How difficult is it to get a Grade 2 or higher in either STEP Paper II or STEP Paper III?

[TwoStepsAtATime]

My daughter did her A levels last summer and decided to take a gap year.
She applied to Imperial to study Maths and did the TMUA exam in January.
She has now been offered a place provided she gets a Grade 2 or higher in either STEP Paper II or STEP Paper III.

She's delighted to get a provisional offer but didn't realise she would have to do the STEP exam.
She's not sure if this is standard practice or whether it's because she took a gap year? Any thoughts?

How difficult is it to get a Grade 2 or higher in either STEP Paper II or STEP Paper III (for someone who got an A star in Maths in year 12 and an A star in further Maths in year 13 and has kept up with maths since then studying for TMUA and doing tutoring etc)?

The STEP exam is in June so she has a few months to study.

From Imperial page it seems typical offers include STEP if TMUA not taken. STEP grades are set by Cambridge to control the numbers of students there. Most students would have been preparing for the exams since last summer. There is plenty of guidance online to help. Suggest she tries a couple of past papers and sees how she gets on. Make sure she doesn't miss entry dates. Can she sit them at her old school?

Thanks @LikeABat

"From Imperial page it seems typical offers include STEP if TMUA not taken."

She has done the TMUA, hence the confusion if her offer is usual or unusual?
Sitting the exam isn't an issue.

An excellent question, OP. I will do my best, but as I am not at Imperial there is some guesswork here. I am however a former admissions tutor in a Maths intensive subject, School ranked just below COWI, and DH is a Maths professor.

TMUA is something of a test of ability or potential and STEP is a test of both ability and achievement. My hunch, and it is inly that, is that because of the gap year Imperial are concerned about how much Maths your DD has retained. This is a widespread concern throughout STEM. I have argued against it. However Imperial Maths is so intense that even I am of two minds in DD’s case.

Arguably this is not an inequity because Imperial Maths candidates who didn’t do TMUA are held to the same standard. But I suspect that given her gap year, DD had a very good TMUA to get this far.

The problem is that as @LikeABat says, Cambridge set the grading scale to control their Maths enrolment, and they make about 2 offers for each place. So it is fairly brutal.

I suggest your very intelligent DD assess the known attitude taken by Cambridge and the likely one taken by Imperial and decide whether she wishes to consider moving ahead. (I don’t mean to sound discouraging. Imperial Maths is an incredible programme). If she does, she should look at the STEP guidance on the Cambridge website, including past papers, model answers and videos, to assess the feasibility of going ahead. The problems are all at A level and FM but they are different to anything previously seen!

We have a terrific MumsNetter who works at Cambridge STEP outreach and can hopefully advise further. I won’t flag her because I know I don’t have her user name quite right. It is something vaguely like ‘Pallandano’

Best wishes to DD

Hi, OP -

An alternative explanation is that the STEP condition is a mistake! Were it not for your discussion of the gap year, that would have been my first thought.

No one will take it amiss if DD politely double checks. This is a routine query; she can email the admissions contact on the website, and write from the viewpoint that the offer is correct but because it is unusual she is double checking. An admin can easily clear this up, though I would give extra points to Imperial Maths if an admissions tutor replies with an explanation (or apology if there is a mistake).

Hi OP

Congratulations to your daughter.

What did she get in the TMUA? Imperial don't give a definitive cutoff for TMUA score but the STEP may be because she got a lower TMUA score?

She got 5.9 in TMUA.

The TMUA was rescaled this year, so the old mark of 6.5 became 5.0. (It wasn’t intended to be more difficult, just rescaled.)

So DD’s 5.9 would have been well over 7 in the old system. Imperial Maths don’t publish a threshold but that’s an excellent mark.

5.9 is really good, definitely worth an email to admissions to check. Let us know how you get on.

I agree with @Mapletreelane , OP.

Could I ask what grades she got in her other A levels? We're also considering gap year for DD but depends on grades.

She got A star in physics and A in chemistry.

Ds is at Imperial studying computing and STEP was a condition of his offer too. It can stressful. He got 4 x A stars in A levels and an A star in an EPQ and started looking at STEP papers about a month beforehand. There wasn't any STEP prep at his school. He got a very high 2, almost a 1. I think it's a very good idea to look at the past papers, as from what I gather it's not necessarily straightforward, more problem-solving.

Based on the TMUA Score Distribution 2024/25, a score of 5.9 in TMUA is likely to be considered borderline for maths at Imperial. Imperial is likely to impose a STEP condition in offers to candidates with a TMUA score below 6.0.

Get in touch with the admissions tutor for maths and ask them to give your daughter an unconditional offer as she’s done TMUA, according to their published admissions criteria, and if not why not.

If she does need to do STEP, start with past papers. Cambridge has a lot of information on STEP resources. Is her previous school in a position to support her with STEP?

I looked at this link, @Sapienza

It shows DD’s TMUA score of 5.9 to be top 20%, which is very good but doesn’t necessarily contradict what you say. However the discussion I saw about TMUA scores is older, so it used the older scales where 6.5 was approximately the score for the top 1/3.

I could not find the statement you refer to, so I would be grateful if you could highlight it, and assure us it is written in the context of the rescaled scores?

Comparing the distribution of scores for this admission cycle and the previous cycle, the distribution of top scores (i.e. the scores obtained by the candidates likely to receive offers) changed very little. A score of 7.3 is still required to place the student within the top ten percentile of applicants.

TMUA Score Distribution November 2024 vs 2023

A score of 5.9 in this admission cycle places the student just inside the top twenty-five percentile and is equivalent to a score of 6.7 in the previous cycle. This is usually considered a borderline TMUA score for successful applicants and a STEP condition is usually attached to such offers.

50% of Cambridge maths offer holders who mostly have 4A* or thereabouts do not secure the Step results needed.