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Hi, I'm James. I'm the Admissions Coordinator for Maths at Oxford, and I'm in charge of the Mathematics Admissions Test. We're making some changes to the MAT this year. Some of them

everyone will notice, for example the questions are going to be on a computer screen this year, rather than printed in the answer booklet. But lots of things are staying the same, you're still going to answer the questions by writing in the answer booklet, and it's based on the same mathematics, it's the same syllabus, it's the same format of test and it's the same people writing the questions. That means that it's also the same way that you prepare for the MAT. You might like to start by looking at the syllabus, or the practice questions, or some of the resources we've made to help people get ready for the MAT that they're going to take in October.  But you might also like to try other tricky maths problems that you can find. It doesn't really matter what the problems are, so long as you can't do them straight away. So long as you find them difficult, so that you can practice being stuck on mathematics. It's supposed to be difficult, it's supposed to be the sort of questions that you can't do immediately, that aren't familiar to you because we're looking for people who can overcome unfamiliarity, who can fluently apply the maths that they know in unfamiliar situations. And also we'd like it if you appreciated what was going on, if you understood the maths that you were doing during the MAT questions. The best way to get better at them is to practise past questions and to look at other maths that you find tricky and also to think about what you're doing afterwards. It's supposed to be tricky, but it's not impossible. Best of luck.

Okay, so top tips. The MAT is made up of multiple choice questions and longer questions where you need to show your working out. The multiple choice questions are marked where you get marks for correct answers, but there's no penalty for wrong answers, so if you're not sure and you've got two ideas, it's best to just pick one and tick that at the end of the exam because you might get all of the marks for ticking the right answer. There's no penalty for ticking the wrong answer. There's also no penalty for leaving the question blank. Next tip: the long questions, you get marks for showing your working out. The long questions that you do actually depends on which Oxford course you're applying to. If you're applying for Maths, Maths and Stats or Maths and Philosophy, you'll do long questions two, three, four and five, but if you're applying for Computer Science, or Computer Science and Philosophy, or Maths and Computer Science, you'll do long questions two, three, five, and six. All of those long questions are made up of separate parts, where we'll give you marks for each part separately.

That means that you can get marks along the way for your working out, even if you don't get the right final answer, even if you get stuck part way through. So if you're making progress, you're probably getting marks. Those long questions mean that you have the marks later on for separate parts, which you can get even if you skipped earlier parts of the question, even if you left them blank or wrote something wrong, you can still pick up marks later in the question for those separate ideas that you need to do the later parts. The MAT's got a really limited syllabus, which means that it might feel like you need to know advanced mathematics or clever tricks, but in reality there's a very limited amount of maths that we use to write the questions, and a very limited amount of maths that you need to know going into the test. We're interested in your depth of understanding, rather than your breadth of knowledge. That means that if you look at the syllabus and you practise those topics, you might get better at applying them in unfamiliar situations rather than the more standard situations you maybe see in school. My next top tip is after you've done a question, to reflect on what you've done. It's really easy to move on to the next question and try a new challenge, but if you look back at your working now that you understand the question, now that you've completed it, you might find that you have ideas about how you could have approached the question,

about things you could have done differently.
Reflection on the questions builds understanding. And lastly, if you get extra time in other exams, then you should also get extra time in the MAT. If you have other access arrangements or modifications to tests then please make sure that your test centre knows, so that your test centre can make sure that you get similar arrangements for the Maths Admissions Test.
Best of luck with the MAT, and keep doing maths.