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STEP I 2011 Discussion Thread

Discuss! I thought it was relatively hard, definitely harder than last year's. What do you guys think and what do you think the boundaries will be?

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Reply 1
Original post by safmaster
Discuss! I thought it was relatively hard, definitely harder than last year's. What do you guys think and what do you think the boundaries will be?


Are you in yr 13? How did you find it?

MY post from other thread:

How did everyone find it? I completed 3 solutions and a very optimistic ~ half of 2 other questions, although this could be a huge overestimate.

Too scared to post my solution, as I am scared they may be incorrect, and also I don't have the question paper,

Can anyone upload the Qs? Overall, how does the paper compare with previous years and what do you think the boundaries for a 1?

I personally will be gutted with a 2, as the past papers for step (surprisingly) seemed so much easier... curse exam stress. If one any one my solution are a letter incorrect, I can honestly say goodbye to hopes of scoring a 1 :frown:;(
I've heard that this exam ended up being tougher than usual according to my peers. If anyone has a scanned copy of the paper, please feel free to upload it.
Reply 3
Doesn't anyone have a copy of the paper? Might work through it today
Reply 4
Loved it.

Felt much more like a STEP II paper than a STEP I paper in terms of style and difficulty, but I usually prefer II anyway so it's all good. I genuinely found the paper easier than last years, and that was with exam conditions added on as well.

Shame II and III weren't as good. :rolleyes:

If anyone could tell me how to finish off question 8 in a slicker way than how I did it, it'd be appreciated. Cheers! Took me about 50 minutes in the exam, just for part ii) of 8.

Q2

Spoiler



Q6

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Q8)

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Q4)

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Q3

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Q1

Spoiler

Reply 5
Well looking though the past STEP I papers as far back as 2004, I'd say that was harder then all of them. I sat them all under exam conditions and usually got 4/5 mostly complete answers, I pretty much got one on that paper, and 5 partials.

However it might just be the pressure of it and how bad I did, making it seem worse. The 2010 Examiners Report does say the paper was too easy, I think they just massively over-compensated.
Reply 6
What did people get for q2. the integration one - -E for i) and (0.5e)(E) for ii), also did anyone get 8 and 12 for q.6? (I stupidly did 6/2 rather than 6x2). I half completed q1. and q3. I did most of it but couldn't get that cosec bit at the end. Q.4 I did it all but left out the deduce part and q.5 I did majority of it.

what do people reckon the grade boundaries will be like?
Reply 7
Original post by Farhan.Hanif93
I've heard that this exam ended up being tougher than usual according to my peers. If anyone has a scanned copy of the paper, please feel free to upload it.


Tbh, noting that almost everyone has no idea about the difficulty of the unattempted questions, I can not honestly say. Nonetheless, mainly due to exam stress (e.g. leading to very slow thinking; reading a question two/three times before it actually sinks in..) I think I could have done better. Will either scrape a 1, get a 2 assuming I have not made a major cock-up.

What's the "average" grade boundary of a step 1 exam (is it in the 70s or 60s, assuming last year was an expection).

Praying for no mistakes and low grade boundaries.:frown:
Reply 8
I'm sure question 5 has appeared on a recent (as in new spec) STEP I paper. Either that or something very similar.
Original post by twig
Tbh, noting that almost everyone has no idea about the difficulty of the unattempted questions, I can not honestly say. Nonetheless, mainly due to exam stress (e.g. leading to very slow thinking; reading a question two/three times before it actually sinks in..) I think I could have done better. Will either scrape a 1, get a 2 assuming I have not made a major cock-up.

What's the "average" grade boundary of a step 1 exam (is it in the 70s or 60s, assuming last year was an expection).

Praying for no mistakes and low grade boundaries.:frown:

The average is going to be in the 60s. As far as I know, there have only been two exams with boundaries up into the 70s (funnily enough, they were the most recent two).

Looking at Zuzuzu's solutions, it seems like the paper was filled with questions that were relatively straightforward to start but harder to complete (saying that I haven't seen the paper yet so I can't really judge).
Reply 10
Thinking about it, I probably should have done a few past papers under exam conditions beforehand
Reply 11
I reckon

Question 1 I got around 15
Question 2 I got around 7
Question 3 I got around 7
Question 4 I got around 20
Question 6 I got around 5
Question 8 I got around 5

So overall about 59 ish, which is probably a 2 considering the difficulty of the paper compared to last year.
Reply 12
Original post by Zuzuzu
Loved it.

