Schols Schols Schols, information and venting thread.

stealinhorses wrote: »

Chemistry schols are more predictable, with certain professors giving massive clues.

Are these clues of the same magnitude as the almost famous clues first years tend to receive off certain professors? :P

So if it's fairly predictable that would imply if you study the material and can handle the past papers that you could go in semi-confident?

outnumbered wrote: »

Do you think it would be wise to perfect first year material in the last month before college begins?
I'm still a bit clueless on some concepts....

Brushing up on some stuff could never hurt, but if you're clueless about stuff then definitely do look over that.

yeah

Undeadfred wrote: »

Is it safe to assume that the format of the Physics Schols paper will be the same as last years? ie, the 3rd section of each paper will still consist of material from first year. I'm in Theoretical Physics btw.

It's more general physics problem solving rather than exclusively stuff from first year.

^Probably depends on the nature of your course. If there's a thread for your course in the TCD forum you might get a better answer there.

https://www.tcd.ie/academicregistry/exams/past-papers/scholarship/
E-mail your school for the 2014 Schols papers. They usually don't get updated for a while yet

Undeadfred wrote: »

Are there past papers going further back that 1998?

I'm planning on doing all of them come Christmas break, 1 a day, under exam conditions. Is this too late to leave them? Should I look at them at midterm as well?

Noble ambitions, but let's be realistic here, you will probably end up not following through with that. That being said, it's kind of pointless even to go anywhere near 1998 because the curriculum for the vast majority of papers out there has changed, and in some cases dramatically. It kind of depends on the lecturer too. Some like to include their own bits and pieces during the module and that reflects on the Schols paper. Some follow their own inhibitions. The best thing to do would be to concentrate by the papers in the last 5 years and set preferably by the same people.

Undeadfred wrote: »

Realistically, I will most likely follow through with it. I'm in TP, so the only way to really study effectively is by doing questions, and what better questions to do than the Schols past papers questions?

Yeah the different lecturer's is really my main concern since some of the past papers could be misleading in that it the past lecturer's questions could be entirely different to the questions this year's lecturers could ask.

You are wasting your time with a lot of those past questions - much of the material is no longer examinable.

Undeadfred wrote: »

How would you recommend I approach Schols study then? Ideally I'd want a load of schol-like questions to do, like a book with solutions in the back.

Do all the questions in the last 3-4 years, over and over until you are sick of them. And learn everything the lecturers say in lectures except Frolov and Simms (ain't nobody got time for that). That's all really.

Undeadfred wrote: »

When you say do them over and over, do you mean do them over and over in a different way each time? Otherwise you'll just be writing out the same answer again and again and you won't be thinking about the problem, you'll just be repeating what you did before

No, I don't mean in a different way each time. A vast amount of it is about pattern recognition, and by running through the solution you'll become better at the pattern.

And if you can't manage to keep thinking about the problem, that's unfortunate.

Maybe_Memories wrote: »

Frolov isn't teaching mechanics anymore. We have him for differential geometry actually.

Ouch. Then learn all the mechanics too, I guess.

Undeadfred wrote: »

We actually have a great lecturer this year for mechanics. John Bulava. He's American and super friendly and helpful.

A guy in my course told me that a 4th year maths/tp (Keith is his name) told him that Zaitseiv gets all his schols questions for Complex Analysis from a book full of questions. I don't suppose you know if this is true/The name of the book?

I don't know if that's true but if it was I'd imagine this would be the book. http://books.google.ie/books/about/Problems_and_theorems_in_analysis.html?id=b9l2NqGEFzgC He recommended it to us at the start of the sophister course.

Even if that's not the book it's still a great source of questions.

Undeadfred wrote: »

Yeah I feel if I just do a load of questions from a book I'll be fine. I learn best by doing questions. That's what I did for my Physics 2 exam and I got 97%

At the start of this year he didn't mention any specific books and basically said 'this course won't be following any particular book. There's many books on analysis but with more books the quality goes down...' in a filthy russian accent.

Use the book by Churchill as a base then supplement with the one by Palka (an excellent book but contains a lot more advanced stuff. It's basically what he follows for the Sophister course). Churchill has a ton of problems in it and the solution manual is online.

Btw, if he's even so much as mentions branches then find a resource for that (I don't know any, sorry) and study them. He seems to like them and they aren't really covered well in any books I've seen.

Zaitsev loves his branches.

His explanations of things are actually pretty good, despite how rambling some of his lectures can become. I don't think you'd need much for a Zaitsev exam besides attending his lectures and listening to him and jotting down interesting things he says. The basics are covered in any complex book you could grab from the library, it's the details he explains that are the valuable bits from his lectures. Just don't try to write everything he says, as he goes in circles sometimes.

I don't know where he gets his questions from, I don't remember his schols papers being notably hard though.

As for having a new mechanics guy, that's tough luck from a schols perspective. No matter how good a teacher he is, I'd bet heavily that his exam will be tougher than the predictability of Frolov.