe they’ve created a few more places since then. Keep in mind the cutoff is places such that there are only 2.5 apllicants per place, so at a 10%ish acceptance rate for Physics and Philosophy you need to have a score in the 75th percentile of test takers.

One A* won’t do much, most, or at least many, people have more than one. Good thing is that for Physics and Philosphy the PAT matters a little less than just for physics if you proceed to the interview stage as there is also the philosophy component.

Either way, there’s no point in stressing out over the test once you’ve taken it. If you get an interview, make sure you’re well prepared, ideally have done practice interviews and have read around your subject. Obviously at least look at oast exam questions, and maybe do some general physics problems as well. I’d recommend “Thinking Physics” by Lewis Epstein, and “The chicken from Minsk” if you can get it, it’s out of print I think. Those books contain a lot of small problems to get you thinking.

look, we get it, you're all special smart cookies, but at the end of the day you're feeling smug about things concerning a college entrance exam for an undergrad. if you plan on going into research, you look especially ridiculous because this is likely to have zero impact on that.

>tl;dr
kys desu senpai

[spoiler]but good luck everyone, i hope you guys do whatever it is you want to do[/spoiler]

no, but they copy just about everything from oxbridge (colleges, family system, formals)

Had a quick look over your answer btw, seems right. I would’ve given u in terms of v, but that doesn’t really matter to the result ofc

my maths feels so rusty looking at you lads posting these solutions, i knew much more when i was doing further maths at a level than I do 2 years into a chem degree. i should have done physics.

You could have gotten the result a lot more quickly by just comparing the forces and then taking the root of the ratio to get the ratio of velocities, no need to actually calculate u and v. Won’t lose you any points, just some time

>It's just me being disillusioned by ivies
It wasn't so much that, think of the ivies what you will, but more so the "I don't even see how someone couldn't do this" attitude. It's elitist and, although people who say it out loud probably want to seem more intelligent by it, to me it just shows that the person is somehow limited in their thinking. It doesn't help anyone.

>70% drop out rate
To me, that isn't a good sign. It either means you're letting in people who have no business being there in the first place (but how does this happen if your entrance exams are oh so difficult?) or then they're smoking people out just to make themselves seem hardcore. Or just failing to provide adequate education for the students there. Just slapping a ton of work on you is not providing an adequate education.

Oxbridge have generally low dropout rates (though they tidy the rates with intermitting students) because the admissions system is designed to make sure people who get in have a realistic chance of succeeding in the program and because there's a system of tutorials and supervisions. You usually hand in work on a weekly basis (for each course) and meet someone (ranging from PhD students to senior academics) to discuss it in groups of 2-3. This way, if someone is falling behind it will be noticed and they try to deal with the issue. Instead of telling them they're brainlets and never going to make it.

And now for the hard part- physics.
4.
[My translation will suck and you might not understand the questions, ask for pictures and i'll upload them tomorrow, if the thread is alive]
Toroid with air core is composed of N coils in one layer next to each other. Area of the toroid is S, with inner radius of r. Current I goes through the coil. Consider the magnetic inductance inside the toroid to be homogenous because the radial "thickness" of the toroid is too small compared to r.
Determine:
[math]B_j,B_v[/math] in the core and outside of the toroid.
Flux [math]\Phi[/math] through the toroid.
Amplitude and direction of electromotoric voltage [math]\epsilon[/math] induced as the current going through the coil grows with the time [math]I=2t[/math]

Imagine that you fill the toroid with a circular core made of material with permeability [math]\mu[/math] and cut a thin air-filled gap, [math]m[/math] long. What is the intensity of magnetic field [math]H[/math] in that gap.

5.
[There are multiple answers to the first part]
Consider unstructured particle in one dimension with Hamiltionian
[eqn]\hat{H}\psi(x)=-\frac{\bar{h}^2}{2m}\psi ''(x)-\lambda [\delta(x+a)+\delta(x-a)]\psi(x)[/eqn]
where [math]a>0[/math] is a constant determining the position of two potential holes idealized as delta function, [math]m[/math] is a mass of particle and [math]\lambda >0[/math] is a constant characterizing the potential.

Construct length and energy constants [math]x_0,\epsilon_{0}[/math] and rewrite stationary Schroedinger equation to dimensionless quantities [math]q=\frac{x}{x_0}[/math] and [math]\epsilon =\frac{E}{\epsilon_0}[/math]
Find discrete spectrum of the Hamiltonian and its normed wavefunctions
Imagine that the particle is in state [math]\psi(x)=exp(\frac{-m\lambda|x|}{\bar{h}^2})[/math]. What is the probability of the particle being detected in base or first excited state.

