Bicen I actually think you are the sweetest most dedicated person. I hope you realise the extent to which you have influenced so many people's lives. You go absolutely above and beyond and your commitment to us and your students shines through so clearly. You should be so proud of yourself, I think you have really found your purpose in teaching maths. You are the teacher every teacher aspires to be like. We are all so grateful for you
Wowwww this is such an incredible thing to say to me, I am so grateful that you took the time to write and share this, thank you so much! I am so touched by your kindness, thank you :) Please let me know if there's anything at all I can do to support your studies further.
Man it was a pleasure, got the A* in the 2024 exams and a big bit of it was owed to you, whenever I give advice to students now I always tell them to go watch your vids for a start !
@Thesassy-q9u watch tlmaths or bicenmaths explain the content and use the textbook and answer questions until u get them consistently right. Do this until u reach the mixed excersize questions and do all of them. If there's any questions ur still unconfident about then rehash those types of questions. Try to aim for perhaps half a chapter a day. Also do ur research and don't just take my advice alone. Do whatever makes u get over 90% in past papers. That's all that matters
@Thesassy-q9u if you really want the honest answer, I don’t mean to glaze here I really don’t but to learn lots of the content I genuinely watched most of his videos, they really walk you through most of the a level like how a GOOD teacher would. Also because they’re condensed into videos, I could watch and learn at a faster pace than what I did in lessons. So step 1 was absorbing all content. Idk if others would or wouldn’t recommend this but I solely sat and learned content for the first few months of yr 13 I didn’t really do as many questions from the textbook (i still recommend you do tho) also whilst learning the content I actually made the mistake of doing entire past papers whilst only knowing like half the a level. Please do NOT do past papers until you’re confident fully that you know all the content, that way when you do the past paper you can do it at your best. (A perfect substitution here would be topic specific questions from the textbook rather than exam questions) As when I did past paper questions before fully knowing all content , all it did was make maths a level seem a lot harder than what it actually was when all that was happening was that I just didn’t know all the content yet. Step 2 after I was done learning all the content was literally pure exam questions (not actual pure maths just straight exam questions) I used madas (more on this later) I used all the past papers, mock sets as well as pmt mocks, papers a - k on pmt and IAlevel. Now lemme tell you, IAlevel is damn good cuz the questions are ever so slightly harder but follow the same spec as we do, there are also WAY more of them. Reason I did straight exam questions is because there are a lot of special nuances and cases that simply just aren’t explained in the book due to how obscure it is (ie on my alevel they wanted us to integrate sin^2 2x. The only way you could do this really that I knew of was by rewriting sin^2 2x in terms of cos4x using trig identities, then you get a reverse chain rule type integral. Now integrating sin^2 2x was never mentioned at all in the book however it’s still possible to figure out if you understand rather than just simply remember the content. For me, I spotted that integral instantly due to all the exam questions I had done at that point, I’d done so many hard ones and learned why each step was taken in answering the super hard questions to the point that I learned techniques that the book simply couldn’t show me) so that is my second tip straight exam questions after content. Don’t do exam questions too fast or else you run out, so take your time in learning and assimilating the content, a lot of people overlook this and end up struggling on questions not because they can’t figure it out biut simply because they don’t know how/ why to do a certain thing ie flipping the limits on an integral will change the overall sign of the thing you’re integrating. You may or may not know this already but it’s small things like that that you need to remember for the whole of the a level. Now mr Bicen may or may not like this too much but since I’m giving you an objective method on how I got my A* ima say it anyways, the day before my maths exams I invested into the Neil does maths cram course, he makes his own exclusive questions which cover almost all the bases, he does like an 8 hour livestream going through all of them and it’s the final but perfect layer to make you feel confident the day before. That’s virtually it, much of this you may consider waffle, which is understandable (I love maths not English 💀) but these are the general steps I took and by the end of it, come the exams in which I just felt prepared and calm. This is the feeling you want before each exam. Any other questions I’m free to answer 😁
