STEP preparation guide

The STEP Support Programme: How to Use It, and What It Leaves Out

Cambridge's own Faculty of Mathematics runs a STEP preparation project called the STEP Support Programme, and all of its resources are free and open to everyone. On its own STEP page the Faculty says the free resources, this programme among them, are more than sufficient, so it neither endorses nor recommends commercial ones. This page therefore does not compare materials. It answers two questions instead. When is the official programme worth the most, and how do you pair it with past papers week by week. And what are the three things it is not designed to cover. We are not affiliated with Cambridge, OCR or Warwick, every official statement below is attributed, and anything that is our own judgement is labelled as ours.

5 sections2,520 words11 min read12 official sources

Practise 111 STEP papers (2 free)Full STEP guide

Papers: 111
Questions: 1532
Free to try: 2

The STEP Support Programme at a Glance

What it is, and cost: An online self-study project of Cambridge's Faculty of Mathematics, developed on its behalf by the Millennium Mathematics Project; in Cambridge's own words, the resources are free and open to everyone
Module structure: 25 Foundation modules, then 21 STEP 2 and STEP 3 modules; a STEP 2 module usually holds 4 STEP questions, and both sets come with hints, full solutions and Topic Notes
Official pacing: One Foundation module a week from Year 12, for around 6 months; STEP 2 modules from September of Year 13, STEP 3 modules from January; timed full papers after the STEP 3 modules
What we cover instead: Full-paper pacing, choosing which questions to commit to when only your best 6 count, and writing to the mark scheme, trained on our 111 STEP past papers and 1532 questions

Module counts follow step.maths.org; the paper and question counts are our own platform figures. We are not affiliated with Cambridge, OCR or Warwick, and this page is only about using the free resource well.

In short

The official structure is stated plainly: 25 Foundation modules, then 21 STEP 2 and STEP 3 modules. So is the starting year. If you are likely to sit STEP 2 and STEP 3 at the end of Year 13, Cambridge says to begin the Foundation modules in Year 12, one a week for around 6 months.
The switch points are official too. Start the STEP 2 modules in September of Year 13, taking Calculus first and Curve Sketching second, then start the STEP 3 modules in January. If your offer does not require STEP 3, Cambridge explicitly says to concentrate your effort on the other modules rather than working through them for completeness.
Timed full papers sit after the STEP 3 modules in the official sequence. Cambridge has written full solutions to the STEP 2 and STEP 3 papers from 2019 onwards precisely so you can judge your own progress at that stage, and those solutions go into more detail than the exam board mark scheme.
Our own view: the modules are not built to cover three things, which are pacing a whole paper, deciding which questions to commit to when only your best 6 count, and writing to the way the paper is actually marked. That is not a flaw in the official material. The modules are topic-organised single-question training, and these three things only grow in a full-paper setting.
We set a concrete threshold for moving from single questions to full papers. Take the 4 questions in one STEP 2 module: if you can get more than half of them out unaided, without the hints, and your write-up is readable to someone else, start doing full papers. That threshold is ours, not Cambridge's.

What Cambridge Provides: Three Families of Modules

The STEP Support Programme is a preparation project built by Cambridge's Faculty of Mathematics to help applicants develop advanced problem-solving skills. It consists of online modules for individual extra study, each with hints and full solutions, and it is developed for the Faculty by Cambridge's Millennium Mathematics Project.

Cambridge says it is aimed particularly at students whose schools cannot support STEP preparation, and that it was written by Cambridge mathematicians who sat STEP themselves and have years of experience coaching school students. The University's undergraduate admissions pages describe it as designed for individual study across Year 12 and Year 13.

The STEP Support Programme

A free online project from Cambridge's Faculty of Mathematics, open to everyone

Foundation modules25 of them, meant to be worked through in order, one a week for around 6 months

Questions mostly come from old STEP 1 papers, with some STEP 2 questions later on
Many need only GCSE or AS content, used in unfamiliar ways
The first 10 to 15 assignments are aimed at Year 12
After Assignment 25 there are three further STEP question sets, in pure, mechanics and statistics

STEP 2 modulesAssume you have finished Foundation; Cambridge suggests starting in September of Year 13

Each module usually holds 4 STEP questions loosely grouped by one part of the specification
Each comes with a hints document, full solutions, and Topic Notes collecting the relevant formulae and results
Cambridge suggests taking Calculus first, then Curve Sketching

