TARA preparation guide

TARA international candidates: what the official tables show

The TARA ran for the first time in the 2026 admissions cycle. Of its 2,626 candidates, close to half lived outside the UK and the EU, and exactly half did not have English as a first language. UAT-UK's technical report breaks the scores down along both of those lines, and the annual report adds UK-versus-overseas booking counts for each sitting. This is the part of the data non-UK applicants actually need and almost nobody has laid out. The tables are here in full, along with their limits: residence is not nationality, Other is not China, and a group mean is not a forecast for a person.

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Quick answer: where international candidates sat

Size of the non-UK, non-EU group: 1,210 candidates (46%), against 1,189 UK (45%) and 227 EU (9%)
That group's two means: 3.95 on Critical Thinking (lowest of three), 4.89 on Problem Solving (highest)
Where the language gap lands: 0.95 on Critical Thinking, only 0.11 on Problem Solving
Is there a separate bar for international candidates: No. The report sets no threshold by residence or nationality and states no pass mark

Every figure here comes from a printed table or sentence in UAT-UK's 2025/26 TARA technical report or its 2025-26 annual report. Nothing is read off a chart image and nothing is derived across tables. FrontierVue is an independent preparation platform and is not affiliated with UAT-UK or any university.

In short

1,210 candidates (46%) gave a country of permanent residence outside the UK and the EU, the largest of the three areas. That group posted the highest Problem Solving mean of the three at 4.89 and the lowest Critical Thinking mean at 3.95.
1,326 candidates (50%) said English was not their first language. They averaged 3.73 on Critical Thinking against 4.69 for the English-first-language group, a difference of 0.95.
The same split differs by only 0.11 on Problem Solving, 4.67 against 4.78, and both groups reach 7.0 at the 90th percentile. The report puts that contrast down to Critical Thinking's higher language load, then reaches for the same load again to account for the Other residence group sitting lowest on Critical Thinking at 3.95.
Overseas bookings edged out UK ones at both sittings: 537 against 508 in October, 887 against 874 in January. Even in its first cycle the TARA was not a majority-UK exam.
Other is not China. The category covers everywhere outside the UK and the EU, no country-level TARA scores are published, and this page will not invent one.

By area of residence: the three groups in full

The report splits candidates by country of permanent residence into UK, EU and Other, where Other means everywhere outside those two. Mainland Chinese candidates fall in that column, but so do India, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the United States and every other market. The three groups are very unequal in size: 1,210 in Other, 1,189 in the UK and just 227 in the EU. The figure worth studying is not which group is highest but that the ordering flips between the two modules.

1,210

Candidates resident outside the UK and EU, 46% of the cohort and the largest group

3.95 / 4.89

Other group means: lowest of three on Critical Thinking, highest on Problem Solving

7.4

Other group's Problem Solving 90th percentile, above the UK's 7.0 and the EU's 6.3

6.7

All three residence groups share this Critical Thinking 90th percentile; the gaps sit below it

	UK (1,189, 45%)	EU (227, 9%)	Other (1,210, 46%)
Critical Thinking mean (SD)	4.41 (1.89)	4.46 (1.77)	3.95 (1.95)
Critical Thinking 25th / 50th / 75th	3.0 / 4.4 / 5.7	3.1 / 4.4 / 5.4	2.5 / 3.8 / 5.2
Critical Thinking 90th percentile	6.7	6.7	6.7
Problem Solving mean (SD)	4.67 (1.75)	4.13 (1.78)	4.89 (1.76)
Problem Solving 25th / 50th / 75th	3.5 / 4.6 / 5.8	3.0 / 3.9 / 5.3	3.7 / 4.8 / 6.0
Problem Solving 90th percentile	7.0	6.3	7.4
Highest Problem Solving score observed	9.0	8.9, the only one of the three not to reach 9.0 on this module	9.0

Do not read Other as China. It covers every country and territory outside the UK and the EU, and neither official document breaks TARA scores down by country or prints a mean or percentile for any single one. A claim of the form 'the average TARA score for Chinese candidates is X' does not come from these sources. Residence is also the address given at registration, not nationality and not first language: the report keeps residence and first language in two separate tables and never crosses them, so no published figure says how many overseas candidates were not native English speakers.

