STEP Prep Thread 2016 (Mark. II)

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Cheers mate, appreciated. Hoping I'll pull a jammy and get dead onto the 1 boundary. :P - I've applied to King's, which means that if I miss my offer in STEP II but do extraordinarily well in III, I'll be pooled somewhere else rather than accepted by King's, given their popularity.

Anywho, thanks for the encouragement. :smile:

I know two people (in two different years) who missed their offer but King's still let them in (including one who got a 3 in a paper) so that's even more reason not to get yourself down - just ace III :smile:

Reply 1701

Alex_Aits

Also, can the paper be found anywhere? Sorry if someone's already posted this

Reply 1702

YonRamires

Hi, this is what I got, how many points/what grade should I expect?

2: complete, except I got a solution x=5 instead of x=4 on part (ii) (apparently i'm not good at adding and substracting one digit ints)
3: complete, except for checking double roots in the even case in the last part)
6: did parts (i), (ii), and (iii), not (iv)
7 (that was the question w/ four parts and integrals right?): only part (i)
9: complete, but in the last part I calculated the path of the bullet relative to the table (so b+c instead of b), so I got the value of b wrong
12: complete

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 1703

Zacken

Original post by Alex_Aits

Also, can the paper be found anywhere? Sorry if someone's already posted this

Original post by Alex_Aits

Oh wow! That does sound promising. I can only hope. :biggrin:

As to your other request, @Insight314 has the paper, he could upload it?

Reply 1704

Zacken

Original post by pepperzealot

ToT I only did 5 questions…Spent 20mins on the first part of Question 4 and still didn't manage to get it…
Overall，
Did 3 full questions（Q1 Q2 Q7）…
I forget to do the deduce part in Q3 which is deduce there is only 1 root of fn（x）…But I have stated the number of roots in the cases n is odd and even… how many marks will I lose？
For Q6， I didn't do the last part which is too prove v（x）=yn（ym（x））something…
How many marks will I got？
I feel like I can not meet my offer as it is an S in STEP II…

20 + 20 + 20 + 17 + 12 = 89, certainly a 1, highly unlikely it's an S - but Cambridge normally lets in 1, 1 even for people whose offer was S, 1.

Reply 1705

kznil

Haven't posted here before but can someone please help estimate what I got? I need a 1 for my Cambridge offer.

Q3: Done everything bar justification for number of roots for odd and even cases. (I did mention number of roots for each cases but I think my proof/justification is wrong, so I guess the A1 marks are nullified? Sketch and explanation for f'(a)f'(b)>0 a bit sketchy but passable, since i did them near the end of exam.

Q4: Done everything up to finding tan(theta), but failed to find the values of x.

Q5: The binomial coefficient question. Done (i), (ii). Didn't do (iii).

Q6: The differential equation question. Done only parts (i) and (ii) which I guess worth very little. Stuck on proving the differential equation although I did verify the case for n=1.

Q7: Integration question. Full.

Q12: Full

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 1706

KingRS

Original post by kznil

I dont think youll lose marks for adding constants, they were definite integrals

Reply 1707

Hauss

Original post by kznil

Haven't posted here before but can someone please help estimate what I got? I need a 1 for my Cambridge offer.
Q7: Integration. Full but I forgot to add constant for all integrals in (i),(ii),(iii),(iv). Really careless.

They were definite integrals, why would you need a constant? :tongue:

Seems like you've gotten enough marks for a 1 though so don't worry!

Reply 1708

kznil

Original post by KingRS

I dont think youll lose marks for adding constants, they were definite integrals

Original post by Hauss

They were definite integrals, why would you need a constant? :tongue:

Seems like you've gotten enough marks for a 1 though so don't worry!

Lol, facepalmed. :redface:

I came out of the exam feeling so dazed that I automatically assumed I dropped a mark or two when someone said they added a constant and I didn't.

Reply 1709

to4ka

Wasn't the factor theorem something among the lines of "If f(x) is a polynomial in x and f(a)=0, it follows that (x-a) divides f(x)" (or the other way around)? In any case, I missed seeing the point of Q2. I managed to get 2 fulls - Q3 and Q7 (part (iv) I substituted x = pi/4-t and then t = pi/2-theta and actually got to something plausible lol), two partials - Q4 and Q6, only the first part of Q5 and the three probabilities in Q12. BTW, are those 1/n, 1/(n(n-1)) and 1/(n(n-1)(n-2)) respectively?

Reply 1710

Hauss

Original post by to4ka

Q12 probabilities are correct.
In Q2 you can see the expression as a polynomial in c, and when c = a+b the polynomial is 0 so (a+b-c) is a factor.

Reply 1711

IrrationalRoot

Did anyone else do (iv) by integrating by parts with x and 1/cosx(cosx+sinx)? Seems like everyone else used other methods.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 1712

to4ka

Original post by Hauss

Q12 probabilities are correct.
In Q2 you can see the expression as a polynomial in c, and when c = a+b the polynomial is 0 so (a+b-c) is a factor.

That's too hard for me to spot - and I feel I'm not the only one, considering almost everyone here didn't attempt that question. *hopes for ez step iii*

Reply 1713

fa991

Can someone estimate my mark please 😞:

1: Did the sketch and found both intersections but didn't get very far on the first part, found gradients and equations of tangent (one of which I think was correct)

2: Not much, showed a+b+c was a factor then found x=1 on the cubic

3: showed that f'(x) was fn-1 and that a was negative

Differential eqn: verified both equations and proved the result for z, then differentiated v but didn't get very far

Integration: did first three parts correctly then next to nothing of the last part

Other integration: drew a vague sketch with some trapezii, couldn't prove the result. Got the three approximations and showed the error.

Q13: Proved all three results but only had continuity corrections on the first one

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(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 1714

sweeneyrod

Original post by to4ka

That's too hard for me to spot - and I feel I'm not the only one, considering almost everyone here didn't attempt that question. *hopes for ez step iii*

Yeah, when I couldn't see what to do in the exam I was worried that I was going to miss a really easy question by failing to see something obvious, but it seems that most people found it a hard spot.

Reply 1715

IrrationalRoot

Original post by to4ka

Wasn't the factor theorem something among the lines of "If f(x) is a polynomial in x and f(a)=0, it follows that (x-a) divides f(x)" (or the other way around)?

If it was the other way round that would be a pretty trivial theorem lol.