STEP 3 modulesTogether with the STEP 2 set these number 21; Cambridge suggests starting in January of Year 13

Assumes both the Foundation and the STEP 2 modules are done
If your offer does not require STEP 3, Cambridge says to focus elsewhere
Neither set carries preparation questions; when you are stuck the hints give you a way in

Tap a branch to unfold

What comes with it

Hints, full solutions, Topic Notes

There are also Foundation Assignment videos walking through the STEP questions behind the early assignments

Solutions for the full-paper stage

Cambridge wrote full solutions for the STEP 2 and STEP 3 papers from 2019 onwards

Cambridge says these go beyond the exam board mark scheme and explain how to approach similar questions

Older papers

The STEP database holds every question from the 1986 specimen paper through 2018, and is searchable

The additional resources page also lists MEI's handwritten solutions from 1996 onwards and a specification mapping document

Where we sit

We are not affiliated with Cambridge, OCR or Warwick

This page does one thing: explain how to use the official material, then fill in what it does not cover

When It Pays Off Most: Year 12 Groundwork, Not the Final Sprint

Cambridge is firm about when to start. If there is any chance you will sit STEP 2 or STEP 3 in the summer of Year 13, it strongly advises beginning the Foundation assignments during Year 12, or over the summer before Year 13 at the latest. The reason is structural: Foundation is a course with a logical order, and it typically proves a result in the warm up so that a later question can use it.

Using it alone in the final sprint is not enough, and Cambridge sequences it the same way: timed full papers come after the STEP 3 modules. The modules build the problem-solving; exam-day performance is built in the stretch that follows. For a full week-by-week schedule, read this alongside our STEP revision plan.

01Groundwork

Across Year 12

One Foundation module a week, around 6 months at the official pace. The first 10 to 15 assignments are designed for Year 12, and many of those questions need only GCSE or AS content.

02Catch-up start

The summer before Year 13

Cambridge names this as the fallback start: if you did not begin during Year 12, begin the Foundation assignments over this summer.

03Step up

September of Year 13

Cambridge suggests starting the STEP 2 modules, with Calculus first and Curve Sketching second, because the techniques in those two feed every other module.

04Branch

January of Year 13

Cambridge suggests starting the STEP 3 modules, assuming Foundation and STEP 2 are done. If your offer does not require STEP 3, this is where you branch off and put the effort elsewhere.

05Full papers

After the STEP 3 modules

Cambridge suggests starting timed full papers here, judging progress against its own full solutions for the papers from 2019 onwards. This is the stretch the rest of this page is about.

Two official notes on flexibility belong together. If time is short or you started late, Cambridge says you do not have to work through the Foundation assignments in order or do every one. But it also warns against skipping an assignment because the content looks familiar, since the point is to consolidate and extend both knowledge and problem-solving. The first is scheduling flexibility, the second is content discipline, and they are not interchangeable.

Pairing Each Week: Module Warm-Up, Matched Past Paper, Then Your Own Write-Up

The official modules give you a complete chain of single-question training, but the chain ends at can do this question. To turn that into exam capability we run the same four steps every week, closing the loop from the module warm-up to a matched past paper, through the official stuck list, and back to your own write-up.

Step two matters most. Cambridge's Faculty of Mathematics puts it plainly: the best preparation for STEP is to work through past papers. As soon as a module's topic is done, take a paper by year from our STEP past paper library and work the question on that topic unaided, hints closed. Pure is the largest slice of the paper, so the STEP pure mathematics guide is a good way in.

	What you do	Why it is arranged this way
Step 1	Work the module's lead-in first: the Foundation warm up and preparatory work, or the Topic Notes on a STEP 2 or STEP 3 module.	Cambridge proves a result in the warm up and then uses it later, so skipping it removes the scaffolding the rest of the module stands on.
Step 2	Then do a matched past paper question: take one of the 111 STEP papers by year, find the question on that topic, and work it unaided, hints closed.	The Faculty's own words are that the best preparation for STEP is to work through past papers, so this is official guidance rather than folklore.
Step 3	When stuck, run the official list first: try special cases, draw a sketch, work backwards, see whether an earlier part helps, guess a substitution, take a break and come back.	Exhausting those six before opening the hints leaves far more of the problem-solving experience with you than reading the solution does.
Step 4	Finally reread your own write-up: is the working complete, the notation standard, the answer simplified, the handwriting legible, and is there only one attempt left standing per question.	The specification says you can lose marks even with a correct final answer if the marker cannot follow your working, so the write-up has to be trained in ordinary practice.