By first language: the gap lands on one module

Critical Thinking, English first language

Mean 4.69

1,300 candidates (50%); 25th to 90th percentiles 3.4 / 4.7 / 5.8 / 7.1

Critical Thinking, other first language

Mean 3.73

1,326 candidates (50%); 2.4 / 3.5 / 4.9 / 6.4, a gap of 0.95 in the means

Problem Solving, English first language

Mean 4.78

The same candidates; 3.5 / 4.8 / 5.9 / 7.0

Problem Solving, other first language

Mean 4.67

3.5 / 4.6 / 5.7 / 7.0, the means only 0.11 apart

Here the report does not leave the reader guessing. It names a cause: Critical Thinking carries a higher overall language load. That one line accounts for two things at once. It explains why the two groups nearly coincide on Problem Solving, where their 25th percentiles are identical at 3.5. And it explains why the same 25th percentile sits 1.0 apart on Critical Thinking, 3.4 against 2.4. Nothing else in the document is as directly usable by a candidate whose first language is not English.

The gap narrows sharply at the top

At the 90th percentile the two first-language groups are identical on Problem Solving, both at 7.0. On Critical Thinking they read 7.1 against 6.4, still a gap but visibly smaller than the gap in means or at the median (4.7 against 3.5). The language difference concentrates around and below the middle of the distribution rather than at the top. If you are aiming high, that pattern is more informative than the single headline figure of 0.95.

The two groups are equally spread out

Critical Thinking standard deviations are 1.86 for English-first-language candidates and 1.87 for the rest; on Problem Solving they are 1.78 and 1.76. The two distributions are about equally wide, so what differs is position rather than shape. Both groups also span the full 1.0 to 9.0 range on both modules, and neither is boxed into the lower end.

The report reaches for the same explanation twice

The residence table is not silent. In its section on area of residence the report names the EU group as strongest on Critical Thinking at 4.46 and the Other group as lowest at 3.95, then says this could be partly attributed to the higher linguistic load of that module. It is the same reason the report gives later for the first-language gap, and the hedge matters: could be, partly. For the reversed ordering on Problem Solving, where Other leads at 4.89 and the EU group scores lowest at 4.13, that section prints the figures and the ranking and stops. This page stops there too.

The items themselves were checked by first language

First language, English against non-English, is one of the comparison groups in the report's differential item functioning analysis, which needs at least 50 responses per group and 200 in total before it will run. For Critical Thinking the report found no significant DIF on gender, first language, UK school type or UK ethnicity. On Problem Solving one item reached Category C, and it was flagged on gender rather than on language. Read literally, the 0.95 is a difference between group averages, not evidence of items built to trap non-native speakers.

How many international candidates, and from where

537 / 887

TARA bookings made overseas: 537 in October 2025, 887 in January 2026

129

Countries in which UAT-UK tests were sat in 2025-26, across all three tests

£130

Fee for candidates sitting outside the UK and Ireland; £75 within them

8,745

The annual report's Asia count, which spans all three tests and is not a TARA figure

	October 2025	January 2026
TARA bookings	1,045	1,761
Booked in the UK	508	874
Booked overseas	537	887

The annual report's continent counts cover all three UAT-UK tests together, not the TARA alone: Asia 8,745, Europe 1,789, North America 650, Africa 173, Oceania 135, South America 36. That table is broken down neither by test nor by country, so it cannot tell you where TARA's overseas candidates came from, still less how many Chinese candidates sat it. On the same all-tests basis the report names Africa (+42%) and Asia (+39%) as the fastest-growing markets. The table above is the only place a TARA-specific overseas count comes from.

Turning the tables into a preparation order

An overseas, non-native-English TARA candidate

What the official tables imply, module by module

Critical Thinking22 items in 40 minutes, scored on the 1.0 to 9.0 scale

Non-English first language 3.73, English 4.69
Other residence group 3.95, lowest of the three
The report gives both gaps the same reason: this module's language load

Problem Solving22 items in 40 minutes, scored on the 1.0 to 9.0 scale

Non-English first language 4.67, English 4.78
Other residence group 4.89, highest of the three
Both first-language groups reach 7.0 at the 90th percentile

Writing TaskOne prompt chosen from three, 750 words, 40 minutes

Officially unscored, and not placed on the 1.0 to 9.0 scale
So the report holds no score table for it, by language or residence or anything else

Tap a branch to unfold

In practice: if English is not your first language, Critical Thinking is where the return is highest, because this module's language load is what the report points at for both the residence gap and the first-language gap. Drill Problem Solving against a hard clock instead of treating it as the settled module. The mechanics of the scale are in scoring, the whole-cohort distribution in the official score statistics, and practice material in what to use instead of past papers.

What these tables cannot answer

There is no separate bar for international candidates, or any bar

The report sets no score threshold by residence, nationality or first language, and it states no pass mark anywhere. How a university weighs a TARA score against predicted grades and the rest of an international application is outside its scope. Reading the Other group's 75th percentiles of 5.2 and 6.0 as a safe line for overseas candidates is something readers add. The distribution is for locating yourself within this cohort, nothing more.

