STEP soon...

i know how u feel mate luckily for me i only need to take paper 1 for my cambridge admission. I still dont think its fair me taking it since im doin engineering but cant do anything about it.

i really hope the question paper isnt too demanding... i only need 4 questions right to get a 1...hope i get lucky

48 hours to go... aargh

ps... anybody else got strange step offers if ur not studying maths?!?!?!

STEP is driving me insane right now

I tld you waht you should have done - You must now face the consequences of NOT cheating!

i know how u feel mate luckily for me i only need to take paper 1 for my cambridge admission. I still dont think its fair me taking it since im doin engineering but cant do anything about it.

i really hope the question paper isnt too demanding... i only need 4 questions right to get a 1...hope i get lucky

48 hours to go... aargh

ps... anybody else got strange step offers if ur not studying maths?!?!?!

really not looking forward to this thank goodness i 'only' need 2,2 from papers II and III..... manchester here i come!!!!! lol
i find it weird that we have to do paper III before II - does this happen every year?

Donna
-x-

I don't think STEP III is that much harder than II. That's probably not a good thing though.

Thats weird, I usually find II a peice of cake compared to III. on III the questions are generally longer and more involved requiring more insight where as on II you sometimes only need to spot one trick and repeat it a few times to finish the question, and sometimes theres no trick at all

That is true, but there are still STEP III questions which come up where you can take a systematic, step by step approach to the question, and there's no great insight needed. Looking at 2003 paper at the moment, and I'd say that question 1, 5, and 8 just out of the pure question are easier than many STEP II questions which do need alot of insight. Looking at 2001 which I haven't had a proper go at head, but I think 4, 6, 8 probably need a better mathematician than those STEP III questions I mentioned.

Thats where the 'look' of the question can deceive you! I thought 8 on STEP III would be routine differentiation implicitly but the hard bit of the question boils down to solving non linear simultaneous equations in 4 variables - which is tricky unless you spot a good method. 5 requires a lot of care with the if and only if and is pretty long, although i admit none of its particularly hard. As for the 2001 paper I would agree that the last part of 4 and 6 are hard but they are doable. 8 could be very short or impossible depending on if you spot the trick

About the if and only if, I find it varies from question to question. Sometimes in the solutions the just write if and only if and dont bother proving it both ways, whereas sometimes you have to be quite rigourous and go both ways (ie not just using double implication signs) An example is STEP II 2003 Q1 "show that the equations have a solution iff b = 11." I would show 1) if they have a solution then b = 11 (the 'only if') by solving the first two and plugging the values of y and z into the third. Then 2) showing if b = 11, then the equations have a soltion (the 'if'). This bit is trickier, but I put b = 11 and then showed that the third equation is a linear combination of the first two (in fact it is 2x(ii) - (i) ) This means that there are essentially two linearly independant equations which have a solution.

However looking at the solution to STEP III Q5 they dont bother with this and simply write things like "the equation has two distinct roots if and only if the turning point is below the axis" without justifying fully the only if