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Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics - Additional


mac117

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Hello IBSurvival!

 

This is my first post here but I've been reading this forum ever since I started going to a international school (March this year). Anyway, I just started my IGCSE's and so far it has been a smooth jurney, BUT today my maths teacher asked me after lesson if I would like to do additional mathematics, as I've had really good grades and on my last test I had an average of 98%. I have overall pretty good academic results, last year I've had an average of 6.7 out of all my subjects...

There are only 2 people taking this class right now and so far they didn't do anything hard, but it's the beginning of the school year so they didn't really have many lessons yet… 

In the future I would like to study medicine in Oxbridge or Ivy League universities in USA, and I've heared that Additional Maths would look really good on my report card and prepare me really good for the IB mathematics (at least SL). 

 

The thing is : I've heared that Additional Mathematics is a really hard subject and that many people fail it, even though they had A*'s in other IGCSE exams. This scared me a little bit even though I was confident about doing it, especially with my teacher telling me that I have the "talent" for maths. Shall I just stay with extended curriculum offer or accept the challenge and do it?

 

Here are also the subjects that I want to choose in IB :

 

HL Biology

HL Chemistry

HL French/Physics

SL Mathematics

SL English

SL Physics/French

 

I hope you can help me with my decision because I don't know what shall I do.

 

Ps. I'm sorry about my spelling/grammar mistakes but English is not my mother tongue and I've been only in a polish/ german school before (I also just realized that my post looks kinda messy but as soon as I try to correct something it just gets worse)

Edited by mac117
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Hi! 

 

Wow, your IB exams are in may 2018 and you've already decided what subjects you're gonna be taking :P

 

I did the IGCSE mathematics and additional mathematics curriculums, and I can tell you that if you're doing well in math, then additional math will definitely be do-able. In my syllabus, the only part that I found was genuinely harder in add math was the calculus - it went quite a bit more in depth that regular maths. 

 

Not sure if Add maths would look good on your report card for those unis but it definitely will help you out in SL Math. SL math content is just about half a step more complicated than add math, though the questions for SL math are obviously more difficult. If you want to take HL math however, I would think that add math is practically a requirement, unless you're willing to work on your foundation a lot during your holidays before IB! 

 

Hope this helps :)

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Hi! 

 

Wow, your IB exams are in may 2018 and you've already decided what subjects you're gonna be taking :P

 

I did the IGCSE mathematics and additional mathematics curriculums, and I can tell you that if you're doing well in math, then additional math will definitely be do-able. In my syllabus, the only part that I found was genuinely harder in add math was the calculus - it went quite a bit more in depth that regular maths. 

 

Not sure if Add maths would look good on your report card for those unis but it definitely will help you out in SL Math. SL math content is just about half a step more complicated than add math, though the questions for SL math are obviously more difficult. If you want to take HL math however, I would think that add math is practically a requirement, unless you're willing to work on your foundation a lot during your holidays before IB! 

 

Hope this helps :)

Thank you for your answer. I've decided to take it and accept it as a challenge. In my school it's an after school activity (unfortunately) so I can't drop ICT to do add maths… Well, I'll see how it goes, tommorow is the my first lesson. I just have one more question : If I have only 1 lesson per week, is it enough? How did it work in your school? My school is pretty small and for example instead of doing french 4 I'm doing french 5 with grade 10 because there is only one french teacher (I basically skipped a year). Of course I will study at home and stuff, I am just worried that it might me not enough and I might end up with a B or C (which I would not like to have..).

 

And the IB subjects - yeah, I like to be very organized and plan everything, then just follow that path. It may seem a little bit weird, especially with me barely starting IGCSE, but hey, success won't come in an instant, right? I forutnately am one of those people that know (mabye not exactly) what they want to do in their lives, so I'm focusing on subjects I really need… + my small "OCD" will definitely help me in IB, from what I've read on this forum  ;)

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x

Thank you for your answer. I've decided to take it and accept it as a challenge. In my school it's an after school activity (unfortunately) so I can't drop ICT to do add maths… Well, I'll see how it goes, tommorow is the my first lesson. I just have one more question : If I have only 1 lesson per week, is it enough? How did it work in your school? My school is pretty small and for example instead of doing french 4 I'm doing french 5 with grade 10 because there is only one french teacher (I basically skipped a year). Of course I will study at home and stuff, I am just worried that it might me not enough and I might end up with a B or C (which I would not like to have..).

 

And the IB subjects - yeah, I like to be very organized and plan everything, then just follow that path. It may seem a little bit weird, especially with me barely starting IGCSE, but hey, success won't come in an instant, right? I forutnately am one of those people that know (mabye not exactly) what they want to do in their lives, so I'm focusing on subjects I really need… + my small "OCD" will definitely help me in IB, from what I've read on this forum  ;)

 

 

Well we had (if I remember correctly) about two hours of lessons a week, during normal school time. To be honest though, if you put in the proper effort at home you'll be fine. We mostly just used class time as a "ask the teacher questions" period, as opposed to him teaching us. Worked out well for everyone :D 

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x

x

 

 

Well we had (if I remember correctly) about two hours of lessons a week, during normal school time. To be honest though, if you put in the proper effort at home you'll be fine. We mostly just used class time as a "ask the teacher questions" period, as opposed to him teaching us. Worked out well for everyone :D

 

Thank you very much for your answer! So far I'm doing good, we started with surds so it's not that hard.

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