Just to add asw, I also did partially use uplearn. Now lemme say this, for bio and chem sure it was pretty decent. However, for maths ibr I found Biden maths videos on each part of each topic more easy to digest. Also the practice questions on uplearn were WAY TOO EASY for regular/somewhat hard a level questions. The uplearn ALEVEL questions were honestly at AS level difficulty. So my one tip, I wouldn’t really invest into uplearn edexcel maths to much. You have everything you need with the public Bicen maths videos, past papers of all sorts and the textbook. Uhhh about madas asw, madas is good up to certain echelons of difficulty. A good way to scope this is that the average questions may be 3 star difficulty and harder ones more so 4star. Never on the papers have I seen anything 5* level difficulty and 5* madas questions I think target fm more than regular maths, I saw one girl using it the day of the exam and she was doing volumes of revolution 😭😭😭 just to clarify we did NOT at all need to know that for regular maths. Also the pmt a-z papers are good for learning the little obscure tricks I told you about earlier. I think it was in one of those papers that I saw how you can rewrite trig functions as not just 2x -> x but the other way so from 2x -> 4x. About paper a-k I found useful. The ones beyond that were a lil too much for regular a level imo. Two other tips, although I did some old spec questions, these are the ones I did the least on only because a lot of the methods or even questions themselves are outdated to the spec and require you to do things that you aren’t always found on the spec as then you get confused and tip no 2 is invest in a graphics calculator if you can. They don’t just make life easier but when you learn how to use it to its fullest potential it’s borderline just a cheat code (not an actual cheat code obvs) but pretty much becomes so so op. In one question, I can’t remember now but it was in a mock, were to do with graphs. I decided to input my final function in the graphics calculator just to double check and the power of seeing the graph visually showed me logically that my answer was actually wrong and I went and checked and actually found a mistake in my working which saved me an extra 3 marks. So graphics calculator if you can. I will say there are a couple drawbacks to it, one being that you can become reliant on the graphics calculator especially for stuff like graph transformations and binomial distribution so beware of that.
Thank you so much! You're an amazing teacher, I felt hopeless starting year 12 maths, now a couple of months in, finished my mocks, and now I'm confident with achieving good grades just because I'm watching your videos! Your summary videos are super helpful and I hope you enjoy your christmas holidays!
Ah, what a lovely thing to say about me, thank you! I am so pleased to hear that my videos are helping you achieve your potential - well done on seeking my support via UA-cam and putting the extra time in, it's impressive to take control of your own education in this way, well done! :) Enjoy the holidays! :)
Doing all the A-Level Maths and Further Maths exams this summer was definitely inspirational! I remember my physics teacher telling me that you master a topic by being able to teach it to someone else, so it's no surprise how well you did in the exams haha. Thank you for all your Maths/Further Maths videos!
it was so humble of you to join us in the 2024 exams, thank you so much for all your help - i got an A this year and genuinely couldn't have done it without you! i have absolutely no business with maths in my future career except maybe simple drug calculations for medicine haha but i'm never unsubscribing you are amazing :)
Inspiring reflections on 2024 achievements and challenges! Loved the tips on exam prep and balanced studying. Personal growth and learning Turkish are commendable. Thanks for sharing your journey!
Hey Seb, would you do a video dedicated on sketching tricky functions that use A level techniques (assumptions on domain and range) like e.g. "Sketching functions A level Maths for 1 hour". I would like to learn the method and the approach for sketching unfamiliar graphs such as y=lnx/x or something like e^sin^2x, just a range of functions which are complex that require a thought process to sketch properly but quickly. I'm requesting this particularly because it's useful not only for maths to save time with the sketches, but also for Oxbridge entrance exams (STEM subjects) which they require you to do these sketches to unfamiliar functions in a short amount of time.
Hi there. Fantastic idea and great suggestion. As someone who is interested in higher level Maths, this is something I was actually working on 8 months ago. Thomas Calculus is an excellent book that focuses on this type of area. Check it out.
I like this suggestion! Graph sketching is a really interesting and challenging area of maths. I will add it to my list for the future, right now I'm gonna try and get these chapter summaries done and out the way! :)
Oh that must be so challenging for you! It might be a good idea to speak to the exam centre about it, perhaps being in a smaller/ventilated room is good? I've heard that trying different anti allergy tablets to see which work best for you can be good, I know that some are more effective for different people! (And don't get the drowsy ones, that'd be a nightmare when sitting an A-Level paper!).
Sir, I really want t to know, roughly how much time did you have left over when you finished all of the 2024 exam questions but the exam period had not finished? If any?
It depended on the exam! For Pure in normal maths, around 50 minutes I think? I was going pretty fast! But for D1 and D2, I had no spare time at all! On average I finished the exams in about 75% of the time limit, and used the remaining 25% to do a lot of double checking.