Before working papers from before 2019, check the official specification mapping document and skip questions that need content no longer examined; Cambridge says the style has not changed, so most older questions still work.

Do not use the pairing to bet on topics. The specification says setters aim for broad coverage but do not guarantee that every topic appears every year, and a single question often draws on several parts of the syllabus. Pairing exists to connect a module's technique to real question wording, not to predict this year's paper.

The Three Things It Does Not Cover: Pacing, Question Choice, Write-Up

This section is our view, not official guidance. Cambridge never describes its modules as having gaps; they are topic-organised single-question training, and these three things simply fall outside that design.

We single them out because they all happen in one place: three hours, one paper, 12 questions. The Faculty makes the pacing shift concrete by comparison, noting that A-level asks for 11 to 14 questions in two hours while STEP asks for no more than 6 in three. That shift does not happen automatically just because you did more modules. On question choice see our STEP question selection guide, and on write-up see writing STEP solutions.

	What the modules give	What the exam actually asks	Where the gap falls
Pacing	Topic-organised single questions, usually 4 to a STEP 2 module, with timed full papers placed after the STEP 3 set.	No more than 6 questions finished inside three hours on one paper, with nobody telling you when to stop.	The modules themselves carry no bulk pacing practice, and the official sequence puts whole papers last, so the timing has to be built up in that final stretch.
Question choice	Module questions arrive grouped by topic, so you already know what they test and never have to choose.	The paper has 12 questions, 8 pure in Section A, 2 mechanics in Section B and 2 probability and statistics in Section C, and only your best 6 count.	Judging which 6 deserve the effort, and when to abandon one, is a decision that only exists inside a full paper.
Write-up	The modules come with teaching-oriented full solutions which, in our view, show more than you actually need to write in the exam.	Marking follows a 20-mark scheme per question, the working has to be followable, crossed-out work is not marked, and every page you write on needs its Question Answered circle filled in.	The distance between a write-up that scores and a write-up that teaches only closes by repeatedly checking your own against real papers and the marking rules.

That last column is our judgement. There is nothing wrong with the official material; it simply is not organised around whole papers.

Questions per paper: 8 pure in Section A, 2 mechanics in Section B, 2 probability and statistics in Section C

Questions that count: your best 6 are totalled, with no limit on how many you attempt per section, though OCR advises against attempting more than 6

Marks per question, with no bonus for completing one; marks reward progress towards a full solution even when the final answer is wrong

111

STEP past papers on the platform, holding 1532 questions in total, for pacing and selection practice

Version A

One attempt per question, rough work crossed out as you go

The working is complete, the notation standard and the answer simplified, so the marker follows it end to end. Crossed-out rough work is not marked, so it is neutral here, neither helping nor hurting.

Version B

Jumps in the working, plus two uncrossed attempts at the same question

Jumps that the marker cannot follow can cost marks even when the final answer is right, which the specification states outright. With two uncrossed attempts at one question, the marker credits only the one judged more substantial, or the earlier one in the booklet if that is not easy to tell.

Version C

Circles unfilled, and a method other than the one the question specified

If the Question Answered circle is not filled in on every page you wrote on, some of the work may go unmarked; and where a question specifies a method, using a different one generally earns little credit. Neither has anything to do with your mathematics, and both are pure rule losses.

Working the marker can follow and creditWritten but with jumps, so the credit is uncertainLost or unmarked because of a rule, not the mathsRough work and crossed-out material, which is not marked

After the Modules: How to Tell You Are Ready for Full Papers

Cambridge's own readiness test is sequential: start timed full papers after finishing the STEP 3 modules. That works well if you followed the official two-year pace, but not if you started late or your offer only requires STEP 2, because you will never finish the STEP 3 set.

So we add a capability-based threshold and a downgrade path for when time is short. Both are our judgement rather than official guidance, and they are here so you have a workable line to cross instead of deciding by feel when to start the clock.

