STEP 2018: Grade Boundaries and Past Paper Practice

All three papers ran in 2018: STEP 1 (paper code 9465), STEP 2 (9470) and STEP 3 (9475). Each paper lasted 3 hours, carried a maximum mark of 120, and contained 13 questions (8 Pure Mathematics, 3 Mechanics, 2 Probability and Statistics). Candidates chose which questions to attempt, only their best 6 answers counted towards the total, and a formula booklet was provided in the exam.

2018 also holds a particular place in STEP history: it was the last year of the old specification. From 2019 the exam was reformed, with STEP 1 cut to 11 questions, STEP 2 and STEP 3 cut to 12, and the formula booklet withdrawn. The 2018 papers are therefore the final outing of the classic thirteen-question format.

The official grade boundaries for 2018 were as follows (each paper out of 120, as published in that year's official Explanation of Results):

STEP results are reported in five grades: S (Outstanding), 1 (Very Good), 2 (Good), 3 (Satisfactory) and U (Unclassified). A grade boundary is simply the lowest total mark that earns that grade. The scoring rules matter here: each question is marked out of 20, only your best 6 answers count, the paper total is out of 120, and a correct answer earns full marks whatever method you use.

The 2018 boundaries are easier to interpret next to the previous year. In 2017 the S/1/2/3 boundaries were 99/72/55/39 on STEP 1, 101/80/69/34 on STEP 2 and 95/69/57/28 on STEP 3. Against that backdrop, the 2018 STEP 3 boundaries sat noticeably lower across the board (S at 87, grade 1 at 59), STEP 2 boundaries were also generally lower than the year before, while the grade 1 boundary on STEP 1 happened to be 72 in both years.

Boundaries move from year to year because they are set after marking, in the light of how demanding the questions turned out to be and how the cohort performed. No boundary is fixed in advance, so treat any single year's numbers as context rather than a permanent target, and be wary of anyone quoting a universal "safe score". As for admissions: Cambridge offer conditions vary by college and by year, so the wording of the offer itself is what counts.

The statistics below come from the STEP 2018 questions catalogued on FrontierVUE (all 13 questions of each paper, matching the official structure of 8 Pure, 3 Mechanics and 2 Probability and Statistics per paper). They reflect FrontierVUE's internal tagging, not an official analysis of the papers.

On difficulty, the year skews hard: STEP 1 carries 3 questions tagged medium and 10 tagged hard, while STEP 2 and STEP 3 each carry 2 medium and 11 hard. Even STEP 1, nominally the entry-level paper, is mostly tagged hard under this scheme.

On topics, the most frequent tag across the year is the broad Pure Mathematics group (24 question-tags), followed by STEP Mechanics (9), Integration Techniques (7), STEP Probability (6), Coordinate Geometry (4), Inequalities and Curve Sketching (3 each), with Induction and Recursion, Differential Equations and Complex Numbers on 2 each. The weight of integration and coordinate geometry suggests that substitution technique and geometric intuition are worthwhile warm-up priorities before sitting these papers.

Open the STEP past paper library on FrontierVUE (/papers/step), go to 2018, and you can sit STEP 1, STEP 2 and STEP 3 separately in the timed exam interface, then review a question-by-question breakdown afterwards; every question comes with a full worked solution. The library covers 111 STEP papers (1987 to 2025) with 1,532 questions in total, and the two most recent papers of each subject are free to try.

Before sitting the 2018 papers, a few guides pair well with them: /exams/step/guides/choosing-questions covers question selection strategy, which matters most on the old-specification papers where you pick from 13 questions; /exams/step/guides/writing-solutions covers how to write solutions that earn marks; /exams/step/guides/grades explains the grading machinery behind the boundaries; and /exams/step/guides/step-2 and /exams/step/guides/step-3 map out paper-specific preparation. The resource library also holds the official OCR specification and STEP Support Programme materials for systematic study beyond past papers.