Oxbridge Page

MATHSHELPER FOR STUDENTS

Oxbridge Resources

Go here to find all STEP past papers since 1998; there are quite a few mark schemes to help you too. You should also find the examiners comments useful; if you find a question too hard to start, it's always nice to see a comment like “very few candidates made any significant progress with this problem”...you are not alone :-)

There is a world of difference between trying a question for 10 minutes and then looking at the answer and working through a problem for yourself. If I were you I would attempt a question over the course of a few days and only then going to look at the solution.

The best two documents to help you prepare for STEP are the two superb booklets by Stephen Siklos from Cambridge University:

Advanced Problems in Mathematics
Advanced Problems in Core Mathematics

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Other Documents

Some Oxbridge Maths Questions (mostly from a Trinity Cambridge Interview Test)

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STEP Past Papers

STEP contains some truly wonderful questions to test your understanding of a topic (or a mixture of topics). However, they are designed to be very hard indeed to test the very top end of A Level candidates, so don't get discouraged if you can't do a question straight away; keep coming back to it and mulling it over in your mind. The two Stephen Siklos booklets (above) are the best place to start (the first one is what I used at school).

[For the papers prior to 1998 I scanned in the originals and then put the images into a TeX document. Being a fool, I then put a footnote at the bottom of each page that I now regret, but because my old laptop was stolen I cannot now change this; IF I COULD I WOULD.]

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Oxford Mathematics Admissions Test

As always, if you have any of the missing papers, please email them to me at
jonathan.m.stone AT gmail.com and I can put them here.

Sample Paper 1 Solutions
Sample Paper 2 Solutions
1999 Paper Solutions
2000 Paper Solutions
2001 Paper Solutions
2002 Paper Solutions
2003 Paper Solutions
2004 Paper Solutions
2005 Paper Solutions
2006 Paper Solutions
2007 Paper Solutions
2008 Paper Solutions

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Advanced Extension Award (AEA) Past Papers

AEA contains some good questions but they can be very fiddly, rather than interestingly challenging.

2002 Paper Solutions
2003 Paper Solutions
2004 Paper Solutions
2005 Paper Solutions
2006 Paper Solutions
2007 Paper Solutions

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Quotes I Like (nowt to do with maths)

“Because I'm passionate. And right. And passionate about being right” - Frasier Crane, Frasier

“Is that why you do drugs; because you're happy? Most people do them because they want to be happy” - Gregory House, House

“I have a degree from Harvard. Every time I'm wrong the world make a little less sense” - Frasier Crane, Frasier

“I guess doing things you hate is the price you pay to avoid loneliness” - Mark Corrigan, Peep Show

“Why do people have to die?” - Tracy Montrose Blair
“To make life important” - Nate Fisher, Six Feet Under

“Why do we fall, sir? So that we might learn to pick ourselves up” - Alfred Pennyworth, Batman Begins

“Sarah? If you're there pick-up. OK fine. I know we don't talk to each other very much any more but I've left you three messages in the last two weeks and you haven't returned any of my calls. I'm beginning to think you don't ever want to talk to me again. If that's the case, well, we really need to talk” - Ruth Fisher, Six Feet Under

“I've been thinking it might not be such a bad idea to lock you all in here and set the place on fire. We have 48 hours before we kick off this campaign. We will work hard. We will work well. We will work together. Or so help me, mother of God, I will stick a pitchfork so far up your asses, you will, quite simply, be dead.” - Bruno Gianelli, The West Wing

“You lost $25000? It's just gone?” - David Fisher
“I suppose it still exists, it's just not mine any more.” - Ruth Fisher, Six Feet Under