No acceptance rate can be derived from candidate counts

The annual report contains bookings and tests delivered, and no admissions outcomes at all, so neither document reports an acceptance rate and none can be derived from them. Dividing an overseas booking figure such as 537 or 887 by a course's intake produces a number that is not official and does not describe what any university actually does.

Absolute scores do not carry across cycles

UAT-UK fixes the scaling to each cycle's October ability distribution, so the transformation is redone every year and the report states that this cycle's scaled scores cannot be compared directly with those from future events. International candidates are especially exposed here, because figures circulating online rarely say which cycle they belong to. Always establish the cycle before benchmarking against a number.

A decimal of difference may just be measurement error

Scaled-score reliabilities run 0.61 to 0.77 for Critical Thinking and 0.61 to 0.74 for Problem Solving. The matching standard errors of measurement are printed as four ranges, by module and sitting, the smallest starting at 0.87 and the largest topping out at 1.24. Under classical test theory a true score lies within one SEM of the observed score with roughly 68% probability and within two with roughly 95%. The 0.11 between the first-language groups on Problem Solving is smaller than any of those SEMs. The report also notes that with only 22 items each these are short modules whose reliabilities are expected to fall below UAT-UK's other exams, with anything above 0.70 satisfactory at this length against the usual rule of thumb of 0.80.

A group mean is not a personal forecast

Every mean on this page averages hundreds or thousands of people and predicts nothing about an individual. Both first-language groups produced scores from 1.0 to 9.0 on both modules, and all three residence groups share an identical Critical Thinking 90th percentile. Using a group average to estimate your own score is the most common misuse of this report.

Every number on this page comes from a printed table or sentence in UAT-UK's 2025/26 TARA technical report or its 2025-26 annual report, and none is read off a chart image. Delivery runs through Pearson, whose network covers more than 5,500 test centres in over 180 countries and territories, and tests were sat in 129 countries in 2025-26, which is why most overseas candidates can find a centre near them. FrontierVue is an independent preparation platform and is not affiliated with UAT-UK or any university.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is the average TARA score for Chinese candidates?

It is not published. The technical report splits residence into UK, EU and Other only, and Other holds mainland China together with India, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the United States and every other market. The annual report's continent counts cover all three UAT-UK tests and are not broken down by country. So any specific average for Chinese candidates does not come from these documents. What is on record is the whole Other column: a Critical Thinking mean of 3.95 and a Problem Solving mean of 4.89.

Am I at a structural disadvantage if English is not my first language?

The data shows a real gap, but it sits on one module. On Critical Thinking the two groups differ by 0.95 in the mean (3.73 against 4.69); on Problem Solving by 0.11 (4.67 against 4.78), with both groups reaching 7.0 at the 90th percentile. The report attributes the contrast to Critical Thinking's higher language load. Two further points matter more. The standard deviations are almost identical (1.87 against 1.86) and both groups span 1.0 to 9.0, so this is a shift in position rather than a lowered ceiling. And the report ran its differential item functioning analysis by first language and found nothing significant on Critical Thinking. The practical response is to put reading and argument analysis first.

Are overseas candidates really stronger on Problem Solving?

The official numbers do read that way. The Other residence group averaged 4.89 on Problem Solving against 4.67 for the UK and 4.13 for the EU, its 90th percentile of 7.4 is the highest of the three, and the report itself calls it the highest scoring group on that module. Three limits apply. It is a mean over 1,210 people whose individual scores run the full 1.0 to 9.0 range, so it forecasts nothing for one candidate. In the residence section the report gives the Problem Solving ordering as figures and ranking only, with no reason attached; where it does supply a reason is on the other side, saying the group's low Critical Thinking mean of 3.95 could be partly attributed to that module's higher linguistic load. And the same group is the weakest of the three on Critical Thinking, so 'stronger overall' does not follow.

Does residence differ from nationality, and does that matter?

Area of residence is a self-reported answer to a registration question about your country of permanent residence. It is not nationality, not your passport and not your first language. The report keeps residence and first language in two separate tables and does not cross them, so a group such as 'resident in the UK, first language not English' has no published figures. Residence turns up in exactly two places in the document: the list of registration questions and the group breakdowns of scores. The scaling method the report sets out runs from raw score to an ability estimate and then, through fixed scaling constants, to the 1.0 to 9.0 scale, and residence is not one of its inputs.

SOURCES

Official sources

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