Hello, I have an offer from Queens', my offer is 1,1 on STEP 2 and 3. I'm a home student and I already did my A levels last year with A* in Maths, Further, Biology and English.
Got CV right now so not studying much for this week. Generally, I am feeling really pessimistic about STEP. I don't see myself getting 1,1; but I was also very pessimistic about my A levels and they turned out ok.
I started around early January, doing the 1998-2003 papers very casually, and often looking up solutions because I was so unused to the style. After 2004, I started doing them properly, mostly timed for 3 hours for 6 questions and untimed for the rest from each paper. I scored between 55-65 on STEP 2/3 and 70-80 on STEP 1 on the timed ones. I'm starting 2009 STEP 2 right now. I've stopped doing 3 hour papers and do all the questions, 30 minutes timed each and then take the best 6 of all the attempts. Sometimes a good few of them take longer than 30 minutes and for these, I just change the pen I use and don't give myself marks I gain after the time limit.
I'm a bit ahead of where I should be, so I think I can afford to take it easy while I recover for the next week or two. I'm giving myself 10 days for the three papers from every year and expect to finish 2019's papers by June 9.
I've sort of identified my weakness and strengths already, some areas are doomed, others just need more work, I think. Obviously, I can't do every "strength" question of mine as well as I'd like and some "weaknesses" aren't completely hopeless either. But in general I'd be more likely to try the former topics in the real thing and less likely for the latter ones.
Strengths:
- Continuous probability functions (the ones that involve calculus work)
- Integration
- Evaluation of sums
- DEs
- Mechanics questions that are mostly just DEs and Calculus
- Matrix Algebra (there isn't much STEP stuff for this but I've always loved Linear Algebra and done a fair few questions for them beyond A-level)
- Statics (moments, centres of masses not involving integration, friction etc)
Weaknesses:
- Geometry (vector, complex, 3d, Euclidean; I'm just awful at everything geometry except the easy diagrams and trigonometry for mechanics)
- "If and only if" proof heavy questions for polynomials (proving both ways is usually an excruciating chore)
- CeNtReS oF mAsS (by integration). I never even understood the FM2 chapter 3 on actually deriving the integrals, so this is beyond doomed. Coupled with how no past STEP questions (none!) actually have centres of mass AND integration, this is hopeless.
- Moment of Inertia, Moment generating functions (don't even know anything about these)
- Simple harmonic motion (I forgot all of it... STEP tested it directly a total of two times between 98 and 08 LOL)
Besides these, I have some "gray areas" with topics that I think are mostly simple but that I just haven't shown myself enough consistency with:
- recurrence relations
- elementary probability/combinatorics
- projectiles
- collisions
- probability with a new idea (usually of some analytic flavor) introduced
So I'm trying to improve specially on the above 5. I also think co-ordinate geometry and parametric curves demand a lot from me often but I've been able to do them to an ok degree usually.
If in the real exam we have a continuous PDF on STEP 2, matrix algebra on 2 AND 3 like in 2019, and at least one approachable mechanics question in both papers, it might not be completely out of the question for me to scrape by with a 1. I don't think this will happen. I hope the rest of you that make it get the most out of your degree