University Entrance Exams

Online cram school This is KO-HEI, a lecturer specializing in mathematics and physics for university entrance exams. Soon, the entrance examination for the second semester of the national university will be over, and the entrance examination for 2023 will come to an end. "Future university entrance exams will become stricter" Here, I would like to give advice from the standpoint of a coach specializing in university entrance examinations. The reduction of the general selection quota at private universities, which originally began with the reduction of the number of students in the 23 wards of Tokyo, has since become difficult to pass the "general selection entrance examination" due to the increase in "recommended admission" as a measure against the decrease in the number of students due to the declining birthrate. In reality, it is said that about 60% of private universities secure students by recommendation by the end of the year. "Nearly half of Waseda Sophia students are admitted by recommendation, and the number of general selection slots at the beginning of the year continues to decrease" https://jbpress.ismedia.jp More I think that unpopular universities have no way to manage them, but it seems that even popular and difficult universities such as Waseda Keio are in this situation. If so, you can understand how difficult it is to enter a difficult university in the general selection entrance examination. Even so, if you want to take the "general selection exam", you need to be quite prepared and prepare early. Furthermore, the "Common Test" that began in 2021 has further raised the "passing barrier". The "Common Test" not only tests your logical thinking skills, but also questions that test your level of interest in all fields in your daily life, from objective thinking ability to observation skills, and the changes of the times, and it is not at the stage where you can earn points if you have studied school classes and prep school / cram school materials. In the previous "Center Examination", students with a sharp intuition such as "I can see the intention of the questioner" and "I can read the answers" and students who are accustomed to mark sheets could somehow get a certain score with technique, but the common test is not so sweet at all. In such a situation, what kind of study is important if you challenge the university entrance examination in the "general selection examination"? In conclusion, it is necessary to "study mathematics from the "foundation" and expand thinking in a "panorama" way. Understanding from the basics means learning to solve problems using all the underlying formulas, while understanding from the "foundation" means learning to create even the basic formulas yourself. In other words, it is necessary to study to understand the "meaning of formulas" and to deepen your understanding to the point where you can create your own formulas even if you forget them. I digress a little, but many students who have taken the junior high school entrance exam are good at learning to understand from this "foundation". This is because children who have not learned equations have been trained to solve problems using only area diagrams and line diagrams, or to think of problems that seem to be sequences only with regularity, without using any formulas at all. Among the applied questions in junior high school entrance exam materials, there are problems that can be solved simply by arranging the numbers even the difference number sequence learned in high school number II.B. When these children learn Σ in high school, they learned the meaning of the sequence graphically in elementary school, so they can understand the "meaning of the formula" without having to memorize the formula for Σ in high school class. There are pros and cons to taking the junior high school exam, but what does it mean to understand at least from the "root"? can be said to have been worn naturally. Unfortunately, in elementary and junior high schools in Japan, it is far from the study method at the junior high school entrance exam level, and the practice of memorizing and making full use of formulas rather than the meaning of textbook formulas has become a method of learning mathematics. It is a natural result that even if you learn this kind of learning for nine years in elementary and junior high school and are told from high school that you will understand the "foundation", you will not be able to understand it and you will not be able to ripen. However, in order to pass the narrow gate of "general selection examination for difficult universities" and to pass the common test and pass the national and private (combined common test) difficult universities, this "fundamental" learning method will be an essential condition in the future. Then, what kind of study method is necessary to "understand from this "foundation"? This is linked to "expanding panoramic thinking," which will be discussed later, but rather than simply memorizing the formulas in each unit, the first step is to carefully understand how the formulas were derived. By doing this, your thinking ability to think about mathematics should improve considerably. Next, let's talk about "expanding panoramic thinking". As most high school students say, "This problem is the solution of this A pattern" or "This problem is the solution of the B pattern", it has become a habit to learn the technique of the solution pattern. Moreover, since each solution pattern is learned independently, it cannot be said that various solutions are solved in cooperation. What it means is that the sequence is the solution method of the sequence, the derivative is the solution method of the derivative, the integral is the solution method of integral, and so on, and it is a study method to understand the unit alone. The more enthusiastic the student, the more focused they are on the unit, so the more they learn, the more they stick to the unit and somehow get to the point of "solving math by memory." "Memorizing mathematics" allows you to solve problems quickly without taking time to think, and you will be filled with the feeling that you have done it. In this way, there are many patterns in which "thinking mathematics" shifts to "memorizing mathematics". This is possible for regular exams, but in the entrance exam, various fields are involved, so there is no tooth at all. It can be said that this phenomenon is the most common phenomenon for most students who can get a certain score on school exams but cannot get at all in mock exams. In the first place, mathematics is not a subject to memorize. Mathematics (which can also be said for physics) is a subject of "thinking" such as imagining the phenomena that formulas mean and logically grasping the phenomena represented by graphs and figures. Multiply the meaning of one figure and one formula over a day and ask yourself, "Why is this so?", "Isn't there a more interesting way to solve it?", "If you solve it like this, what kind of answer can you get?" It is important to learn to "think" through friendly competition from all directions. It can also be said that the interesting thing about mathematics lies in the process of exploring and guiding from various directions. In this way, the study method that acquires "panoramic thinking" that looks at one problem from all directions and tries to try and synchronizes the solutions learned in various units is the study method that can break through the narrow gate "Difficult University General Selection Examination" in the future. I also feel that this "panoramic thinking" is the original joy of mathematics and "true learning". On the other hand, "recommended admission" has been relaxed, and many students can improve their high school grades and aim for the recommended slot. However, the recommendation quota also varies depending on the high school, and if you are aiming for the recommendation slot of the university of your choice, you must think about "which high school to enter" from the time of high school entrance examination. After entering high school, my school did not have a recommendation slot for the university I wanted to apply to! In order to avoid this, it is necessary to choose a high school with an eye on the university even before entering high school. In other words, it became necessary to choose a high school with the set of "high school entrance exam university admission", which I said that I would think about from junior high school to university. Will you study hard in high school and challenge the "general selection exam"? Will you go to a high school that has a recommendation slot at the university of your choice with the aim of "recommendation admission"? It is an era in which exams and study methods that look 2~3 years ahead from junior high school are questioned. Language This page has been automatically translated. Please note that it may differ from the original contents.