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

A STEP result carries no percentile and no scaled score: each paper receives a single grade. STEP 2 and STEP 3 are graded separately, each against its own boundaries, and there is no combined total across the two papers, so a condition of "grade 1 in both papers" means two independent lines, each 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 that year's boundaries. Universities work in grades, not marks: a Cambridge offer condition says grade 1, not a number out of 120.

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. 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: a wrong final answer can still earn process marks, a correct answer earns full marks whatever the method, and there are no bonus marks for finishing a question completely.

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 Cambridge, Warwick and Imperial College London. Each boundary 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 reaching each grade, with past years' documents available online.

An unclassified result is not a freak outcome on STEP; it is an honest reflection of how demanding the papers are. Note also that every STEP 3 boundary sits below its STEP 2 counterpart while the cumulative percentages run higher. That does not mean STEP 3 is easier: the 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 compare your practice marks against the boundaries of the paper you are actually sitting, not the other one.

Take 2026 as the worked example: grade 1 on STEP 2 cost 62 out of 120, and 28.14% of candidates managed it. 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.

Cambridge is the heaviest user of STEP grades. 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 check the page for the College you are applying to; the "universal threshold" that circulates online does not exist.

In scope, 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.

Results reach 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, and OCR's own pages do not describe it as the same day as A level results. Treat any alignment as something to check each year rather than a guarantee, and read both official calendars separately.

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: