Summary Sheets for 2021-22 Exams
Please note that this page is no longer relevant for candidates sitting exams in the 2023-24 academic year, unless you are permitted to bring a summary sheet to your exams. Current students should refer to this page for examinations guidance.
Students who are permitted to bring summary sheets to the 2023-24 exams should consult the summary sheet guidance below.
Part B, C, OMMS and MTP A4 Summary Sheet Guidance
For Part B and Part C Maths and Stats exams in summer 2022 (and MSc programmes that share papers with these), students were allowed to take in one sheet of A4 paper (with material on both sides) containing material they have prepared. Those students who were due to sit exams in the 2021-22 academic year and have not received teaching since are also allowed to bring these summary sheets to the 2023-24 exams. Students eligible for summary sheets have been contacted by Academic Administration; if you think that you should be eligible but have not received any communication regarding this, please contact the Academic Admin Team (@email).
Note that these summary sheets are NOT part of the assessment, students are not expected to hand in the sheets at the end of the examinations and should take them with them at the end of the examination.
You must prepare your sheets according to the following rules, which are designed to ensure fairness and consistency for all students.
- A4 paper must be used, with at least 2.5cm margins on all four sides. Margins must be empty.
- Typed content (not including standard superscripts and subscripts etc) must be in font size at least 10. No more than 58 lines of typed text may be used on each of the two sides.
- Handwritten material must be written on lined paper (or its electronic equivalent) supplied by the departments, with no more than one line of handwriting per line (subscripts, superscripts, and natural stacking such as $\displaystyle\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}x_n$ are all allowed.) Regarding expressions like fractions, if you can sensibly, and legibly, write it on one line, then it is acceptable.
- Diagrams should be drawn at a commensurate scale.
- Handwritten content must not be in pencil.
- It is acceptable to mix typed and handwritten content, subject to the constraints above.
- You may choose to prepare your notes in portrait or landscape format, with the same rules above (and the maximum number of lines of typed text adjusted correspondingly for landscape format).
- All sheets will need to be on paper (one sheet of A4 per student) to go into the exam. They may be created on paper, or created electronically and printed.
- In all cases, these rules are subject to appropriate individual variation for students who require adjustments for reasons of disability. This will be coordinated between the Disability Advisory Service and the departments.
The departments have prepared summary sheet templates for you to use.
If you wish to produce handwritten summary notes download the following templates:
B_C_lined_template.pdf and B_C_templateLandscape.pdf - hard copies will be available from reception.
If on the other hand you wish to produce typed summary notes using LaTeX, then download the files
B_C_Example_Summary_Sheet_template.tex and stylefile.tex
You should save the file stylefile.tex in the same folder as the file B_C_Example_Summary_Sheet.tex. You create your summary sheet by editing B_C_Example_Summary_Sheet.tex (as indicated in the file), and running LaTeX on this file. If you'd prefer to create a landscape sheet, add [landscape] between \documentclass and {article}.
There are various LaTeX installations, front ends, online interfaces you can use to do this. For those of you who are not familiar with LaTeX you can find guidance here or the video of the Introduction to LaTeX lecture here.
In the event that you'd prefer to use a word document for your summary Word_summary_notes_template.docx and edit the file following the guidelines on this webpage. When you have finished editing print the resulting file.
There is no requirement that students prepare their sheets individually. You are free to collaborate if you wish. You are also permitted to copy material from your lecture notes to include on your sheets (subject to the bullet point rules above). It is expected that producing these sheets will be a useful aspect of student revision, so students who do not play an active role in producing the sheets they use are likely to be at a disadvantage in the exam.
You should, as always, feel free to consult your college tutors for general revision support, but should not expect your college tutors to provide significant course-specific support in producing summary sheets, in looking over draft summary sheets, or in discussing what material to include. Tutors leading consultation (revision) sessions in Trinity Term can discuss sheets in general terms, if they wish, but should not review sheets of individual students.
For reference, please see our example summary sheet below: