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STEP Support Programme

Mechanics and Statistics questions

Hi
If I find the mechanics and stats questions easier than the pure questions, is it a bad strategy to aim to answer these and only 1 or 2 pure questions?
If I were to miss my offer would having answered mainly applied questions rather than pure then look bad to tutors looking at my script to see if I should still get a place?
Thanks

No, there's no preference as to whether you're more pure or not. What really matters when looking at your script is how full your solutions are, how clear they are, your thinking style, etc... not what type of questions you do.

If you feel that you are best served by doing mainly applied questions, then it's not a bad strategy to focus on answering them (focusing on your strengths will never be a bad strategy). That said, in the same vein that I'd tell a pure person not to completely ignore applied, you shouldn't ignore pure: it is reasonable for you to practice pure questions. There's only 5 applied questions on a paper and if one or two of them are ugly, then you certainly want to be able to pick out some of the easier pure questions, of which there are 8.

Useful Links

Underground Mathematics: Selected worked STEP questions

STEP Question database

University of Cambridge Mathematics Faculty: What do we look for?

University of Cambridge Mathematics Faculty: Information about STEP

University of Cambridge Admissions Office: Undergraduate course information for Mathematics

Stephen Siklos' "Advanced Problems in Mathematics" book (external link)

MEI: Worked solutions to STEP questions (external link)

OCR: Exam board information about STEP (external link)

AMSP (Advanced Maths Support programme): Support for University Admission Tests (external link)