How should students prepare for the TMUA?
What if you run out of past paper questions?
Below I have written a guide for how to prepare for the TMUA admissions test.
This is based on my experience as a tutor helping students prepare for this test.
The “attitude mistake”
With a significant minority of students applying for the admissions test, I see some students with the following mindset:
“Revising won’t make any difference to how I will perform in the TMUA. So I won’t do much revision and will just show up on the day and see how it goes”.
I could not disagree with this attitude more. It reflects a lack of accountability and your competitors will be revising and improving. How well you perform is largely in your control and doing revision will help maximise your chances of success.
Doing revision can help you in the following ways:
- Learn the mathematics required for the exam. In particular students are typically not so familiar with the logic component before starting revision.
- Understand the format of the exam
- Get used to the types of particular questions, both consciously and subconsciously.
- Speed up answering questions by learning techniques for types of questions and getting accustomed to the time management required for the paper.
- Ultimately it should help you achieve a higher score in the TMUA.
3 Stage Revision Process
The TMUA revision process is, to some extent, like revising for any other exam. The revision process I recommend to my students is in the following diagram:
*diagram*
This is a standard revision process for any exam, but we will dive into the specifics for the TMUA.
Step 1: Revise content you do not know
Grab a copy of the TMUA syllabus. You can find this here.
Make sure you know the content mentioned in the syllabus. Look through the syllabus, identify any areas you are not familiar with and revise those topics. You could use an A-level mathematics book or the internet to do this, for example.
Usually students need a refresher on some of the more difficult content. This can include but is not limited to:
- Binomial expansions.
- Circle theorems.
- Knowing simple trigonometric ratios and the associated standard triangles.
- Log rules.
- Fundamental theorem of calculus.
- Trapezium rule and whether estimates using this rule are over/underestimates.
- HCF/LCM rules.
- Sums of interior/exterior angles of polygons.
- Geometrical proofs, including circle theorems.
- Transformations of shapes including use of vector notation.
- Formulae for volume of prisms.
- SI prefixes.
- Sources of (statistical) bias.
- Histogram interpretation.
- Tree diagrams to show outcomes of combined events, when probabilities are independent or dependent on previous outcome.
- Logic section.
In particular I bring your attention to the logic section. Several of the questions require understanding of logic. This includes necessary and sufficient statements, identifying flaws in proofs and so on.
Often students are not as familiar with this. I recommend reading the quick explainer on the TMUA website here.
Step 2.1 Do past papers
The official TMUA website has the past papers and also some specimen papers.
In the TMUA the questions can be unusual, often requiring multiple concepts to answer one question. This is worth getting used to.
There are also several different types of question. Practice will aid familiarisation with question types, consciously and subconsciously. Spotting and learning patterns in questions will make it easier to tackle the exam questions.
It is important to attempt these questions in timed conditions. If at first it takes you too long to complete the paper, record where you got up to when time is up and carry on. Then give yourself separate scores for each part of the paper.
Step 2.2 Do practice questions
Beyond the TMUA papers, what other practice questions can you attempt?
Here are some other sources of practice questions:
- MAT – another maths admissions test.
- UKMT Senior Maths Challenge and Kangaroo questions.
- In the coming months, some extra TMUA practice questions will appear on this website. I will update this page when they are available.
Step 3 Review and improve
Review your answers and write down any mistakes you make (I recommend a spreadsheet for this).
If you are making a particular type of mistake repeatedly, put some work in to address that mistake.
The most common types of exam mistakes I see students make in answering past papers or practice questions for the TMUA are:
- Time management
- Slip-ups in basic mathematics operations
- Not knowing which concepts to apply to the question.
- Lack of familiarity with question patterns based on the type of the question.
- Not knowing mathematics content from the syllabus
More to follow on question types and extra questions to practice.
For more resources on university applications for economics, see the link here.