STEP Prep Thread 2016 (Mark. II)

I seem to lack exam skill which is the only thing I feel i need to improve on before I hit uni. Need to get quicker.


Posted from TSR Mobile

I seem to lack exam skill which is the only thing I feel i need to improve on before I hit uni. Need to get quicker.


Posted from TSR Mobile

just get over the fact that the maths dept has their **** together and the physics one dgaf

While it is obviously sad, STEP is designed to test exam skill not just maths skill I believe so it is really hard to tell if you are an S level STEPPER (?) unless you have done lots of 3 hour hard exams before with intense pressure. I definitely found in STEP ii that while I would normally aim to rush through 3 in the first 1 hr 20 or so and be confident for the next hour as a result, I instead panicked and did nothing for an hour and 20 and then randomly hacked together some solutions in the last hour and 40.

On another note, if you want to take a toilet break and you ask them if you will lose time and they say you get it back, only to find out they have changed their minds when you get back and you have lost 5 minutes (that would have helped in neatly writing up a solution) is that bad or what?

I think I got full UMS in G484 Physics (that is 90/90 UMS) but my G485 (this Tuesday) is worth 150 UMS so we're gonna see m8. inb4 not get even an A grade lol.

I know right, holy ****.

Same here - the plan is to just sit down and do long exams over the summer (maybe 4 hours of some random BMO2 or balkan olympiad questions) to improve stamina and so on.

Is that OCR B? I also have those exams - I find that OCR B are really generous with A grades and ridiculously cruel with the A*. Not too big a deal (unless I messed up further maths).

I think I got full UMS in G484 Physics (that is 90/90 UMS) but my G485 (this Tuesday) is worth 150 UMS so we're gonna see m8. inb4 not get even an A grade lol.

I don't think you should be given extra time for going to toilet, I wasn't at least and I went toilet for every single exam except STEP III.

Olympiads aren't that time pressured since for BMO2 you have 4 questions 3 n half hours. I found that solving most step problems is easy to master. Being able to do them under 30 minutes requires practice(unless you are IMO level) I guess I just didn't do this year since I did random olympiad **** for fun aswell as no propee step till may since i did all the stuff last year.

r u too good for feynman lectures

Ahm, I think it is OCR A. Isn't G484/G485 OCR A Physics?

How did you find chemistry unit 5 btw?


Posted from TSR Mobile

No, I agree there but I didn't know if I did or not and it was near the end so I wouldn't have taken it if I had known. If that makes any sense.

Not a massive deal though - just a bit irritating.

Maybe OCR B is G494 and G495. I knew it was too much of a coincidence to find another OCR B'er - maybe one day I will find the other person who does it (if they even exist).

I didn't do ANY past papers for it, so I found transition elements pretty difficult and I got the last question for moles of water of crystallisation wrong (I got 117 moles lol). However, I found the rest pretty easy. I think I can get an A on it, as long as my transition elements were not complete rubbish. Overall, my aim is an A in Chemistry, which I would be ecstatic with since I didn't have the time to prepare for those exams.

Didn't do any either, although that's mostly down to laziness from me.
I got 225.8 for that, and kept getting 5, despite all my mates insisting that it was 4, think everything went fairly well apart from the electrochemical stuff and maybe parts of the transition metals so maybe an A/B (inb4 I get a C)


Posted from TSR Mobile

You read them too? I usually read them on the bus or something. I got half way through first volume. I like them, but I feel like they are not as mathematically rigorous to aid a hopeful theoretical physicist. But I might be wrong, who knows. I think Volume II/III are pretty mathematically rigorous since they introduce you to quantum mechanics, but Volume I is just Newtonian mechanics and some statistical mechanics IIRC. I might read through them during the summer, but even then I would like to buy them since I like having books paperback. They are expensive though so gotta make sure they help me with Tripos.

nah year belows SW is me