I am very pleased that you are holding the offer of a place to read Natural Sciences (Physical) here at Downing and I look forward to meeting you in due course.

When you have time, I suggest that you take a look at the University's website for the Natural Sciences. Have a look round this site, and you can find out about the various first-year courses that are available. You can also follow the links to Information for Prospective Students - Suggested reading list. Please do not feel that you need to look at all of these! The lists are there as suggestions for a bit of background reading if you have time and interest, or if you simply want to find out a bit more about a subject - perhaps one of those you have not covered at school or college. In particular, please note the preamble at the top of the page:

... the books present an initial view of the subject and may not include material covered by the undergraduate course. You are NOT expected to purchase any of these books on this suggested reading list.

You do not have to make a final decision on your subject choices until you are actually here in Cambridge, but it is obviously important to think about it and to have got any relevant information.  We will be asking you for your provisional options, or best guess at what you'd like to take, during September.  I will be in touch about this again soon, but please let me know if I can offer any advice.

A Mathematics Workbook is available from this webpage: http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergradnst/prospective/preArrival.  It will be a good idea to go through this, check that you can do the easy bits, but do not worry if you get stuck on some of it. You can go over any problems when you get here.

In addition to this workbook (which we do recommend that you go through), there are further maths problems and games at: http://nrich.maths.org/6884. You might find some of this useful to brush up on your maths skills – but it‘s definitely NOT mandatory!

With best wishes
Zoe Barber