STEP Preparation

Hiya,

I'm a year 12 student who's hoping to study maths at Cambridge or Warwick, and I'm taking both STEP papers next year.
Just a question to people on here, how far in advance did you start preparing for STEP? I've started with about an hour a week but not sure if that's enough (tbh I'm not very consistent with it anyway)

I really think I have a shot at Cambridge so really, REALLY don't want to fail STEP.

Thanks!

Reply 1

ECFDPB

If you want, I can share with you my suggestion which I gave to others last month

***DIRECTLY COPIED
I don't know whether you are now preparing for Cambridge or have already received the conditional offers. I think you are in the former situation, meaning that you probably still have more than one year to prepare it. Believe me, it is accessible for students to prepare STEPs and eventually get a good score in one years since I'm now in Grade 11 and I'm going to take STEPs this year, and I get around 80 and even sometimes more than 90 for all my mock tests taking at school, using STEP past paper from 2018 to 2020.

Here are some of my suggests for you to try:
1.
Before trying STEPs, be sure that you finish your AL further mathematics really well, means that you not only know how to use the methods to solve questions, but also their underlying meanings.
Even if STEP2 doesn't require you to have knowledge about A2 further mathematics, you need to know more mathematics knowledges so as to broaden your horizon or to make you think like a mathematician.
If you don't like Mechanics or Statistics, then it is okay to skip them when studying further mathematics, but you have to learn Pure Mathematics really well.
PS: TRY SOME TEST PAPERS OF FURTHER MATHEMATICS! YOU NEED PRACTICE INSTEAD OF MERELY KNOWING THE METHOD!
2.
(option) If you have time, try AMC12 or BMO1 and do some of their past papers, because you need to know 'how mathematicians or university mathematics professors think'.
You may find AoPS website and UKMT website useful. There is a great book called ACE THE AMC 10/12(which you can find online, or I can send it to you through email), written by students and covered almost all knowledge about AMC from geometry to number theory, which is useful if you don't have a basic understanding about these fields
3.
Use Cambridge website wisely.
There are some STEP modules and a recommended online book about some great STEP questions on the Cambridge website. Print them out and finish all of them! They are the good start points and you can gain a basic understanding of STEP once you finish them. There are also some knowledge notes organised by Cambridge and they are available on the website.
4.
Finally, do all the question papers from 1998 to 2023.
You no longer need to do STEP1 questions since they are too simple for students applying to mathematics faculty and doing them is a bit like waste of time. It will be more effective for you to do all question papers of STEP2 and STEP3. You may also do question papers from 1988 to 1997, but since the syllabus changed in 1998, it might be confusing to do some early papers.
At the time doing STEPs, prepare a notebook for writing down some now knowledge or skill you have learned, like ' when we know a relationship in the form of A+B+C+D and want to prove a equality in the form of ABCD, let a=InA, b=InB, c=InC, d=InD and calculate a+b+c+d'. Also, organise the questions which you think are difficult but you can soon learn how to solve them, make a list, and finish them again before the week of taking STEPs
That's all my suggests and all my experience during the study of this year. Hope that it is useful for you, and also hope that I can get 1&1 or even higher in STEPs this year.

Here's some useful website:
STEP database: https://stepdatabase.maths.org/database/index.html#
AoPS database, consisting of almost all question paper from almost around the world, if you want to find STEP/AMC question papers, try this: https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c3158_usa_contests
STEP modules:
https://maths.org/step/assignments
https://maths.org/step/assignments-stepii
https://maths.org/step/assignments-stepiii
AMC12: https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AMC_12_Problems_and_Solutions
BMO1: https://bmos.ukmt.org.uk/home/bmo.shtml

GOOD LUCK!