Submitted by Stephen on Sun, 05/14/2017 - 00:09
Forums:
Hello,
I've only recently discovered STEP, and I'm somewhat surprised by the difficulty of some questions, given that they are designed for A level students.
There's a mention in the description of the home page that STEP is designed to test candidates on questions that are 'similar in style to undergraduate mathematics'.
Does this mean that most questions are just as hard as undergraduate test questions with the only exception that they don't cover the same topics? That is, STEP would cover pre-calculus and basic calculus, but obviously not things like linear algebra or groups?
Thanks for the clarifications.
Regards,
Stephen
They are similar in style in
They are similar in style in the sense that questions are worth 20 marks, you have a choice of questions - the exam is three hours long, most questions usually start with an easy or bookwork bit before getting you to apply that to novel situations with a problem element.
But I don't think that STEP is as hard as Tripos exams - it is considerably easier, although this may not be a universally shared view. Remember that STEP aims to differentiate amongst the top 2% of A-Level Mathematicians in the country whereas Tripos exams are trying to differentiate between the top ~200 undergraduate mathematicians in the country in a given year; any first year Cambridge mathematician would find STEP trivial.
The above is geared specifically towards the Tripos, other university undergraduate exams may or may not be easier - I don't know anything about them.
After going through the
After going through the difficulty progression of the questions more thoroughly, and the marking scheme of STEP (e.g. the possibility to only answer 4 questions chosen from a list of 13 and still get a grade 1 pass) I think you’re right.
Sill, you mentioned this may not be a universally shared view, this makes me wonder what are some of the arguments given in favour of it being closer in relative difficulty to Tripos exams?
Difficulty
STEP I and II specifications are based on roughly on "an A-level syllabus" and STEP III contains Further Maths topics. STEP is aimed at the top 2000 students in a year (and last year more than 4000 students achieved an A* in A level Further Maths and more than 16,000 got an A* in A-level single maths, so it really is a very small ability band that STEP is aimed at).
I also disagree with Zacken somewhat! I found STEP harder than my tripos exams, that is probably because when I did my first year Tripos I was more used to the style of exam, and had also caught up on the bits that my A-levels missed out (such as hyperbolic functions). I also think that the need to set testing questions on a reduced syllabus can result in "harder questions" than setting testing questions on a hard syllabus (if that makes sense). STEP setters need to go "outside the box" more as they are restricted to A-level topics.
There are very very few STEP questions that I consider "Trivial", almost all of them make me think. I still can't do some of them. This is despite me having sat 3 years of Tripos exams and ending up with a first. I am considerably older than Zacken though which may be a factor :-)
Thanks for these
Thanks for these clarifications - very helpful!