Cracking The Thinking Skills Assessment: A guide to the entrance exam required for selected courses at Oxford and Cambridge University

Oxford and Cambridge now require students to complete an exam called the Thinking Skills Assessment (TSA) before they invite them for interview. This exam forms a large part of their assessment of candidates prior to meeting them; good TSA scores can sometimes lead to interviews despite poor results in public exams and a poor TSA score has been known to lead to rejection of a candidate before interview despite flawless public exam scores. This textbook is designed to help students improve their performance in the TSA through a number of methods: 1. Exam Strategy This exam is unlike any exam most candidates will have ever faced. The textbook arms students with simple but extremely effective strategies designed to save candidates time and also to use the nature of the exam to guide them towards more correct answers. 2. Approach The textbook also shows candidates simple approaches to the unique style of question presented in the TSA. It helps candidates get comfortable and confident with the questions the TSA requires candidates to complete. 3. Practice With 130 practice questions which are all designed in a similar way to the questions on the TSA exam, along with numerous worked examples, candidates will go into the exam having more experience of the questions. There is also a comprehensive explained answer section so candidates can check their answers and also see different methods to evaluate the questions and get to the correct answer more often, faster.


About the Author
Mitesh studied Economics at the University of Warwick in England. Following this he embarked on a career in finance; working at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Mitesh then moved into teaching, focussed on Economics principally at the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School just outside of North West London. Here he helped his students to achieve excellent academic grades in their public exams and also coached boys for Oxbridge entry. It was during this time that Mitesh wrote this textbook to help develop his students' thinking skills.