Honours Maths... Is it worth it?

wayhey

I'm going for medicine next year (going into 6th year) and I want to know if I should stick with Honours maths. I got a C in the Junior and my LC teacher is god awful, I'll be getting grinds this summer if I am going to stick with it. I need to make my mind up next week though and I'm not sure.
I found 5th Year HL Maths tricky enough, but it was the time thing more than anything (I'm all honours and I was holding down a 3 nighter part time job which I hope to either drop or shorten for 6th Year). Anyway, what do you guys n gals think, seeing as you're all but done? Haha I doubt many'll actually come back to the Leaving Cert. forums but it's worth a shot...

Should I play the points game and drop down to pass? My other subjects are English, Irish, French, Geography, Chemistry and Biology. Should I get Maths grinds off this guy who's supposed to be good? Or go to Leeson St. on Saturdays and take up Geography with it (not so great teacher either). Opinions? I'm really confused on this one.

aine-maire

Do it if you're prepared to put in the work.
It's time-consuming, but challenging. OL is basically HL for junior cert, with a few extra bits and bobs added in.
I would definitely give it a go for 5th year at least, and see how you get on.
I'm not a really maths person, but I worked pretty hard at it for the Leaving and I'm hoping for an A or a B.
Do you like maths?

xOxSinéadxOx

I only got a B in the junior cert and thought honours leaving was grand. people are always going on about how it takes up so much of your time but it doesn't, it was just like any other subject to me. did nothing and I'm expecting a C. especially if you're getting grinds this summer you should be fine. I only got a B in the JC and my teacher was brilliant, tbh I never really started understanding anything in maths until 6th year my teacher for 5th and 6th was crap though

grinds in the summer

ya-ba-da-ba-doo

Im glad i did it. But then again im not looking for medicine.. a C in the jc means nothing. I did pass maths for the jc! Look, its worth it if your willing to sacrifice alot of time for it but if its points your looking for, drop down if its too hard

pathway33

Drop to pass. If you work out the points difference you will gain more points by dropping down. Someone who has maintained honours maths for 5th year albeit finding it tricky should get an A1 in pass maths (60 points). Even if you get a B3 in honours maths that's only an extra 15 points, which you would more than make up for in your other subjects due to the extra time you will undoubthedly have.

I'd say spend your money on geography rather than maths

xOxSinéadxOx

ya-ba-da-ba-doo wrote: »

Im glad i did it. But then again im not looking for medicine.. a C in the jc means nothing. I did pass maths for the jc! Look, its worth it if your willing to sacrifice alot of time for it but if its points your looking for, drop down if its too hard

yeah I agree the junior cert means nothing, don't let what you got in it decide for you. I was just floating along not sure what to do, then I really started to enjoy maths in 6th year so I'm glad I kept it on. Pass maths is just too easy to be interesting imo. For me I did honours cos I like it, if you like maths it shouldn't seem like much work for you

CallMeDoctor

Hey im just finished the lc today and im goin for medicine too. I loved higher level maths this year even though it was a lot of work. I would definitely recommend sticking wit it because
1. It makes you much better at solving problems trust me on dis one it will reli help ur chemistry.

2. Its better to have 7 subjects if ur goin for medicine coz i onli had 6 dis year and u feel the pressure because you have nothing to fall bak on.

3. It will help u with the logical reasoning section of the HPAT(results on monday holy ****!!!!!!)

4. Its becoming easier by the year to get an A1 in maths.

5. It all starts making sense in sixth year. I sucked at maths in 5th yr but jus did my hw everynite in 6th and i reckon i got the A

Best of luck and the more work you do the better chance u have at:D medicine.

Prowetod

Stick with it, its not half as bad as people make it out to be, when you go back to school do about 3 or 4 exam questions a week, thats a max 1.5hrs work/week. I found Revise Wise very helpful.

Back Prince

I believe it comes down to your ability ur either able to do maths or find it hard. There was this chap in my school who studid non stop but just couldnt get it while this other chap just sat there and breezed through it. Also in 6th year maths is well sexy. probability but this is a topic u either love or hate so its catch 22

xOxSinéadxOx

Back Prince wrote: »

I believe it comes down to your ability ur either able to do maths or find it hard. There was this chap in my school who studid non stop but just couldnt get it while this other chap just sat there and breezed through it. Also in 6th year maths is well sexy. probability but this is a topic u either love or hate so its catch 22

yeah there was a girl in my class who loved to think she was so smart, she really struggled through it studying her arse off and I'd say we'll get around the same grade. you need to have the ability

Jay P

CallMeDoctor wrote: »

4. Its becoming easier by the year to get an A1 in maths.

I wouldn't agree with this. While it does get easier every year, less people tend to do it each year, and pretty much the same levels of people get A's B's and C's every year, it's the same with every subject.

