STEP grades and grade boundaries: from raw marks to offer conditions

A STEP result is a single grade per paper: S (Outstanding), 1 (Very Good), 2 (Good), 3 (Satisfactory) or U (Unclassified). There is no percentile, no scaled score and no combined total across the two papers: STEP 2 and STEP 3 are graded separately, each against its own boundaries, so a condition of "grade 1 in both papers" means two independent lines, each of which must be cleared on its own. Each paper has a genuine maximum of 120 marks, and your grade is determined entirely by where your raw mark falls against the boundaries published for that year's sitting. Universities work in grades, not marks: a Cambridge offer condition says grade 1, not a number out of 120. That gives STEP preparation an unusual shape. You are not chasing a fixed score; you are trying to clear a line whose exact position is only revealed on results day. The consolation is that STEP publishes its boundary history in full, so you can predict roughly where the line will sit, and the sections below give you the complete recent data to do exactly that.

Each paper has 12 questions: eight pure in Section A, two mechanics in Section B and two probability and statistics in Section C, every one marked out of 20. The scoring rule is widely misquoted, so it is worth stating precisely: you do not pick six questions in advance. Everything you attempt is marked, and your total is the sum of your six best-scoring answers, with no restriction on how many you attempt from any section. That has direct consequences in the exam room. If a question stalls, you can abandon it without having wasted the slot, and partial work you have already written can still end up among your best six. Marking rewards genuine progress towards a solution, so a wrong final answer can still earn a healthy score, while a correct answer earns full marks whatever the method. There are no bonus marks for finishing a question completely. One further rule catches people out: working must be clear, logical and legible, and marks can be lost if the examiner cannot follow your reasoning, even when the final answer is right. OCR is also explicit that attempting more than six questions is not advisable: candidates who spread themselves thinly rarely score as well as those who concentrate on six. The link to grades is direct: your grade is decided by the quality of six answers, not by coverage of twelve.

STEP boundaries are not fixed in advance, and they are not cut at a preset percentile. They are set by working backwards from university places: OCR positions the boundaries so that the number of successful offers closely matches the places available at the official user institutions, which are the University of Cambridge, the University of Warwick and Imperial College London. The position of each boundary in any given year therefore depends on how that year's cohort of applicants to those universities performed. A stronger cohort pushes the lines up; a weaker one lets them drift down. Year-on-year movement is a designed feature of the system, not a wobble. The boundaries are published at the same moment as the results, by 08:00 UK time on results day, and OCR issues a formal Explanation of Results document giving every boundary and the cumulative percentage of candidates reaching each grade, with past years' documents available online. Two practical conclusions follow. First, treat historical boundaries as a reference frame, not a promise. Second, set your personal target a few marks above the most recent published line, so that the uncertainty is absorbed during training rather than on results morning.

Here are the complete 2026 boundaries and cumulative percentages for both papers, taken from OCR's official Explanation of Results document:

Three points on reading the table. First, the percentages are cumulative: 28.14% of STEP 2 candidates achieved grade 1 or better, not exactly grade 1. Second, run the numbers the other way and roughly 26% of STEP 2 candidates, and about 17% on STEP 3, finished with a U in 2026. An unclassified result is not a freak outcome on STEP; it is an honest reflection of how demanding the papers are. Third, notice that every STEP 3 boundary sits below its STEP 2 counterpart while the cumulative percentages are higher. That does not mean STEP 3 is easier. The two papers are pitched at different backgrounds: officially, STEP 2 is based on A level Mathematics and AS level Further Mathematics, while STEP 3 is based on A level Mathematics and the full A level Further Mathematics, and applicants for Cambridge Mathematics are normally asked to take both. The cohorts and the papers differ, so comparing your own practice marks against the right paper's boundaries, not the other paper's, is part of reading the data correctly.

If you are also preparing for the ESAT or the TMUA, you need to switch reference frames when you turn to STEP. Those computer-based tests report scaled scores rather than grades. STEP is built the other way round: each paper has a genuine maximum of 120 (six answers at 20 marks), there is no fixed pass mark of any kind, and yet the grade boundaries and the full grade distribution are published every single year. The two structures produce very different preparation psychology. An ESAT or TMUA candidate is always guessing whether a score will do; a STEP candidate can look up exactly what grade 1 cost last year and what proportion of the cohort managed it: 62 out of 120 on STEP 2 in 2026, achieved by 28.14% of candidates. The transparency has a price, though. Because boundaries move with the cohort, last year's 62 is not a guarantee for this year. The sound approach is to use the most recent published boundaries as a baseline and train to a level comfortably above the line, rather than treating one year's number as gospel. One common misreading is worth correcting here: "no pass mark" does not mean "no maximum". STEP has a hard ceiling of 120 marks per paper; the grades are simply the scale that admissions teams actually use.

