Course Description
The course will prepare students for the different style of questions that will appear on the MAT, with a focus on developing the students’ problem-solving skills and refining their thought-processes when dealing with difficult and unfamiliar mathematical problems.
The course should not be considered to be all the preparation that the students will need. No short course could legitimately claim to do this, since Mathematics is a subject which requires independent practice - it must be learned by doing rather than watching. Instead, the course aims to equip the students with the tools that they need to prepare themselves during their own revision.
As such, we will discuss how the students can make the best use of their time when studying, including how to learn from problems that they weren’t able to do, so that when they see a similar problem in the future, they will be able to make progress.
We will spend most of our time in the course working through past MAT questions from the main categories of questions that will appear in the exam. The students will have weekly homework based on this. The students will then be able to vote for which questions they would like to see worked answers to in the next session.
While, of course, some prior knowledge of the MAT is useful, the course will not assume any knowledge of the MAT or its structure other than the year 12 content from A Level Maths. The first session will bring students up to speed on the structure of the MAT.
Day 1:
Structure of the MAT, examples of types of questions on the MAT, problem-solving techniques, how to learn from hard problems.
Day 2, 3 and 4:
Discussion of past MAT problems, with a focus on problem-solving and the ideal thought-process as well as going through selected homework problems, depending on the students’ votes.
Detailed feedback: An end of course report is sent on completion detailing the student’s achievements and areas for further work.
Greg has 11 years' experience in tutoring Maths at various levels and he is one of Keystone's most experienced and trusted MAT and STEP tutors (STEP is the admissions test used to select applicants to Maths courses at Cambridge and other top universities). Greg has helped facilitate courses for the MAT run by Oxford and Imperial College on 7 occasions, after graduating from Imperial College himself. While studying for his Master's in Maths, where he attained high first-class honours (75% mark), he ran weekly tutorials with two groups of undergraduate students and since then has been regularly tutoring undergraduate maths students. In 2020, Greg led Keystone's Pro Bono Maths and Engineering Programme at the West London Free School Sixth Form. Greg is also the author of this blog post on preparing for the MAT, which can be seen here: https://www.keystonetutors.com/news/the-maths-admissions-test-mat-oxford
- Maximum Class Size: We teach in groups of no more than 10 with the average number in our classes being 5
- Platform: Lessons will take place on Zoom, which is free and straightforward for students to use. A link will be sent out ahead of the course start date. Take a look at this video to see our online teaching in action.
- Age group: Year 13 in September 2022
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