STEP Preparation: my experience

Cambridge offers have already been sent. Congrats offer-holders! Good preparation for STEP is vital if you want to meet your offer…here is how I did it!

(If you’re reading this, you probably know a lot about STEP, but if that’s not the case click here.)

STEP is meant to be challenging for everyone (both by the question style and by the content), but as an international student, it was certainly harder. In Spain, we have at Year 12 a very different maths syllabus and due to that, I had to learn by myself about 75% of the specification. At the beginning I didn’t prepare specifically for STEP, but I did try to cover all the missing stuff for the interview. I will skip that here, so I will go from January 2017 (when I got the offer) to August (when I got the results).

The first thing I did when I got my offer was to catch up with the assignments of the STEP Support Programme (I hadn’t done the Christmas ones). I recommend using it: the topic notes and the discussion forum are great.  However, you truly need to do much more work on your own if you want to secure your grades on STEP. Then I started doing past papers of STEP 1 (which wasn’t on the offer, but it’s easier) from 1998 onwards. This didn’t work as well as I had expected because I did them whenever I had free time from studying school subjects, without any specific planning, and there were no official solutions -so getting stuck on a question made me panic-.

The workload from school increased and I had to quit doing STEP 1, it wasn’t being productive. TIP: Doing STEP 1 papers is fine, but try 2004 onwards (download the solutions, but don’t go straight to them), that is enough papers for you to get confident and then go with the STEP 2.

I decided to do some AEA papers (which are easier) until I was confident enough with them (this was good, I suggest you try this!). After this, I tried the very old ones STEP 2 (from 1987!) and again it was a mistake for the same reason. I quit again. As a Warwick offer-holder, I got an invitation to a one-day STEP-course (I might write about this in another post) so, despite the fact that I had just had my wisdom teeth removed, I took a plane (from Madrid!) and went there. The fact that most Cambridge offer holders were also having a tough time with STEP (surprisingly some were far behind me), uplifted my motivation. Back to Spain, I read S. Sickhlo’s books (there are 3 editions, which are similar but not the same!).

I knew I had to start seriously with STEP 2 and 3 papers, but I was much stressed and didn’t find the time between school subjects to go with them. I had a breakdown. That was in the middle of March. I discussed it with my tutor and a psychologist and I finally had a proper plan to face STEP.

It was in the Easter break (mid April) when I did STEP 2 2004-2014. Then I had school exams, but luckily in May I didn’t have to go to class, it was optional for revision. I divided May into 3 parts:

1. STEP 3 2004-2014
2. STEP 2 & 3 1998-2003
3. STEP 2 1987-1997

The first weeks of June I had the exams for the Spanish universities, so I did no STEP at all.

The weekend before STEP 2 I did as mock exams STEP 2 2015-16. They went horrible. I wasn’t choosing the right questions, I was managing my time poorly and ended up having 8 unfinished answers.

Nevertheless, I didn’t let that take me down and went to the exam fairly motivated (yet very nervous!). I made again the same mistakes, tried 8 questions and expected to get no more than 75 points.

In between 2 and 3 I did STEP 1987-1997 as well as 2015-16 mocks.

Doing STEP 3 gave me better feelings, I finished 4 questions and did half of 2 more.

*I might do another post about how to answer STEP questions, exam routines, etc.

17^th August, Results day.

I bursted into tears when I saw the results, I had met my 1,1 offer ! I was expecting a 2,1 but I got S,1. I can’t explain how I managed to get 104 points in STEP 2 and 92 at STEP 3 (missed the S by 3 marks!) but I believe everything comes down to hard work. Maybe I underestimated my exam performance, focused on what I had done wrong instead of what I had done right.

Effort pays off. It is worth the pain.

NOTE: It is key for your exam success to eat healthy, exercise and rest well. You need to have lots of energy.

I hope this helps you! Good luck and feel free to ask anything! I’m looking forward to see you in Cambridge next October!