Say what you will, but i expect Oxford to be an elite university, i do not expect mediocre people to apply there and to repulse them from doing so, i would expect the exams to be pretty hard.
I wouldn't bat an eye if a regular uni had an exam where non-elites could get in, but from one of the top universities in the world, i would not expect it.
It wouldn't be a good sign in your environment. My environment was always about survival, there's no need to change that. I was actually expecting Oxford had smaller droprate, but in hindsight if someone was used to effortlessly being the top student in highschool, they might not be able to adapt quickly enough and end up getting dropped out even though they are capable of Oxford.
Here it works differently, when you enter uni you're always pressured to study, no matter how brilliant you are, you always feel like you know nothing. If you're falling behind you're simply not studying hard enough. Our professors are paid to teach, not to research like in western academia, and they do a very good job. One thing i noticed when i watched online lectures from american universities was, there was almost no discussion, the students didn't have any questions and the lecturer almost always used notes to teach. Here the professor sits at the desk and talks to us, draws and writes on blackboard to explain what he's talking about, asks us to fill in some gaps to see if we understand and, if we do not understand, he asks what isn't clear. After class, you can visit his office any time in the day to discuss. This is something i have rarely seen in american universities. It might be different in Oxford, but generally the lectures from MIT and other ivies were very "dry" and did a bad job at explaining the subject. They were basically just hints for textbooks. Here you have to read textbooks because the assignments are so hard you can't finish them without looking deeper into subject, not because the lectures shit.

And what si the outcome of that system? A bunch of rote memorised stuff that will never be put to any use? Just compare how many top scientists western elite unis vs russian unis produce. Clearly the western approach works much better

Indian unis are also super selective, but not very good. Simply selecting down a large pool of candidates isn’t a sign of quality, it’s a sign of a lack of good options in that country

By A* at A2 I mean an actual grade, not a prediction (I sat all 6 modules last year). It's obviously not as good of an indicator of my skills as a test like the PAT, but I'm hoping it helps me out.

I think PhysPhil students get shortlisted with just as much scrutiny as regular Physics applicants, since I'm also applying for Physics by default (in the case where I am not accepted for the Philosophy part). For interview prep I have 'professor povey's perplexing problems' which seems decent, but I'll look into the books you mentioned. By the way, how important is it to know your personal statement? I'd rather prepare for the problems than try to remember everything I mentioned in mine. Thanks a lot for replying; I appreciate the info.

wow, I'm surprised. are you sure? the full question is in the other thread I linked beforehand.

Look at the results of olympiads and other contests. All the good russians go to US for grad or post-grad. Do you think i like it here? Hell no, this place is a shithole. It's exquisite for undergrad because you *learn* a shitton of stuff, so much that you have no problems getting to ivies. But doing research here? Good luck with that, the morons here don't do anything worthwhile in hep-th or even condensed matter. Funding is kek, you'll be living off of bread and kvas. Post-grad is nightmare here and nobody wants to do that, everyone goes to work for government or runs away.
The soviet approach works best, as demonstrated in cold war where our rotting country was able to keep up with the world's top superpower, just because we had superior brainpower. It's this recent dillution with western approach that makes our academia a joke. Look at how many russians and chinese are in IAS.
Off to sleep, i will post the last two problems in the morning, after i have some coffee. I think i'll just upload a pdf because writing this out on Veeky Forums is pain.
Good night, my suchki.

>i do not expect mediocre people to apply there and to repulse them from doing so, i would expect the exams to be pretty hard

Generally, mediocre people don't. And the exams are pretty hard. I get the impression that your image of the skill distribution of high school graduates is somewhat warped.

Lectures vary, but mostly there isn't much exchange during them, especially at earlier years since class sizes are big. Generally lecturers know their shit and communicate it pretty well, but it can be dry, largely because of the aforementioned lack of interaction and quite often also due to being too dense in content. I generally haven't used textbooks a lot, usually lecture notes are sufficient.

Perhaps you've bought too much into the rankings, attended a perfectly good university that works you hard and then thought that the best in the world has to be much harder.

Here are some stats on A level grades and success rates

ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate/additional-info/qualifications?wssl=1

The A* isn’t nearly as helpful as you having finished the A level early, expect them to maybe ask about it in the interview

The shortlisting process is exactly the same for all subjects, I just meant that Physics is only part of the application (the bigger one though) so the result of the PAT probably isn’t quite as all-important as for pure Physics students.

