Admissions tests STEP (Maths) tutors
13 UK tutors who teach STEP (Maths) at Admissions tests. £32–£175/hr · median £65
STEP (Sixth Term Examination Paper) is the Cambridge maths admissions test, administered by OCR, and the gold-standard hard-maths admissions test in the UK. Warwick also uses it; Imperial accepts it as a fallback where an applicant has not sat the TMUA. Some other departments, Bath among them, offer a reduced grade requirement for a good STEP score without requiring the paper. There are two papers (STEP 2 and STEP 3) covering pure, mechanics and statistics at a level beyond A-level Further Maths in difficulty, with three-hour papers and a small number of long, technically demanding questions. Tutoring helps most with the problem-solving habits: STEP rewards patience, multiple-attempt strategies and clean mathematical writing. Look for tutors with explicit STEP grades themselves (S or 1), ideally Cambridge maths graduates, and structured worked-solution experience.
Admissions tests are the university-entrance exams sat in Year 12 or Year 13 alongside (or instead of treating as) A-level prep: TMUA and STEP for maths-heavy courses, ESAT for engineering and sciences, LNAT for Law, UCAT for Medicine and Dentistry, GAMSAT for graduate-entry medicine, plus Oxbridge interview and written-work preparation. They're distinct from school qualifications, and most schools don't teach to them. The landscape has shifted recently: ESAT and TMUA were first sat in October 2024, TARA a year later, and Oxford moves onto the UAT-UK suite from the 2026 cycle, with the MAT, BMAT, PAT and TSA retired or replaced. Tutoring helps most with format-specific past-paper practice, timing, and the problem-solving style these papers reward. Match the tutor to the specific test; a strong A-level Maths tutor is not automatically a STEP tutor.
Umer S.
Award-winning Oxford/Cambridge/Imperial/UCL Gold Medalist | 11+/13+/16+/GCSE/AL/IB/Admissions Expert | Education Consultant | Examiner
- Common Entrance
- Maths
- Further Maths
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