STEP 2024: Grade Boundaries, Papers and Practice

STEP 2024 ran as two papers: STEP 2 (paper code 9470) and STEP 3 (paper code 9475), each a 3-hour written exam marked out of 120. STEP 1 was withdrawn from 2021, so the two-paper format was already the settled shape of the exam. What made 2024 distinctive was the change of delivery body: the Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing (CAAT) website closed in early 2024, and the official closure notice confirmed that STEP would be delivered from 2024 by OCR, which also sits within the Cambridge family. The year's Explanation of Results was accordingly published by OCR for the first time.

The official grade boundaries for STEP 2024 (each paper out of 120; source: the official Explanation of Results for STEP 2024):

STEP results fall into five grades: S (Outstanding), 1 (Very Good), 2 (Good), 3 (Satisfactory) and U (Unclassified). The numbers in the table are minimum marks for each grade. On STEP 3 in 2024, for example, a total of 93 earned an S, 70 a grade 1, 57 a grade 2 and 34 a grade 3; below the grade 3 boundary the result is U.

The marking rules matter for reading these numbers. Each question is marked out of 20, each paper out of 120, and only your best 6 answers count towards the total; a fully correct answer scores full marks whatever method is used. A boundary therefore measures the combined quality of your best 6 questions, not an expectation that you attempt everything.

Compared with 2023 (official figures for both years): on STEP 2, the S boundary moved from 90 to 93, grade 1 from 65 to 69, grade 2 from 50 to 51 and grade 3 from 28 to 26. On STEP 3, S moved from 85 to 93, grade 1 from 63 to 70, grade 2 from 54 to 57 and grade 3 from 32 to 34. Most boundaries sat higher in 2024 than in 2023; only the STEP 2 grade 3 line came down.

Boundaries are reset every year in light of how hard the papers proved and how the cohort performed, so year-to-year movement is normal and no single year's line makes a reliable fixed target. Cambridge offer conditions vary by college and by year, so always go by the wording of the offer itself.

The figures below reflect how FrontierVUE has catalogued the 2024 questions, based on the platform's own difficulty ratings and topic tags. They are not an official analysis of the papers.

On difficulty: FrontierVUE holds 12 questions from STEP 2 2024, of which 3 are rated medium and 9 hard, and 12 questions from STEP 3 2024, of which 2 are rated medium and 10 hard. Both papers break down as 8 pure mathematics questions, 2 mechanics and 2 probability and statistics, matching the official paper structure in place since the 2019 reform. STEP 3 carries the larger share of hard-rated questions, consistent with its positioning on the full A Level Further Mathematics syllabus.

On topics: across both 2024 papers, the most frequent tag in the FrontierVUE catalogue is the broad pure mathematics category (16 occurrences), followed by coordinate geometry (5), mechanics (4), probability (4), induction and recursion (4), integration techniques (4), differential equations (3), curve sketching (3) and inequalities (2). The practical takeaway: coordinate geometry and induction-style questions carry real weight this year, so a focused review of those areas pays off before sitting either paper in full.

Practising the 2024 papers on FrontierVUE is straightforward: open the past paper list at /papers/step, find STEP 2 and STEP 3 under 2024, and sit either paper in the timed interface. After submitting you get a question-by-question breakdown, and every question comes with a full worked solution. The FrontierVUE bank covers 111 STEP past papers from 1987 to 2025, 1,532 questions in total, and the latest two papers in each subject are free to try; check the free labels on the site for the current line-up.

For method alongside the papers, the guides under /exams/step/guides/ are built to pair with them: step-2 and step-3 cover what each paper demands and how to prepare, writing-solutions covers turning correct ideas into marks on the page, choosing-questions covers picking the 6 answers that will count, and grades covers the boundary and grading system as a whole. The resource library also holds the official OCR specification and STEP Support Programme materials as an official reference point.