Hi sir do you have any advice to not forget things, for example if I learnt Matrices, after watching your videos I would know how to do it in detail, and would be very confident with it, then a few weeks or months later, I would forget it, and i would have to relearn (or rewatch the whole playlist from scratch again). It might be because of the lack of practice, but I'm not sure how much practice is enough? Also people online say that space repition is the key not forgetting things but I'm not sure how to actually implement this into alevels. Also for further Maths, would you recommend doing every other E/P question and mixed exercises for every topic in chronlogical order then moving onto past papers to get to an A* level. (There's too many questions it seems overwhelming). I'm self teaching further maths, i started in Oct/Nov in year 13 doing exams this year
Great question! The spaced repetition really is the best thing you can do. What does this look like in practice? Well, it means even when you are learning a new topic, you're keeping the old topics alive/fresh in your mind by doing a quick question on them too. Eventually, you can leave longer gaps with doing this. In practice, I would recommend doing a question from a previous topic at the end of a study session on a new topic. If you can make this a normal part of your practice, it will shift these topics into your long term memory rather than short term memory, and means you will hold onto them for much longer! As for the E/P questions, I don't always recommend doing all of these - there are enough exam questions to practice with now that you might want to move onto these as soon as you can/as soon as you feel ready! Hope this helps!
Sir I love pure math but I don’t like applied. Do you think it’s good idea to take FP1 and FP2 ? I know it may be hard to get A* but I’m very tempted to
Any of the options can be a good idea, it really depends on each person and how well they connect with those modules! I do like those modules, in particular I love FP2. There's some challenging content in both of them, but this is true of all the modules. In theory, it should be as hard/easy to get an A* with whatever combination you choose, so it's important to pick ones that you would be really interested in! Sorry I can't give you a definitive answer here :)
It was a stressful experience, I don't think I'll want to put myself through that for quite a while haha! Wishing you all the best with your studies :)
Bicen I actually think you are the sweetest most dedicated person. I hope you realise the extent to which you have influenced so many people's lives. You go absolutely above and beyond and your commitment to us and your students shines through so clearly. You should be so proud of yourself, I think you have really found your purpose in teaching maths. You are the teacher every teacher aspires to be like. We are all so grateful for you
Wowwww this is such an incredible thing to say to me, I am so grateful that you took the time to write and share this, thank you so much! I am so touched by your kindness, thank you :) Please let me know if there's anything at all I can do to support your studies further.
Man it was a pleasure, got the A* in the 2024 exams and a big bit of it was owed to you, whenever I give advice to students now I always tell them to go watch your vids for a start !
What would be a cool idea imo would be going through some of the mid/harder madas questions. That would definitely be cool.
Could you please tell what you did to get an A*?
@Thesassy-q9u watch tlmaths or bicenmaths explain the content and use the textbook and answer questions until u get them consistently right. Do this until u reach the mixed excersize questions and do all of them. If there's any questions ur still unconfident about then rehash those types of questions. Try to aim for perhaps half a chapter a day. Also do ur research and don't just take my advice alone. Do whatever makes u get over 90% in past papers. That's all that matters
@Thesassy-q9u if you really want the honest answer, I don’t mean to glaze here I really don’t but to learn lots of the content I genuinely watched most of his videos, they really walk you through most of the a level like how a GOOD teacher would. Also because they’re condensed into videos, I could watch and learn at a faster pace than what I did in lessons. So step 1 was absorbing all content. Idk if others would or wouldn’t recommend this but I solely sat and learned content for the first few months of yr 13 I didn’t really do as many questions from the textbook (i still recommend you do tho) also whilst learning the content I actually made the mistake of doing entire past papers whilst only knowing like half the a level. Please do NOT do past papers until you’re confident fully that you know all the content, that way when you do the past paper you can do it at your best. (A perfect substitution here would be topic specific questions from the textbook rather than exam questions) As when I did past paper questions before fully knowing all content , all it did was make maths a level seem a lot harder than what it actually was when all that was happening was that I just didn’t know all the content yet. Step 2 after I was done learning all the content was literally pure exam questions (not actual pure maths just straight exam questions) I used madas (more on this later) I used all the past papers, mock sets as well as pmt mocks, papers a - k on pmt and IAlevel. Now lemme tell you, IAlevel is damn good cuz the questions are ever so slightly harder but follow the same spec as we do, there are also WAY more of them. Reason I did straight exam questions is because there are a lot of special nuances and cases that simply just aren’t explained in the book due to how obscure it is (ie on my alevel they wanted us to integrate sin^2 2x. The only way you could do this really that I knew of was by rewriting sin^2 2x in terms of cos4x using trig identities, then you get a reverse chain rule type integral. Now integrating sin^2 2x was