How TARA scoring works

The TARA reports two numbers. UAT-UK states on its TARA page: "They score on a scale from 1 (low) to 9 (high), with results reported to one decimal place." One of those scores covers Critical Thinking, the other covers Problem Solving, and each is reported on its own. The official description is of a separate score for each multiple-choice module, so it is more accurate to talk about your two TARA scores than about a single TARA score.

The reporting precision matters more than it looks. A score given to one decimal place, such as 5.8 or 6.3, is plainly not a count of correct answers. Each multiple-choice module contains 22 questions in 40 minutes, so a raw mark can only be a whole number out of 22, while the reported score sits on a 1 to 9 scale carrying a decimal. What UAT-UK has published is the scale and the precision. It has not published how the two relate.

The Writing Task module produces no number at all. You choose one task from three prompts and write to a 750-word limit in 40 minutes, and UAT-UK does not mark what you write. It goes to universities instead, which is covered further down this page.

All three modules are compulsory for every candidate, and each is separately timed at 40 minutes, for 120 minutes in total. A module's unused minutes do not carry into the next one: they are simply lost when the module closes. The test is computer-based, you are given an erasable booklet for working, and calculators and dictionaries are not permitted in any module.

Within each multiple-choice module the marking is as simple as it gets. Every question is worth one mark, and no marks are deducted for a wrong answer. There is no penalty for guessing, which has one immediate consequence for exam technique: never leave a blank. A question you have no idea about is still worth answering, because an unanswered question and a wrong answer are worth exactly the same, and a guess is worth more than nothing.

There is also no pass mark and no fail mark. The TARA does not produce a threshold you clear or miss. It produces two numbers, and what those numbers are worth is decided by the universities reading them.

The arithmetic of the timing is worth internalising. Twenty-two questions in 40 minutes is a shade under 1 minute 50 seconds per question, in both Critical Thinking and Problem Solving. Since wrong answers cost nothing, the expensive mistake is not a wrong answer, it is spending six minutes on one stubborn question and never reaching the easy ones at the end. The straightforward habit is to put down your best available answer as soon as a question stops yielding and move on, so nothing is left blank behind you.

Problem Solving does not require subject knowledge. The official expectation is basic maths only: fractions, place value, percentages, the four rules of number, averages, time, money and measures, and the relationships between km, m, cm and mm and between kg and g. Complex fraction and decimal calculation is not required, which is consistent with calculators being banned. If a Problem Solving question seems to demand heavy computation, that is usually a sign you have missed a shorter route rather than a sign the question needs one.

The Writing Task is easy to misread, because it is compulsory but unscored. UAT-UK does not mark it. What happens instead is that a copy of your response is sent to the universities where you applied, and they decide what to do with it.

That makes the Writing Task high-stakes in a different way from the two multiple-choice modules. There is no number to optimise and nothing about it appears in your results, but an admissions tutor may read your actual prose, unedited, written in 40 minutes.

Oxford's position is that all Oxford applicants must sit all three modules, Writing Task included. Only two Oxford courses state that the Writing Task will not be used in admissions selection for that course: LN12 Economics and Management and LV11 History and Economics. The other eight, including PPE, Experimental Psychology, Human Sciences and History and Politics, carry no such line, so for those courses you should assume the piece will be read.

The format is fixed and worth rehearsing. Each of the three prompts gives a short statement and then asks the same three things in the same order: explain what you think is meant by the statement, give a reasoned argument against it, and say to what extent you agree. Detailed subject knowledge is neither expected nor required.

UAT-UK's own recommendations are unusually concrete. Plan for 5 to 10 minutes before writing and group your ideas under the three parts. Engage closely with the actual wording of the statement rather than the general topic area, and treat broad or abstract terms with some nuance. Argue both sides, use targeted concrete examples rather than letting examples carry the argument alone, build the counter-argument from several different angles instead of padding it with background, and finish by stating your own view clearly and in enough depth, supported by your earlier arguments rather than simply summarising them.

This is the question every candidate asks, and the honest answer is that nobody can tell you, including us.

UAT-UK has never published a score distribution, a percentile table or a cut-off score for the TARA. There is no official statement of what counts as a strong score, no mean, no median and no band descriptors. On top of that, the TARA has not yet been sat by anyone: the first sitting window is 12 to 16 October 2026. There is no cohort, so there is no data about a cohort, so there is nothing from which a benchmark could be built.

That has a blunt implication. Any specific TARA target score in circulation is invented. A confident number, a percentile chart, or a claim that a particular course expects a particular score cannot be traced to any source, because the source does not exist. Treat a specific figure as an unsourced guess.

Nor can a benchmark be imported from elsewhere. UAT-UK says the Critical Thinking and Problem Solving components share a common history with BMAT Section 1 and the TSA, and on that basis it hosts BMAT Section 1 papers from 2003 to 2023 and TSA Section 1 papers from 2008 to 2023 on its preparation materials page. That is as far as the official statement goes, and it says nothing about how TARA scores will be spread. Figures attached to a different test, taken by a different cohort under different rules, do not transfer.

The useful conclusion is not despairing, it is narrowing. You cannot aim at a public number, so aim at the things that are genuinely under your control and observable in your own practice.

Start from what the score is: one input. UAT-UK produces the two scores and sends a copy of your Writing Task response to the universities where you applied, and each university decides what to do with what it receives. Two Oxford courses state that they will not use the Writing Task in admissions selection while others say nothing of the kind, which shows directly that the same material can be treated differently from course to course. Beyond that, nothing has been published about how a TARA result is weighed against the rest of an application, and we are not going to invent it.

That leaves a short list of things worth doing.

For volume, FrontierVUE publishes 18 original parallel TARA papers, each 45 questions over 120 minutes, plus a 350-question topic bank for drilling one question type at a time: 1,160 questions in total, every one with a worked solution and a Chinese translation, with papers 1 and 2 free to attempt. These are papers we write ourselves against the published specification. They are not official past papers, and no official TARA past paper exists.

For 2027 entry there are two sittings, and the results date for each is fixed.

Sitting 1: the test window runs from 12 to 16 October 2026, and results are released on 16 November 2026. In China, Hong Kong and Macau each test has a fixed day inside that window rather than a choice of days, and the TARA day is 14 October 2026. Booking for the October sitting closes at 6pm BST on 28 September 2026.

Sitting 2: the test window runs from 4 to 8 January 2027, and results are released on 8 February 2027.

Both sittings exist and the results dates are as above. Which sitting your course accepts is a matter for the university you are applying to, and you should follow that university's own guidance. The UAT-UK timetable sets the test windows and the results dates; it does not decide which sitting a given university or course requires, and requirements can differ between institutions and between courses. So the first step in planning is to confirm on your target institution's admissions pages which sitting it expects, and then work back from the dates above.

The fee is 78 GBP in the UK and Ireland and 133 GBP in the rest of the world.

Plan backwards from the booking deadline rather than from the test date. 28 September 2026 is the last moment to secure an October seat, and in China, Hong Kong and Macau the fixed 14 October date leaves almost no flexibility if it collides with something else. Once the modules are sat there is nothing further to influence: the two scores arrive on the published date, and your Writing Task response is passed to the universities you applied to rather than returned to you as a mark.