Students come to Cambridge with varying levels of knowledge and experience because there is a very wide range of options at A-level. For example, some have taken several mechanics modules and others very few. Some have taken Further Maths and others not. This presents a significant challenge to the first year lecturers, who typically have to cover their subject area in just 16 lectures. Ideally, some students would receive more tuition in some areas before starting the lectures.

Before they arrive, new undergraduates are sent a Preparatory Problems Booklet, which shows them the level that is expected at entry and helps them to identify any areas in which they could improve. This year a website has been created to run in conjunction with the booklet. It provides a wide variety of resources, ranging from a simple maths formula sheet to tutorial-like animations from the first year lecturers, as well as links to good external sites. The aim is to make it very easy for students to fill any gaps in their knowledge before coming to Cambridge.

The website can be found at http://www-t.eng.cam.ac.uk/prep_problems. New undergraduates who have not yet received login details should contact ugrad-prep-problems@eng.cam.ac.uk . Any comments and suggestions are very welcome and should be sent to the same email address.

The website has been funded by RLO-CETL (The Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning in Reusable Learning Objects) and created by Megan Davies Wykes, a UROP student supervised by Matthew Juniper. The project is led by Dawn Leeder, with technical input from Matthew Juniper, Jim Woodhouse, Andrew Gee and Tom Hynes.