Preparation
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Advice & Insight From TSA Specialists
​​​The first thing to say is that you cannot start preparing too soon! You should begin preparing as soon as you decide that you might like to apply to the courses at Oxford, Cambridge and UCL which require the TSA.
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Once you have familiarised yourself with the content of the paper, the next step is to get comfortable with the kinds of contexts that these concepts come up in. That means – practice papers! You can get worked solutions for most of the TSA papers, though you should have a go at the papers without any guidance (start by working at your own pace, you can work on speed later). Once you have gone through the past paper questions on your own, mark the work and then work through the worked solutions to come to understand why the answer is what it is.
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A common question here is: What do I do when I have done all the past papers? You might turn to the BMAT to find some more questions to work on (though make sure you ignore the Biology and Chemistry questions!) and after that, it will probably be a long time since you did the TSA papers, so come back to them and do them again. You can also purchase books of questions which may be useful to find additional questions to practice with. TOP TIP: You might want to save the most recent paper to do completely unseen once you have finished the rest of your preparation.
Learn the best TSA strategies and practice with reflective TSA questions & worked solutions.
Section Two is only required for some courses, and it concerns writing a two-page essay in half an hour on a question you choose from a given set (usually of 4). Most of the questions that you’re asked to answer provide something that provokes an immediate reaction from you; they are designed to be provocative and that means you should run with the strong view that you have.
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The main thing is to start practicing as soon as you can. Good luck!Â