Mathematical Sciences · December 2026 session

Sixty marks, seventeen weeks, one number that matters.

Days to paper
Exam date (edit when announced)
Cold baseline 60.0 / 200
Target 123.75

The mark ledger

Bands are drawn to their true weight in the paper — Part A is 30 marks, Part C is 95. Solid fill is what the July paper actually returned. Hatched fill is the December target.

Part A GENERAL APTITUDE · 15 OF 20 · 2 MARKS
10.00 → 27.50 of 30
+17.50
Part B CORE · 25 OF 40 · 3 MARKS · −25%
26.25 → 48.75 of 75
+22.50
Part C ADVANCED · 20 OF 60 · 4.75 · NO NEGATIVE
23.75 → 47.50 of 95
+23.75
Now 60.00 · 30.0%
Statutory floor (33%) 66.00
Recent cutoff band 84 – 118
Target 123.75 · 61.9%
July result December target Cutoffs ranged 42%–59% across recent cycles; 123.75 clears every one on record.

Where the sixty marks come from

None of this requires mathematics beyond what an M.Sc. already covers. It requires recall speed in Part B, execution in Part A, and restraint in Part C.

Part A · execution
+17.50

7 correct of 15 becomes 14. LCM, simple interest, letter series, cube patterns — none of it was beyond you. Two weeks of format drilling holds this permanently.

Part B · recall
+22.50

12 correct of 25 becomes 18. Same 25 attempts, better accuracy. Attempting more before accuracy rises loses marks to the 25% penalty.

Part C · restraint
+23.75

5 exact of 20 becomes 10. Five misses were off by one option, four of those from marking one option too many. Half this gain is discipline, not study.

Two rules for exam day

Written down now, while they are abstract, so they hold in the third hour when they are not.

Part C: justify every tick

For each option marked, be able to state the reason it holds or the counterexample that kills it. If you cannot do that for all four options, narrow to what you can defend or leave the question.

Marking 1,2,3,4 happened five times in July and returned zero every time. Only 9 of 60 questions had all four options correct.

Read the set back before submitting

Check the marked set as a single claim. On Q111 you marked "S is not compact" and "every open cover has a finite subcover" together — a contradiction visible without any mathematics.

Thirty seconds a question. It would have converted two or three questions in July.

The daily four hours

Fixed structure, rotating topic. The summary block is the one people drop first and it is the one doing the recall work this paper tests.

2 hours

Theory

Work the topic from one source. Reproduce the key proofs on paper without looking.

90 minutes

Problems

Eight to ten problems mixing textbook and previous-year. Hard cap of 12 minutes each — move on, mark it, return later.

30 minutes

One-page summary

The week's topic in your own notation. Three theorems that matter and the idea of each proof. This becomes the December revision sheet.

15 minutes

Part A drill

One short aptitude set daily from week one. Small, constant, and worth 30 marks.

Seventeen weeks

Linear algebra runs first and runs for three weeks — seven of your 28 misses across Parts B and C sat in that one unit. Click a week to mark it done.

Mock log

Enter part scores after each timed paper. Same arithmetic as the July baseline, so the numbers stay comparable.

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