Description
A 3-day STEP Maths Preparation Course for students sitting MAT, TMUA, CSAT, STEP, or similar exams for entry to Oxford, Durham, Cambridge, Warwick, UCL, Bath, Imperial College. Takes place in the summer holidays.
If you have your sights set on a mathematics degree at a top university, you are likely to have to take an entrance exam such as MAT, TMUA, CSAT, or STEP. In this course, we will guide you through MAT and STEP past questions based on Year 12 Maths, which are useful for all maths admissions papers. You will have a chance to work through specially-selected questions, both individually and in cooperation with some of your fellow applicants, with full solutions then presented for each question.
MAT, TMUA, CSAT and STEP will require you to display mathematical problem-solving abilities at a level appropriate for Maths undergraduates. Therefore, in this course, we are particularly focused on proof and the logical analysis of questions, which are tested much more severely in these papers, just as at university.
Since you will be marked in part on your understanding or presentation of proofs, we cover questions requiring proof by contradiction, counterexample, induction, and division into cases so that you can see fully explained examples of each type.
Two places where students often trip up in their answers are on knowing which manipulations are or are not permitted when dealing with inequalities, and on distinguishing between necessary and sufficient conditions, so we present questions which rely heavily on each. We also expound on the use of symmetry to understand and speed up your approach to some problems.
- Learn how to plan for and present all of the most essential kinds of proof
- Examine the subtlest aspects of manipulating inequalities
- Perfect your understanding of necessary and sufficient conditions
- Analyse unfamiliar graphs with symmetry tricks
- Master the art of dividing problems by cases
What our students said:
“It’s really engaging as working as a team makes the questions feel less daunting. Moreover the strategies recommended are priceless when it comes to efficiency in answering questions.“
– Edward
“I really enjoyed this course because it allowed me to challenge myself as well as improving my ability to think outside of the box when it comes to finding less obvious solutions to problems.”
– Aisha
“Very good course! Questions covered in lots of detail, wide variety of topics covered and lots of support in case you don’t understand something.”
– Ethan