Interviews vary by college, as they’re done by tutors at the respective colleges. Don’t worry too much about your personal statement, they don’t really care about it beyond maybe asking you about someting that stands out like skipping a couple grades or having done a great internship. What actually gets you in is how well you can answer the questions, and importantly how well you respond to the style of interview, as it is purposely done similarly to a tutorial. E.g. if you get something wrong, how well do you respond to tips, can you explain what you are doing, can you link to previous knowledge, are you explaining your thoughts as you go along etc.

>the full question is in the other thread I linked beforehand.

Yeah you can do it either way. If this was an interview I’d definitely want to find u in terms of v, as v is the standard result you probably know by heart and should therefore use as a reference. In the PAT it will have been fine that way round, as the question doesn’t really specify an order

Who cares about olympiads, actual outcomes matter. Yes, if the country is a shithole and people are desperate you can get them to study really hard for a chance to get out, but try doing that in the west. You may well learn a lot, obviously the people who come to the west are smart and willing to work, so they do well here. The brain drain isn’t really anything to be proud of though

imgur.com/a/mDrRY

Here are some of my answers for the PAT. Can anyone who's done it check these with theirs?

fuck me, are all of you underages at this level already?

burgers education is just an absolute state, lad

Fuck latex, i'm too busy today. Hope the thread is alive tomorrow night.

7.
Molecule with multipole moment in nonhomogenous electric field is described as 3D rotor with hamiltonian [math]\hat{H}=\frac{1}{27}\hat{L}^2+\gamma cos^2(\theta)[/math]
on the space of quadratic integrable functions of unit sphere. [math]\hat{L}^2[/math] is operator of the square root of orbital moment and [math]\theta,\phi[/math] are spherical coordinates. Find basis state of this system using variational principle. Assume that the wave function is linear combination of spherical harmonics [math]Y_{00}(\theta,\phi), Y_{10}(\theta,\phi), Y_{20}(\theta,\phi)[/math].
Additionally use these Clebsch-Gordan coefficients:
[math]\langle lm|j_1m_1j_2m_2\rangle, l=0 l=1, l=2, l=3[/math]
[math]\langle l0|2010\rangle, 0, -\sqrt{2/5}, 0, \sqrt{3/5}[/math]
[math]\langle l0|2020\rangle, \sqrt{1/5}, 0, -\sqrt{2/7}, 0[/math]

Can you explain the hate for Hertford? The meme page is always making fun of them

9.
In a simplified Yukawa model with Lagrangian
[math]\mathcal{L}=i\bar{\psi}\slashed{\partial}\psi-m\bar{\psi}\psi+\frac{1}{2}\partial_\mu \phi \partial^\mu\phi-\frac{1}{2}M^2\phi^2+g\bar{\psi}\psi\phi[/math]
determine leading anomaly dimension of fermion [math]\phi[/math], i.e. leading value of parameter [math]\gamma=\frac{1}{2}Z_{\psi}^{-1}\mu_R\frac{\partial Z_\psi}{\mu_R}[/math] where [math]Z_\psi[/math] is singular loop renormalization of fermionic kinetic part in Lagrangian and [math]\mu_R[/math] is the renomralization scale.

That is the last problem and i can't imagine anyone being able to solve it in highschool. It is a graduate level problem (hard one too).

That one is very hard, the other ones seem like fairly standard undergrad problems but I wouldn't expect anyone to know the material straight out of high school.

I'm pretty late to this thread but I sat the offical MAT 2017 two days ago at my school.
I am still in secondary school but turned 18 mid october.
I'd be willing to answer any questions you guys may have about it but I'm mostly writing this if anyone else there took MAT 2017 as I would like to ask them a few questions (mostly about question 5)

How difficult was it compared to the specimen papers and past papers?
Also how difficult was it compared to high school maths?

The multichoice questions towards the end got more difficult compared to the average past papers. I haven't tried the specimen papers because there was enough past papers to keep busy with and some STEP questions are MAT similar.
The second, third and fourth question were relatively easy for me, though thats mostly because I focused practice on questions that involves in-depth algebra/polynomials (which is usually question 2 and 3) rather then geometry (question 4) or combinatorics (question 5).

Most MAT questions are easy to answer with secondary school maths its just more messy algebra and some scary factorising. The difficulty in these questions is just knowing how to answer them, especially with geometry questions in which you could find the area of some region by hundreds of different ways, you have to see which one is the most efficient way to answer it quick enough.

Overall I would say it is harder then Core Mathematics at school as there can be these weird connections between the topics that I've get taught that I never been encountered, like using a geometric series to find the area of multiple triangles or something.

I would say its less harder compared to Further Mathematics at school for the same reasons as above but it's easier as the subject knowledge isn't Second Order differential or de Moirve's theorem. Still in secondary school maths papers there quite a lot of hand holding and MAT just lessens it significantly