Which is harder, BMO or STEP?

As title suggests, which do ya reckon is more challenging BMO1/2 or STEP I/II/III.

Reply 1

BMO2 is definitely the most challenging and I would say that BMO1 is more challenging than STEP I, not sure about the rest.. you have more choice in STEP..

Reply 2

SimonM

I don't think it's possible to compare them in any sensible way

Reply 3

Scipio90

Will depend much on the individual, and I think it has already been done to death here. For me, BMO1 was much, much harder than STEP 3.

Reply 4

miml

They are quite different. For example, there is almost no calculus (it is very much discouraged) in BMO, but STEP often has 3/4 questions on calculus. Then again BMO goes a lot further into number theory and geometery then I have seen in STEP.

Reply 5

Earthbounded

STEP1 is definitely the easiest and BMO2 is definitely the hardest of them.

How rank the difficulty of STEP2/3 and BMO1 depends a lot on the individual's mathematical skill set. If one is more interested in number theory and geometry then perhaps BMO1 is easier and a calculus/mechanis/stats lover may consider STEP easier.

Another factor is that all STEP 3 questions are supposed to be at the same difficulty while BMO1 has an ascending difficulty so "on average" (Q3-Q4 in BMO1) it is perhaps easier although Q6 is oftentimes harder than a typical STEP 3 problem.