never mentioned at all in the book however it’s still possible to figure out if you understand rather than just simply remember the content. For me, I spotted that integral instantly due to all the exam questions I had done at that point, I’d done so many hard ones and learned why each step was taken in answering the super hard questions to the point that I learned techniques that the book simply couldn’t show me) so that is my second tip straight exam questions after content. Don’t do exam questions too fast or else you run out, so take your time in learning and assimilating the content, a lot of people overlook this and end up struggling on questions not because they can’t figure it out biut simply because they don’t know how/ why to do a certain thing ie flipping the limits on an integral will change the overall sign of the thing you’re integrating. You may or may not know this already but it’s small things like that that you need to remember for the whole of the a level. Now mr Bicen may or may not like this too much but since I’m giving you an objective method on how I got my A* ima say it anyways, the day before my maths exams I invested into the Neil does maths cram course, he makes his own exclusive questions which cover almost all the bases, he does like an 8 hour livestream going through all of them and it’s the final but perfect layer to make you feel confident the day before. That’s virtually it, much of this you may consider waffle, which is understandable (I love maths not English 💀) but these are the general steps I took and by the end of it, come the exams in which I just felt prepared and calm. This is the feeling you want before each exam. Any other questions I’m free to answer 😁
Just to add asw, I also did partially use uplearn. Now lemme say this, for bio and chem sure it was pretty decent. However, for maths ibr I found Biden maths videos on each part of each topic more easy to digest. Also the practice questions on uplearn were WAY TOO EASY for regular/somewhat hard a level questions. The uplearn ALEVEL questions were honestly at AS level difficulty. So my one tip, I wouldn’t really invest into uplearn edexcel maths to much. You have everything you need with the public Bicen maths videos, past papers of all sorts and the textbook. Uhhh about madas asw, madas is good up to certain echelons of difficulty. A good way to scope this is that the average questions may be 3 star difficulty and harder ones more so 4star. Never on the papers have I seen anything 5* level difficulty and 5* madas questions I think target fm more than regular maths, I saw one girl using it the day of the exam and she was doing volumes of revolution 😭😭😭 just to clarify we did NOT at all need to know that for regular maths. Also the pmt a-z papers are good for learning the little obscure tricks I told you about earlier. I think it was in one of those papers that I saw how you can rewrite trig functions as not just 2x -> x but the other way so from 2x -> 4x. About paper a-k I found useful. The ones beyond that were a lil too much for regular a level imo. Two other tips, although I did some old spec questions, these are the ones I did the least on only because a lot of the methods or even questions themselves are outdated to the spec and require you to do things that you aren’t always found on the spec as then you get confused and tip no 2 is invest in a graphics calculator if you can. They don’t just make life easier but when you learn how to use it to its fullest potential it’s borderline just a cheat code (not an actual cheat code obvs) but pretty much becomes so so op. In one question, I can’t remember now but it was in a mock, were to do with graphs. I decided to input my final function in the graphics calculator just to double check and the power of seeing the graph visually showed me logically that my answer was actually wrong and I went and checked and actually found a mistake in my working which saved me an extra 3 marks. So graphics calculator if you can. I will say there are a couple drawbacks to it, one being that you can become reliant on the graphics calculator especially for stuff like graph transformations and binomial distribution so beware of that.
Low : Further Mechanics 2
Thank you so much! You're an amazing teacher, I felt hopeless starting year 12 maths, now a couple of months in, finished my mocks, and now I'm confident with achieving good grades just because I'm watching your videos! Your summary videos are super helpful and I hope you enjoy your christmas holidays!
Ah, what a lovely thing to say about me, thank you! I am so pleased to hear that my videos are helping you achieve your potential - well done on seeking my support via UA-cam and putting the extra time in, it's impressive to take control of your own education in this way, well done! :) Enjoy the holidays! :)
Doing all the A-Level Maths and Further Maths exams this summer was definitely inspirational! I remember my physics teacher telling me that you master a topic by being able to teach it to someone else, so it's no surprise how well you did in the exams haha. Thank you for all your Maths/Further Maths videos!
Thank you so much! :)
Hi bicen thank you for all your help so far. I'm only in y12 but its been really helpful so far and im sure it will continue to be.
keep up the good work Bicen, have a restful holiday and thank you for the support that you provided!
Thank you! :)
it was so humble of you to join us in the 2024 exams, thank you so much for all your help - i got an A this year and genuinely couldn't have done it without you! i have absolutely no business with maths in my future career except maybe simple drug calculations for medicine haha but i'm never unsubscribing you are amazing :)
You are so welcome - thanks for returning to watch this and leave a comment - I hope your current studies are going well! :)
Inspiring reflections on 2024 achievements and challenges! Loved the tips on exam prep and balanced studying. Personal growth and learning Turkish are commendable. Thanks for sharing your journey!
