Is having fun on BMO type questions a waste of time?

My goals being to get into a high ranking college. BMO type questions are more fun than the MAT/Step style questions, but how less effective are they in preparing myself for those said tests?

My goals being to get into a high ranking college. BMO type questions are more fun than the MAT/Step style questions, but how less effective are they in preparing myself for those said tests?

They test almost completely orthogonal skills. BMO is effectively useless at preparing you for STEP. I can't speak for the MAT, but I imagine it's the same.

What are orthogonal skills?

My goals being to get into a high ranking college. BMO type questions are more fun than the MAT/Step style questions, but how less effective are they in preparing myself for those said tests?

Yeah I found that olympiad questions helped develop my problem solving skills aswell. I didn't feel like doing them prepared me that well when I started doing step I papers, and the olympiad maths is pretty much useless to me except occasionally when I use mod arithmetic or something.

Another thing to kind of consider though is that in my interview for cambridge the questions were all very problem solve-y, and if I didn't do any olympiad stuff I definitely wouldn't have done as well in my interviews as I did.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Yep it helped me in a mod arithematic quest aswell. I fully agree if i didnt do olympiad maths i wouldnt have got in to camvridge. Still gotta do step though 😁


Posted from TSR Mobile

I think, as a metric of ability, STEP functions much better than BMO. Once you have covered A-Level Maths, all that stops you from bossing STEP I and II is practice. In the vast majority of cases learning new techniques will not be useful for STEP. On the other hand, although BMO1 in theory requires only GCSE Maths, unless you are ridiculously skilled you cannot get by just on prior knowledge. Even BMO1 success realistically requires knowledge of geometrical theorems, number theory and inequalities that you wouldn't come across unless you did a lot of specific study. As a result, BMO rewards people who have been trained specifically for it. I have no idea on the stats but I'd guess that if you looked at , say, the people who qualified for BMO2, probably the majority would have been training since year 9 or before. I'm not saying it's completely due to pushy parents, but I'd guess that it's often a factor.

The question then is whether they are useful with regards to each other. I'm not that good at either BMO or STEP, but I've used a bit of BMO number theory in STEP. That's probably about it in terms of technical maths.

However, BMO and STEP are both the only three hour exams most students will ever do prior to uni, and in terms of teaching mathematical perseverance and suchlike I reckon they probably help each other out a bit. Also, they are the only two exams that realistically test ability to prove things fairly rigorously. Overall, while the contents of the exams aren't much to do with each other, the style of the exams are somewhat similar, which I think could help a bit.

Really because I really don't like the style of the Maths Olympiad questions I have seen, they don't seem to be proper questions ie.involving higher level skills like Calculus that doesn't mean they are easy by a long shot just not my style of Maths really, they seem extremely tough too I was never really good at that type of Maths I got Bronzes on the Maths Challenges when most people applying for Cambridge probably got Golds and some people in my class got Golds and Silvers.I got into Cambridge and I didn't study Olympiad questions but I had done a lot of STEP practice starting slowly from Y11.

I wasn't trained specifically. I was the first person to ever qualify for bmo1 let alone 2. I just practised.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Fair enough - I know a lot of people practised off their own back.

My goals being to get into a high ranking college. BMO type questions are more fun than the MAT/Step style questions, but how less effective are they in preparing myself for those said tests?

To re-iterate what the others have already said, and to throw in a few comments of my own:

Ability in one type of test doesn't necessarily correlate with ability in another. There is a core of very able young mathematicians in this country who have digested the whole of A level, get through STEP/MAT without too much hassle, and perform exceptionally well in competitive maths such as BMO. But there are also people such as myself who were never exposed to maths competitions at school and still got through Cambridge OK!

BMO tests a very narrow set of topics, but tests it in a very demanding way. Yes, it will improve your general problem solving ability, but it won't necessarily develop skills in the 'right' areas i.e. coverage of A level topics which is what STEP (and to a lesser extent MAT) are testing.

As I commented in one of your other threads, there is nothing wrong with seeking out any maths that interests you. But the best way to prepare for a specific test is to practise other examples of the same test - if you want to be good at STEP, practise STEP; if you want to be good at MAT, practise MAT.

Finally, recognize that you are playing a tactical game. BMO may be very enjoyable, but if you want to get into a 'top' uni you have to play by the rules they set, which essentially means you're going to be facing up to one of MAT or STEP at least - you can't trade off performance in something else against your offer requirements (although there are rare exceptions to everything!).

I just tried oxford MAT test and self marked it and found myself getting 36/40 for the multiple choice, and for both of the 2 questions I did, I got all of the question except the last part of each. It took me approximately 2 hours out of the 2 and a half hours that I'm supposed to have, and if that was a real test I would expect my work to be worth ~60 marks, give or take 5. I'd really like to see a mark scheme for the MAT/STEP because I'm not really sure how much you have to write for you to "show that" in a question, obviously I don't want to risk losing marks so I'd have to write a decently large amount, but at the same time, doing so has an opportunity cost in the form of time spent for other questions. Is there a general guideline as to what level of depth should I be going to in the "show that" questions? I'm assuming it's roughly that of the worked solutions that are on the MAT site, though unless anybody says otherwise.

I think you do raise a very valid point though, that I should be preparing for these tests instead of doing BMO type questions. I think MAT is a bit more simialr to BMO type problems than STEP.

I just tried oxford MAT test and self marked it and found myself getting 36/40 for the multiple choice, and for both of the 2 questions I did, I got all of the question except the last part of each. It took me approximately 2 hours out of the 2 and a half hours that I'm supposed to have, and if that was a real test I would expect my work to be worth ~60 marks, give or take 5. I'd really like to see a mark scheme for the MAT/STEP because I'm not really sure how much you have to write for you to "show that" in a question