Felt much more like a STEP II paper than a STEP I paper in terms of style and difficulty, but I usually prefer II anyway so it's all good. I genuinely found the paper easier than last years, and that was with exam conditions added on as well.

Shame II and III weren't as good. :rolleyes:

If anyone could tell me how to finish off question 8 in a slicker way than how I did it, it'd be appreciated. Cheers! Took me about 50 minutes in the exam, just for part ii) of 8.

Q2

Spoiler



Q6

Spoiler



Q8)

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Q4)

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Q3

Spoiler



Q1

Spoiler



q8 was not too bad. For 8 (ii), I solved using the part (i) method. A you had to dio different was consider when p<q, which is when 2q^2-1 is less than zero, and hence only when q=0 as an interger. Then you consider that q+1<p<q is true for all q expcept within a certain interval, which is deduce identically to part (i). THen just consider integer values of q in that interval so get the three solutions in total are you have found.
Reply 13
Got Q1 out fully, got the first two parts of Q2 (didn't manage i or ii), got the first part of Q3, got about half of Q4 (couldn't find cos(phi)), got about three quarters of Q5 (differentiated the function in alpha but couldn't get the minimum, got Q6 out fully.

So marking quite harshly I'll say that's 17 + 6 + 4 + 8 + 10 + 17 = 62
Hoping this will be a 2, be pretty gutted if I end up 1 mark below or similar.
It's a shame because the 2010 paper was so easy... managed to get 4.75 solutions out on that one.
Reply 14
Original post by Pheylan
Thinking about it, I probably should have done a few past papers under exam conditions beforehand


Trust me, doing STEP causally not-timed at home, doing it timed at home, and doing it in a empty office room with immense pressure is three very very different things. As a mock two days before friday, i got 5.5 solutions (compfortable S) to step 2 2001 in three hours. In step I here I only managed to get 3 solutions and 2 half solutions...:frown:

At least I know what (hopefully) is coming my next year.
Reply 15
The more I think about it the more I feel like dying..

I didn't even apply for maths goddammit.

Am I right that we can't register online for the results until 10 days before results day?
Reply 16
Original post by twig
q8 was not too bad. For 8 (ii), I solved using the part (i) method. A you had to dio different was consider when p<q, which is when 2q^2-1 is less than zero, and hence only when q=0 as an interger. Then you consider that q+1<p<q is true for all q expcept within a certain interval, which is deduce identically to part (i). THen just consider integer values of q in that interval so get the three solutions in total are you have found.


Ah.. That method would make a lot more sense. Cheers.
Reply 17
Arghhhh after looking at this here is what I got:

3/4 of 1, bit of 3, quite a lot of 5, bit of 6, bit of 4. ffs. Was very difficult actually. The first parts were generally quite easy but then it was hard to actually get any solutions.
Reply 18
Don't have a scanner, so I took pictures with my phone, and the mechanics and stats page are mixed up.

Too big to attach so I uploaded on MF:

http://www.mediafire.com/?5z6pqal73r6wrmn
Reply 19
Original post by Zuzuzu
Ah.. That method would make a lot more sense. Cheers.


Not worries mate. Do you think I will lose marks for q8 if I said m^(3)>n^(3) implies m>n as the cubic function is reversible, rather than how you explained it? Need at the single marks I can get (meaning perfect solutions) if I am to have any hopes of a I.

So dissappointed I could not get the binomial expansion out:
I did the first parts. Then also for the first series, instead of just subbing in 1/2 for x, me being a fool and exam pressure lead to the long-wind approach of rephrasing the solution as: "considering when x=(y/2), then let y=1". The funniest part of all it that although I think my expansion in terms of y was correct, when subbing in y=1 I slipped up on my sh**ty arithmeitc and got 12.

Most frustratingly at all, for the second serise I wrote the sequence as ((r+1)^2)over 2^r, instead of ((r)^2)over 2^r-1. This led to a dead end when trying to resolve the (2r)over 2^r left over.

How many marks do you all think I deserve for this pathetic attempt?

Hate exam stress.

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