Cambridge is the heaviest user of STEP grades, and four points matter. First, STEP is a condition of the offer, not a pre-application test: you sit it in the summer after applying, so an October 2026 applicant sits STEP in June 2027. Second, the published minimum offer level for Mathematics is AAA at A level together with grade 1 in both STEP 2 and STEP 3, and Mathematics applicants are normally asked to take both papers. The exact grades demanded vary by College, so the page to check is the one for the College you are applying to; the "universal threshold" that circulates online does not exist. Third, a flexible offer scheme operates: some Colleges set an offer met by either AAA with grade 1 in both STEP papers, or AAA* with grade 1 in either paper, with both papers still to be taken. For 2027 entry the participating Colleges are Downing, Emmanuel, Girton, Jesus, Newnham, Robinson, Sidney Sussex and Trinity Hall. Fourth, and least well known: copies of candidates' answer booklets are sent directly to the Cambridge admissions team, so applicants who narrowly miss their offer are judged on the actual mathematics they wrote, not merely on the grade letter. That is a concrete reason to keep your working clear and complete even on a day that feels like it is going badly; the booklet itself can be your second chance. STEP appears in almost all conditional offers for Mathematics and for Mathematics with Physics, and individual Colleges may attach it to other strongly mathematical courses too.

Warwick treats STEP as a full equivalent to the TMUA: every applicant to an undergraduate maths course must sit one of the two, as a requirement rather than an optional extra. On the STEP route, the typical A level offer is A* in Mathematics, A* in Further Mathematics and A in a third subject, plus grade 2 in any one STEP paper; the IB version is 39 points with 6, 6, 6 at Higher Level including Mathematics (Analysis and Approaches), again with grade 2 in any STEP. Warwick explicitly accepts either paper and leaves the choice to you. Bath's position is conditional: with full A level Further Mathematics or IB HL Mathematics: Analysis & Approaches, no additional maths test is needed at all; applicants to the relevant courses with only AS level Further Mathematics do need one, and the stated target is grade 2 in any STEP paper. The wider context is that Bath stopped considering TMUA and MAT scores from 2025 entry, while STEP and the AEA remain accepted, which makes a STEP grade 2 the practical card on the Bath route. Imperial, by contrast, uses STEP as a safety gate around its primary test, the TMUA. Everyone applying on or before 21 December 2026 must take the TMUA, with no STEP substitute on that route; candidates applying after that date without a TMUA score usually receive offers with a STEP condition attached, sometimes at a raised grade; and even TMUA candidates can have STEP added if their score is borderline against the cohort. Imperial's STEP requirements are set case by case: the grade that binds you is the one written into your own offer.

For the 2026 series, results day was 13 August, with both results and grade boundaries released by 08:00 UK time. Results are passed to universities through UCAS, and each institution applies them through its own process; Cambridge additionally receives copies of answer booklets so that near-miss cases can be judged on the work itself. On the perennial question of whether STEP results land on the same day as A level results: the only verifiable fact is STEP's own date, 13 August in 2026, which falls in the middle of the UK results season. OCR's own pages do not describe it as the same day as A level results, so treat any alignment as something to check each year rather than a guarantee, and read both official calendars separately. Note also that the dates for the 2027 series, covering registration, test days and results, have not yet been published, and OCR reserves the right to change dates and fees. Specific days such as 4 June for STEP 2 and 10 June for STEP 3 in 2026 must not be projected onto next year; even the weekdays move from one series to the next.

If you believe your mark is wrong once results are out, the official route is a results enquiry, priced at £50.75 per paper for 2026, with a hard deadline of 20 August: exactly one week after results day, so the window is short and the decision should be made on results morning. Beyond the enquiry stage there is an appeals process, also £50.75 per paper. Whether an enquiry is worth it can be judged coldly from the published data. Both your raw mark and the boundaries are explicit, so if you sit one or two marks below a boundary, the expected value of an enquiry is comparatively high; a gap of ten or more marks is very unlikely to close. This is the transparency of STEP working in your favour: you never need to guess how far short you fell, because the numbers are in front of you. One clarification matters for Cambridge applicants. Since Cambridge already receives copies of answer booklets and reviews near-miss cases on the actual work, the OCR enquiry and the College's own case-by-case review are parallel tracks: one is a formal re-check of the marking through OCR, the other an admissions judgement made by the College on the mathematics you wrote. Neither replaces the other.

The great dividend of published boundaries is that a grade target converts directly into a mark target. Using 2026 as the reference, the arithmetic is illustrative: grade 1 on STEP 2 fell at 62, roughly three fully solved questions plus a couple of marks of partial progress; the S boundary at 84 is four complete solutions plus four marks of partial credit. On STEP 3, grade 1 at 56 is roughly two full solutions and one nearly complete answer. That framing points preparation in the right direction. Your grade is decided not by how many questions you touched but by how many you can push to the 18-to-20 mark standard of completeness. In timed practice, track your count of properly finished questions per paper rather than a vague sense of overall score, and treat question selection, deciding within a minute or two whether a question belongs in your six, as a skill to practise in its own right. Because the mark scheme rewards progress, write up what you have established before abandoning any line of attack. Finally, after each timed past paper, mark yourself honestly against a 20-marks-per-question standard and place your total against the most recent published boundaries. That comparison is the closest thing STEP offers to knowing where you stand before the real thing.