OP: If you want to do honours maths, be prepared to do loads and loads of exam papers. That helped me loads. At the start you prolly won't be able to do them, but trust me, it comes to you after a while. Plus, I began to recognise questions tend to repeat themselves quite a bit. Maybe try tis year's papers in the next few days? And getting out questions is such a nice feeling! Well for me anyway, I love maths so I'm gonna do it next year!

I also had grinds since the start of fifth year which helped loads, but I still had to work hard for it.

Decide later in the year if you're gonna drop down, because with what you will have done in honours, you'll be well sut up for pass, it'd just take a few classes to cover the stuff you didn't do.

Honours maths is not the big scary monster it's made out to be, it's quite mangeable if you put un the effort. Enjoy

Tevez101

If u dont have a nautural ability for maths and don't pick it up relatively easy, and if your going for medicine i would advise you not to do it. If u spend half the time at a subject like ag science than you would have done for maths, I guarantee you the result in Ag Science will be much the same....if you're going for medicine i'd advise you not to do hons maths unless you can get an A with the same amount of work needed to get an A in any other subject...if u get me..

QueenOfLeon

I think its definately worth it, but then i've always loved maths so its really up to you and how good you are at it. Im going for medicine too, and i did 7 subjects. Im definately glad now that i did them all at honours, cos subjects that you think will go great may not work out that well on the day (arrgghh accountancy :mad:). You could also find you're under alot of pressure during the exams with 6 honours if you need to do well in all of them.

However, if you find that maths isnt your strongest subject and you're fairly sure that you cant get more than the 60 points in HL that you could get from an A1 in OL, Id say make up your mind before going back in september. Its alot of time you could dedicate to your other honours subjects. There was 10 people in my class who did the HL mock, 4 of them dropped between easter and the leaving. They didnt find the OL paper a walk in the park cos of lack of practise, and they completely regretted the time they had spent on honours maths when they ended up not doing it.

AMixedBag

Don't spend money on something that you think you won't do well in.(Grinds can only help you so much, the rest is up to yourself).
Some people have the ability to do maths, others don't.

I never did honours maths as I was never a mathematical genius by all accounts but some of my mates did it. One is class at maths and had no problem. The other 3 dropped down to pass maths just before the LC. One of them even got grinds but sure, they didn't help at all.

I know this might sound crazy but work at some maths over the summer trying to figure out weak spots etc. You might then get a feeling if you are capable or not.

aine-maire

Jay P wrote: »

Maybe try tis year's papers in the next few days?

Don't. That will only put you off. You haven't covered any of the course yet; why should you expect to be able to do exam papers?
I had exam papers before starting 5th year and they scared the s*** out of me... Don't worry about them until 6th year!
Obviously you'll have to cover at least some of the course before attempting exam papers.:rolleyes:

aine-maire

aine-maire wrote: »

Don't. That will only put you off. You haven't covered any of the course yet; why should you expect to be able to do exam papers?
I had exam papers before starting 5th year and they scared the s*** out of me... Don't worry about them until 6th year!
Obviously you'll have to cover at least some of the course before attempting exam papers.:rolleyes:

She's going into 6th year now.

OxfordComma

I definitely think you should do it at HL, but I wouldn't recommend going for an A1 in it. I'm going for medicine too, and I got an A in it in the JC so I had always intended to count it for points. I worked at it all year, and I still don't think I got an A1 in it... I'm really disappointed about that to be honest. It's easy to get a B in it, but very very VERY hard to get an A in.

Actually, having HL maths is a huge advantage for subjects like Physics and Chemistry, where there's logic/calculations involved. And it's really not that hard to get an honour in it. The part A's and B's are very straightforward... It's the part C's that are really difficult.

aine-maire

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

She's going into 6th year now.

Oops,my bad!

In that case, go on and do exam papers!

Sorry,hope I didn't read my papers so haphazardly

Jay P

1fahy4 wrote: »

I definitely think you should do it at HL, but I wouldn't recommend going for an A1 in it.

What's the matter with going for an A1? You might as well aim high if you're going for it.

ya-ba-da-ba-doo

Honours maths is not 'easy' to get a B in.

OxfordComma

Jay P wrote: »

What's the matter with going for an A1? You might as well aim high if you're going for it.

Because it's a headwrecker... It all depends on the paper you get in maths. I'm not saying don't aim high, but don't bank on getting an A1 even if you work very hard at it.

electrogrimey

Well you don't have to decide any time soon, I'd say stick with higher maybe until the mocks, and if you work for the mocks and fail, then drop down, and you could still get your A1 in ordinary. I passed my 5th year summer exam in higher easily, but dropped down in like November because I was doing 8 anyway. Now I realise I shouldn't have done accounting...hmm...

OxfordComma

ya-ba-da-ba-doo wrote: »

Honours maths is not 'easy' to get a B in.

