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Do you have to have maths olympiads to get into Cambridge for Maths?

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, so decided to make my first post about a question that has been looming over me for a while now.
I've never been an intuitively olympiad-wired person and haven't made any extraordinary progress in UKMT competitions. I've gotten gold in SMC and merit in senior kangaroo (for the reference).
My main questions are:
1. Does Cambridge put that much thought into your olympiad 'accolades' when deciding whether you're worth an interview?
2. Do most Cambridge mathmos get to BMO1?
3. Here's a rather unrelated question: are most successful Cambridge maths applicants naturally very good at maths and have been from a young age? Are there any who only decided on maths at Cambridge during Year 12 (or 11) and only began pursuing maths seriously then?

Thanks for reading so far :smile:

Reply 1

Theloniouss

Universities Forum Helper

In my further maths class, we sat the BMO (etc.) but didn't really prepare for it specifically. One of my classmates is currently studying maths at Cambridge and made it in without being pooled - he got SMC gold but didn't even make kangaroo. So I would say it's definitely possible to get in without having good UKMT or BMO results.

I would guess that most successful applicants are naturally good at maths - i.e. performing at or near the top of their cohort since they were young, just because maths seems to lend itself to natural ability more than other subjects. Although if you're doing well in senior kangaroo you're already doing better than some successful applicants.

Reply 2

amy0560

Really appreciate your reply and encouragement. About your classmate, do you remember whether he taught himself the course material early or fit the 'genius' stereotype that we just described? Or was he just very hard-working and diligent with uni admissions prep later on in his studies (ie post-GCSEs)?

Reply 3

Theloniouss

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by amy0560

Cambridge don't expect you to teach yourself the course content before you arrive (assuming that's what you mean) and a solid grasp of Further maths/STEP content will benefit you far more. I think he was mainly just hard-working throughout his A levels.

Reply 4

amy0560

Sorry I meant the A-level course material (not uni course material) - should have made that clearer.
But thanks for the reply!

Reply 5

Theloniouss

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by amy0560

Sorry I meant the A-level course material (not uni course material) - should have made that clearer.
But thanks for the reply!

You'll probably benefit from learning some of the content in advance, so that you can prepare for STEP 3, which relies on later further maths content - if you don't do it in advance you may not have enough time to prepare for STEP.

Reply 6

C_Giraffe

You don't necessarily need olympiads to get in though having some form of experience with them does help as some colleges' interview questions are of a similar type and involve lots of problem solving.
Even if you haven't been to any olympiads and might not have the opportunity to do so in the future, it's still recommended that you do some olympiad questions in your own time to help develop your problem solving skills.
Conveniently enough there is a STEP maths discord server you can visit since it has a lot of useful free resources to help you with prep and some mathmos from all years of undergraduate maths at cambridge.
Good luck and all the best!

link to step server: https://discord.gg/UTKXkwe

Reply 7

GDC2022

The linkage to step server doesn’t work now, any other step group for communication?