When to move from single questions to full papers

Our threshold: take the 4 questions in one STEP 2 module, and if you can get more than half of them out unaided with the hints closed, and your write-up is readable to somebody else, start full papers. That is our judgement; Cambridge sets no such bar. Its own test is sequential, namely starting timed papers after the STEP 3 modules. The two do not conflict, so act on whichever you reach first.

The downgrade path when time is short

Skip the middle and later Foundation assignments, use the Calculus and Curve Sketching modules from the STEP 2 set to build feel, then move to full papers. Cambridge does allow working the Foundation assignments out of order and not completing every one, but this particular route is our suggestion. One scheduling reality to add: if you are aiming at Cambridge mathematics for 2027 entry, your plan also has to hold the TMUA, which every applicant now sits as a pre-interview filter, with the October sitting closing for registration on 28 September 2026.

Using the published grade boundaries in the final stretch

In the 2026 session STEP 2 (paper 9470) was marked out of 120, with S at 84, grade 1 at 62, grade 2 at 52 and grade 3 at 34; for STEP 3 (paper 9475) the same four sat at 80, 56, 48 and 30. On cumulative percentages, 28.14% reached grade 1 or above on STEP 2 and 35.73% did so on STEP 3. OCR sets these boundaries by working back from the places available at the universities that use STEP, so they move each year with how that year's cohort performed. They are not a fixed standard and they are not any university's admissions threshold; treat them as a way to size a target, no more.

What is not worth your time

Reading solutions without writing anything, doing single questions and never timing yourself, and allocating revision by guessing which topics will appear. The first two do not match how STEP is marked or paced, and the third contradicts the specification's own statement that no topic is guaranteed to appear every year. That is our view. One aside: the Faculty notes that colleges can see STEP scripts as well as scores, and can judge a near miss on the actual work rather than the number alone, so the return on a clean write-up does not stop at the marker.

What the modules leave you short of is not volume; the past papers themselves are free from the exam board. What you need is somewhere to run them as whole papers: three hours, one paper, a clock, best-6 scoring forcing the selection call, then a look back at the write-up you just produced. The platform holds 111 STEP papers and 1532 questions to run that way. Take a paper by year from the STEP paper list, or see how the whole archive is laid out at the STEP past paper library. Keep using the official modules, free as ever; the two jobs sit in different places.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does the STEP Support Programme cost anything?

No. In Cambridge's own words the resources are free and open to everyone. The project is developed by the University's Millennium Mathematics Project on behalf of the Faculty of Mathematics, and the official contact address is step@maths.cam.ac.uk. We are not affiliated with it; this page only explains how to get the most out of the free resource.

Are the official modules enough on their own?

Enough for groundwork, not enough for the exam room, and that is our view. Cambridge itself places timed full papers after the STEP 3 modules, and the Faculty states that the best preparation for STEP is to work through past papers. The modules are topic-organised single-question practice, so full-paper pacing, choosing questions when only your best 6 count, and writing to the mark scheme all have to be trained separately.

Is it too late if I only start in Year 13?

Cambridge allows you to work the Foundation assignments out of order and to skip some, so a late start is not fatal. Our downgrade route is to skip the middle and later assignments, build feel on the Calculus and Curve Sketching modules from the STEP 2 set, then move to full papers; that route is our suggestion rather than official guidance. And if you are targeting Cambridge mathematics for 2027 entry, the plan also has to hold the TMUA, whose October sitting closes for registration on 28 September 2026.

STEP 1 is gone. Are its past papers still usable?

Yes. STEP 1 has been discontinued and only STEP 2 and STEP 3 remain, but the Faculty states that STEP 1 papers are still useful preparation, with a syllabus roughly equivalent to A level Mathematics, which suits the groundwork phase. The Foundation modules already draw most of their questions from old STEP 1 papers. Before working papers from before 2019, check the official specification mapping document and avoid questions needing mathematics that is no longer examined.

Can I use the grade boundaries as a target?

As a reference, yes; as a threshold, no. In the 2026 session grade 1 on STEP 2 was 62 out of 120, and 56 on STEP 3. OCR sets those boundaries by working back from the places available at the universities that use STEP, so they shift each year with the cohort. They are not a fixed standard and they are not any university's admissions threshold. The steadier approach is to count questions: aim at how many of the six you can land solidly, rather than at a number that moves.

SOURCES

Official sources

MORE GUIDES

Other STEP preparation guides

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