Thank you so much :) You have left some lovely comments on my videos before this one, too - I really appreciate them :)
Thank you so much ur acc helping so much in year 13
Hey Seb, would you do a video dedicated on sketching tricky functions that use A level techniques (assumptions on domain and range) like e.g. "Sketching functions A level Maths for 1 hour". I would like to learn the method and the approach for sketching unfamiliar graphs such as y=lnx/x or something like e^sin^2x, just a range of functions which are complex that require a thought process to sketch properly but quickly. I'm requesting this particularly because it's useful not only for maths to save time with the sketches, but also for Oxbridge entrance exams (STEM subjects) which they require you to do these sketches to unfamiliar functions in a short amount of time.
Hi there. Fantastic idea and great suggestion. As someone who is interested in higher level Maths, this is something I was actually working on 8 months ago. Thomas Calculus is an excellent book that focuses on this type of area. Check it out.
I like this suggestion! Graph sketching is a really interesting and challenging area of maths. I will add it to my list for the future, right now I'm gonna try and get these chapter summaries done and out the way! :)
Thank you sir I hope you can help me get an A in maths next year
Let me know if there's anything I can do to help :)
any advice for sitting exams with allergies? It's like my kryptonite in the summer lol
Oh that must be so challenging for you! It might be a good idea to speak to the exam centre about it, perhaps being in a smaller/ventilated room is good? I've heard that trying different anti allergy tablets to see which work best for you can be good, I know that some are more effective for different people! (And don't get the drowsy ones, that'd be a nightmare when sitting an A-Level paper!).
Sir, I really want t to know, roughly how much time did you have left over when you finished all of the 2024 exam questions but the exam period had not finished? If any?
I'm not sure what you mean by your question - do you mean how much spare time I had in the exam hall after finishing the paper?
@BicenMaths yes!
It depended on the exam! For Pure in normal maths, around 50 minutes I think? I was going pretty fast! But for D1 and D2, I had no spare time at all! On average I finished the exams in about 75% of the time limit, and used the remaining 25% to do a lot of double checking.
@@BicenMaths thank you so much for telling me this, though i want to be better at maths than you one day (hehe)
@MathsAvocate You can definitely do that!
Hi sir do you have any advice to not forget things, for example if I learnt Matrices, after watching your videos I would know how to do it in detail, and would be very confident with it, then a few weeks or months later, I would forget it, and i would have to relearn (or rewatch the whole playlist from scratch again). It might be because of the lack of practice, but I'm not sure how much practice is enough? Also people online say that space repition is the key not forgetting things but I'm not sure how to actually implement this into alevels.
Also for further Maths, would you recommend doing every other E/P question and mixed exercises for every topic in chronlogical order then moving onto past papers to get to an A* level. (There's too many questions it seems overwhelming). I'm self teaching further maths, i started in Oct/Nov in year 13 doing exams this year
Great question! The spaced repetition really is the best thing you can do. What does this look like in practice? Well, it means even when you are learning a new topic, you're keeping the old topics alive/fresh in your mind by doing a quick question on them too. Eventually, you can leave longer gaps with doing this. In practice, I would recommend doing a question from a previous topic at the end of a study session on a new topic. If you can make this a normal part of your practice, it will shift these topics into your long term memory rather than short term memory, and means you will hold onto them for much longer!
As for the E/P questions, I don't always recommend doing all of these - there are enough exam questions to practice with now that you might want to move onto these as soon as you can/as soon as you feel ready!
Hope this helps!
@@BicenMaths Thanks for the advice!
Can you do chapter summaries for stats and mechanics
They're coming!
@@BicenMaths thank you
Sir I love pure math but I don’t like applied. Do you think it’s good idea to take FP1 and FP2 ? I know it may be hard to get A* but I’m very tempted to
Any of the options can be a good idea, it really depends on each person and how well they connect with those modules! I do like those modules, in particular I love FP2. There's some challenging content in both of them, but this is true of all the modules. In theory, it should be as hard/easy to get an A* with whatever combination you choose, so it's important to pick ones that you would be really interested in! Sorry I can't give you a definitive answer here :)
Sir please consider joining our 2025 cohort for Maths again this year who knows you may be able to get full marks this time! 🥲🥲
It was a stressful experience, I don't think I'll want to put myself through that for quite a while haha! Wishing you all the best with your studies :)