Careful selection was the key to yesterday afternoon's applied maths papers. ASTI subject representative Mr Damien Cooke said that higher-level candidates who chose their questions carefully should do well. Candidates would have found questions 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 easiest to answer, he added.

Some of the perennially popular questions were very long. Question 10 part (b) contained an integral which was "tricky" while question 3, on projectiles, was fine but long. He singled out question 4 as being "very nice".

At ordinary level, the paper was fine but candidates may have found question 3, on projectiles, difficult, said Mr Cooke. Questions 1,4,5,6,7 and 9 were most easily answered.

This year, some 1,700 students entered for the applied maths exam. Exam Times received a number of strong complaints about the higher-level paper. One parent of a student in the Institute of Education, Dublin, said her daughter had expected an A - but will be lucky now to get a C.