Increasingly worried about STEP [all papers]

I have to look at the solutions to sikloses booklets to most questions. smh what do I do.

I feel that the questions at least the core ones aren't too bad. But I don't get any of the stats or mechanics questions.

It takes me far too long to complete a core questions like 30 mins for the STEP 1 questions.
I feel so overwhelmed with how much I need to do with STEP, my other a levels are all fine.

With further maths, the questions asked are at least methodical and I can practice for them, whereas in STEP they just throw stuff that I have not seen before (you know what I practically mean).

I have to look at the solutions to sikloses booklets to most questions. smh what do I do.

Also do extra timers get 45 mins extra on top of the 3 hours, and what happens if you have another a level exam on the same day.

what happens if you have another a level exam on the same day.

Since if you can do each question in 30 minutes you'd get a perfect score, I'm really not sure why you think this is a problem.

You've plenty of time yet. Most people find it gets a lot easier with practice.

This means you can do 6 full questions in 3 hours, which is the most you need to do! Since it's only October now and the exams aren't till June, you have plenty of time to improve your speed, especially as your mathematical knowledge is still maturing in your brain!

STEP usually takes place at the very end of the exam season (although last year a few A Level exams did take place after the STEP exams). If a clash was to occur, it would be dealt with in the usual way by keeping the student isolated between papers.

I should have made this clearer, sorry about that. This is only for step 1 questions, for the step 2 and 3 I have only been able to do 1 so far without help. And for the others I am currently not making enough progress.

Again, I want to go about it right, should I practice on mechanics/stats more? I find the core to be more easier at least for myself...


But this is only for STEP 1, and since I consider currently my stats and mechanics weak for the STEP questions I am at the mercy of what the core questions are. And for extremely difficult ones I have my choice restricted further.

Thanks all.

I should have made this clearer, sorry about that. This is only for step 1 questions, for the step 2 and 3 I have only been able to do 1 so far without help. And for the others I am currently not making enough progress.

Again, I want to go about it right, should I practice on mechanics/stats more? I find the core to be more easier at least for myself...


But this is only for STEP 1, and since I consider currently my stats and mechanics weak for the STEP questions I am at the mercy of what the core questions are. And for extremely difficult ones I have my choice restricted further.

I would personally recommend focusing on the Core stuff first - irrespective of STEP, or wherever you go to do a Maths degree, the Core (and FP) knowledge underpins everything you do at university. As you practise more of it, it will embed itself in your brain and start to mature, and you will hopefully see how things fit together better.

After that, it is certainly a good idea to have a look at some of the applied questions, but I would say don't learn things for the sake of trying to add potential questions in STEP - decide whether you're a "mechanics person" or a "stats person" and focus on the areas you enjoy.

The nice thing about the applied side of STEP is that if you have the pure down, I think you can reasonably pick up enough applied to be able to tackle a couple of questions (or more) per paper in a fairly short period of time, and although the learning curve may be steep, it's relatively short compared with the time people take to get up to speed with the pure.

I would persevere with the applied, you never know where gift questions will pop up




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You still have a lot of time before next June!

I would personally recommend focusing on the Core stuff first - irrespective of STEP, or wherever you go to do a Maths degree, the Core (and FP) knowledge underpins everything you do at university. As you practise more of it, it will embed itself in your brain and start to mature, and you will hopefully see how things fit together better.

After that, it is certainly a good idea to have a look at some of the applied questions, but I would say don't learn things for the sake of trying to add potential questions in STEP - decide whether you're a "mechanics person" or a "stats person" and focus on the areas you enjoy.

#same

Agreed. And to a fairly large extent, the mechanics/stats questions in STEP test you on your in depth knowledge of the Core, so you need to make sure this is up to speed first.

The nice thing about the applied side of STEP is that if you have the pure down, I think you can reasonably pick up enough applied to be able to tackle a couple of questions (or more) per paper in a fairly short period of time, and although the learning curve may be steep, it's relatively short compared with the time people take to get up to speed with the pure.

Yes - the advice I would give to someone who was "confident about the pure" would be slightly modified from that I'd give (or have given) to someone who wasn't

And November 1st is still frighteningly early to expect to be comfortable with the whole range of knowledge required for STEP - I'd be pretty impressed / scared of someone who was already in that position at this point of the year!

I don't think there's any real point in retaking these - they're not bad enough to affect your final grades. However, to be honest I'd expect a Cambridge admissions tutor to be looking at those marks quite critically.

it is on the same day as M3, but I won't prepare for C1 so it won't take any time out. At least if I give C1. For step, my understanding of s1 was quite weak - so I am really restricted in step questions to S2-S4, Mechanics and Pure Questions.

Why do you need to boost your UMS? As I understand the boundaries, to get an A*, you need to score 90 in C3 and C4 - your current module grades will be fine for the rest of it.

From what I've seen, contents of S1 vary quite a lot from board to board. For STEP, I would pay careful attention to what is on the STEP syllabus - it's generally a significantlly smaller set of material than you'd cover doing A-level stats modules. (But at the same time there's some stuff like generating functions that comes up fairly often in STEP but is pretty unusual to cover at A-level).

Edit: The reason I emphasize "For STEP" is because many people find the optimum choice of material for STEP to be very different from the choice for M/FM. So you end up needing to (a) choose the right modules to get A*A* in M/FM, and then (b) choose the right material (not necessarily modules, you may want to pick and choose from bits of modules) to maximize chances in STEP. In particular, doing S4/S5 to maximize stats optioms in STEP is probably a pretty inefficient way of going about things.

I just think I could easily improve on C1 C2 S1. Do you think I should not redo these, despite it having no time taken away from revision.