Ok, it's not easy... But it's not quite as hard as people say either!

wobzilla

i only got a c in junior cert, and then got a b1 in leaving. just keep doing past papers

wayhey

Thanks for all the input guys! I think I'm going to get grinds over the summer and stick at it until the mocks and then see. I don't have that natural mathematical ability but I work hard and once I understand something from example I can "get" another one if that makes sense to anyone... I'm no genius at it but can you do well enough following rules and theorems?

Good luck with the HPAT results CallMeDoctor!! And look at papers?! My summer test was absolutely painful and my teacher is seriously seriously bad. Most of the stuff I've learned I've learned myself.

OxfordComma

wayhey wrote: »

Thanks for all the input guys! I think I'm going to get grinds over the summer and stick at it until the mocks and then see. I don't have that natural mathematical ability but I work hard and once I understand something from example I can "get" another one if that makes sense to anyone... I'm no genius at it but can you do well enough following rules and theorems?

Good luck with the HPAT results CallMeDoctor!! And look at papers?! My summer test was absolutely painful and my teacher is seriously seriously bad. Most of the stuff I've learned I've learned myself.

Actually, about 60% of the HL maths paper involves following principles and using techniques that you would have practiced in class etc. The other 40% (ie. the part C's in each question) are the really demanding bits, where you have to think outside the box and deal with things you won't have seen before. So even if you could get all the A's and B's right and attempt the part C's, you could do very well, and get more than the 60 points you'd get from an A1 in OL maths

QuoiFaireX

I wouldnt advise doin HL tbh... im nt a 'mathsy' person but managed to get an A in the junior cert.
My maths teacher is amazing nd i worked my ass off 4 the past 2 years... was aiming 4 a B1 but now... Uggh! i found both papers extremely hard nd tink i just about scraped a C3. i studied soo much dat my oher subjects suffered such as geography dat was on the same day as paper1. If i dropped down to pass i say i could've got d same points 4 less work nd couldve spent waayyyy more time studyin my other subjects
Really its a personal thing but if you are gonnaa eventually drop down i wouldnt wit til after the mocks- ders no point waisting time struggling..
Sorry about the negativity!

aine-maire

1fahy4 wrote: »

Because it's a headwrecker... It all depends on the paper you get in maths. I'm not saying don't aim high, but don't bank on getting an A1 even if you work very hard at it.

I wouldn't say that it depends on the paper...fair enough if it doesn't suit you personally maybe, but they still have to make the results fit a bell curve..:o

beaner09

If you do it my advice would be to do alot of exam questions. The questions in the book were very misleading for me, I thought it was easy until I got to the exam questions.

WaldenByThoreua

wayhey wrote: »

I'm going for medicine next year (going into 6th year) and I want to know if I should stick with Honours maths. I got a C in the Junior and my LC teacher is god awful, I'll be getting grinds this summer if I am going to stick with it. I need to make my mind up next week though and I'm not sure.
I found 5th Year HL Maths tricky enough, but it was the time thing more than anything (I'm all honours and I was holding down a 3 nighter part time job which I hope to either drop or shorten for 6th Year). Anyway, what do you guys n gals think, seeing as you're all but done? Haha I doubt many'll actually come back to the Leaving Cert. forums but it's worth a shot...

Should I play the points game and drop down to pass? My other subjects are English, Irish, French, Geography, Chemistry and Biology. Should I get Maths grinds off this guy who's supposed to be good? Or go to Leeson St. on Saturdays and take up Geography with it (not so great teacher either). Opinions? I'm really confused on this one.

Hey,
My situaton was virtually identical to yours 2 years ago.

I did the exact same subjects as you and was going for the a similar high points course..

I went from my normal school to a grind school in 6th year. First day in there they made me drop to pass maths (got a B in the junior cert and just about passed 5th year honours). I took up Ag science. Then in October honours french was not going so well so I dropped to pass in that leaving me with 6 honours and 2 pass.

Best decisions I ever made. Did Ag on a saturday for an hour, got 99% percent in the pre and something similar in the leaving. If Id persevered with maths and got a plethora of grinds I might have got a B3 and I would have lost 20 points in other subjects. I reckon the switch got me 40 points easily. In total I did about 40 hours class time for Ag in the whole year (about what you'd do in 2-3 months of class time of honours maths), leaving me with a huge amount of study time.

Best of luck with whatever you do, im surre you''ll do great

OxfordComma

aine-maire wrote: »

I wouldn't say that it depends on the paper...fair enough if it doesn't suit you personally maybe, but they still have to make the results fit a bell curve..:o

Yeah, I suppose... I don't know, I got an A1 in the mock and worked really hard all year but I don't think I did quite so well in the real thing.

Like the Q.8 on paper two was way way way harder than any other one I'd done for practice, and I think I did every one of them in the book :eek:... Maybe it doesn't depend that much on the paper, but it does to a certain extent!