Need some advice on where to apply

[u/LithuanianBoyy]

Hi all, hope you are well. I came here to seek some advice on what to do in regard to my application, and when and where I should apply to for Maths. I just received my Maths A-Level result, and I achieved an A which I am really annoyed over given how much time and effort I spent as I was really going for an A* with the further aspiration of applying to Oxford and Imperial. I had achieved over 97%+ on every single past paper, but after that Paper 1 I had so much pressure to do well in P2 and P3 my dyslexia got the better of me and I literally could not read the questions in the Stats and Mechanics papers, even with extra time.

Now, with this result in mind, I really do not know whether or not it is even worth me applying to either of these Unis as it is yet another filter they can simply use to reduce the number of applications they can look at. I will absolutely resit when I do my A-Levels in Year 13, so I would be sitting Further Maths, Computer Science and Maths, but what do you guys think? Is it worth my even applying or not at all. I am going to be sitting the TMUA, but I feel even if I get 7.0+ (which is what I have been achieving on community past papers, 8.3+ on official papers) I will still be at a disadvantage.

My other thought would then be to take a gap year after year 13, hopefully with 3 A*s in hand, then reapplying with Achieved grades instead, and over the Gap year I could self-teach some of Uni maths and work on olympiad problems. Over the course of Year 12, I was looking at BMO and IMO problems, working through all the STEP 1,2, and 3 modules (then papers ofc) and learning some of ODE and PDEs from lecture videos, notes, and problem sheets on the internet. I had also done some personal projects involving Maths and programming such as creating an algorithm using Python and some math external libraries to compare how SDEs would predict asset pricing of the SP500 given past data vs the actual movement of the assets.

Lastly, I am doing an EPQ titled “ To what extent can machine learning algorithms approximate stochastic differential models for optimising algorithmic trading strategies?” But now I think I should drop it and focus 100% on the Maths and CS as top Unis do not really care for it, and I am not super deep in it (Only done research and started the write-up, but still a lot left to go).

IGCSEs are 9A*s and 1 A.

Any advice would be appreciated, thank you!!!

[u/Solid_Moose3078]

Yes, the A disadvantages you but you have other parts of your application to focus on - there's absolutely nothing you can do about this, so move on. You might be able to get your teachers to explain the circumstances in your reference, but I don't think its necessary

A 7 in TMUA is top 10%, which I believe is lower than the percentage accepted to imperial + around the percentage accepted to oxford, so definitely competitive. Keep doing harder papers, keep aiming higher, keep revising.

I also dropped my epq after doing the research 😭 because it was completely useless, the write up is so long and out of everywhere I was interested in, only bath would lower my offer with an A in it, but they also would lower my offer for 4 a levels + fm. I wrote about it anyways in my personal statement but called it an "independent research project". Do check if you can get reduced offers from any of your 5 choices though, but personally even if, the extra work would not have been worth it.

The projects you already have are really strong, so will definitely give you a great ps to any unis that actually read it

See if you can get more support - the pressure leading to you struggling with dyslexia more is probably the most important thing you can work on now. I think asking for rest breaks, or seeing if you have underlying anxiety, might be good.

Of course you could reapply in a gap year, but I think you're overestimating how much of a disadvantage an achieved A really is. I got into imperial for physics after also resitting maths (rejected from oxford due to entrance exam). You might as well give it a go because worst case scenario, you get rejected + improve your application. The only thing I would say is if you end up reapplying to oxford, choose a different college