What Is a Good TARA Score? Percentiles, Conversion and Results Date

There is no official pass mark or "good" TARA score: UAT-UK sets no grade boundaries, and each of the two scored modules, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, is reported from 1.0 to 9.0 with no total. The scale is built so that the median candidate scores about 4.5 and roughly 10% score above 7.0. In the first cycle, 2,626 candidates, the official medians were 4.0 and 4.7 and the 90th percentiles 6.7 and 7.0. There is no official TARA score calculator or raw-score converter, and the public data cannot support one, because the raw-to-scaled table is made separately for each test form and is not published. Results for the October 2026 sitting arrive on Monday 16 November 2026. This guide gives the official percentile points by sitting, an approximate percentile lookup, the dates, and why a TARA score is not an IQ.

What is a good TARA score?

Because the scale is anchored to each year's candidates, a good score is a rank, not an amount. UAT-UK says typical candidates will score around 4.5 and about 10% will score higher than 7.0, with scores capped at 1.0 and 9.0. Neither Oxford nor UCL publishes a cut-off. The technical report for the first cycle prints four percentile points per module, all of them below, and nothing else: no 10th, 95th or 99th percentile appears anywhere in the official documents.

• Critical Thinking, all 2,626 candidates: 25th percentile 2.8, median 4.0, 75th 5.4, 90th 6.7 (mean 4.21, standard deviation 1.92)
• Critical Thinking, October 2025 (976 candidates): 2.9, 4.5, 5.8, 7.0 (mean 4.46, standard deviation 2.06)
• Critical Thinking, January 2026 (1,650 candidates): 2.8, 4.0, 5.2, 6.6 (mean 4.06, standard deviation 1.82)
• Problem Solving, all 2,626 candidates: 3.5, 4.7, 5.8, 7.0 (mean 4.72, standard deviation 1.77)
• Problem Solving, October 2025: 3.5, 4.5, 5.8, 7.0 (mean 4.66, standard deviation 1.81)
• Problem Solving, January 2026: 3.5, 4.8, 5.7, 7.0 (mean 4.76, standard deviation 1.74)

The minimum is 1.0 and the maximum 9.0 in every row. The medians sit a little below and above the design target of 4.5 because the scale was set on the October sitting, where the Critical Thinking median was 4.5; January candidates scored lower in Critical Thinking, a mean of 4.06 against 4.46. UAT-UK publishes the full distributions only as bar charts with no data table, so the share of candidates at each score is not available from official sources. Tutoring sites that read percentages off those charts disagree with each other and with the official table, and we do not use their figures. With 22 questions per module there are only 23 possible raw scores, 0 to 22 (our arithmetic), so scaled scores take a limited set of values on any one form.

What percentile is my TARA score?

You can place a score between the four official points by straight-line interpolation. The figures below use the 2,626-candidate percentiles and are a rough guide, not an official conversion: the real curve is lumpy, scores below the 25th percentile cannot be placed because no lower point is printed, and scores differ by sitting.

• Critical Thinking: 3.5 the 40th, 4.0 the 50th, 4.5 the 59th, 5.0 the 68th, 5.4 the 75th, 6.0 the 82nd, 6.7 the 90th percentile
• Problem Solving: 4.0 the 35th, 4.7 the 50th, 5.0 the 57th, 5.5 the 68th, 5.8 the 75th, 6.5 the 84th, 7.0 the 90th percentile

Treat each figure as a band. A reported score has a standard error of about a point (see below), so a Critical Thinking 5.4, the 75th percentile, could sit anywhere from about the 57th to the 87th once plus or minus one point is allowed for, which our own guide to the IQ score margin of error explains in general terms.

Is there a TARA score calculator or raw score conversion?

No official one exists, and no accurate unofficial one can be built from public data. UAT-UK scores the test with the Rasch item response model and post-equates it at the end of each testing window, which is why candidates do not receive an immediate score. For each form, the item difficulties generate a table that turns a raw score into an ability value, and that value is then scaled to the 1.0 to 9.0 range; the raw-score table is not published. What is published are the scaling constants: scaled score equals 2.1055 plus 1.9112 times ability for Critical Thinking, and 3.5686 plus 1.8520 times ability for Problem Solving, set so that the median candidate lands on 4.5 and the 90th percentile on 7.0. Our arithmetic confirms that those constants give 4.5 and 7.0 at the report's anchor values. But the ability value for a given raw score depends on how hard that particular form was, so the same raw mark can scale to different scores on different forms. UAT-UK adds that practice tests award no score on purpose, because the scale depends on the cohort sitting the real test. Any "TARA score converter" or raw-score calculator is therefore a guess.

The scale is also re-set every admissions cycle: UAT-UK's report says the scaled scores from this cycle cannot be compared directly with those from later ones. One inconsistency on UAT-UK's own results page is worth knowing: one passage there fixes the 90th percentile at 9.0 while the technical report and the Explanation of Results both say 7.0.

Are there TARA grade boundaries or a pass mark?

No. UAT-UK states that it does not provide any grade boundaries or a pass mark, and that there is no pass or fail; its Explanation of Results shows a candidate's score relative to peers. It adds that most universities use results alongside other information from the UCAS application, and its 2025-26 annual report says UAT-UK does not dictate how each institution uses test scores. Oxford says tests form one part of its process and are used alongside a range of information to help assess academic potential and suitability, and its page has no cut-off wording. UAT-UK also warns candidates not to expect to score as highly as in school exams. We found no statement of how Oxford uses the Writing Task.

When are TARA results released, and can you resit?

• October 2026 sitting: 12 to 16 October (booking closed on 28 September); results on Monday 16 November 2026 in the candidate's UAT-UK account
• January 2027 sitting: 4 to 8 January; booking opens on 26 October 2026 and closes on 21 December; results on 8 February 2027
• One attempt per cycle: UAT-UK's FAQ says you can only take the test once in any given application cycle, and previous scores are not available to the universities you apply to
• No appeals: UAT-UK says it does not accept appeals of test scores
• Oxford: all undergraduate applicants must take their test in October 2026; only the Astrophoria Foundation Year may use the January sitting
• Fee: 78 pounds in the UK and Republic of Ireland and 133 pounds elsewhere

What is the TARA and who uses it?

TARA stands for the Test of Academic Reasoning for Admissions, a computer-based test taken at Pearson test centres and owned by UAT-UK, a company set up on 1 December 2023 as a joint venture between Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge. It was offered for the first time in October 2025, and in 2025-26 UAT-UK recorded 2,806 TARA bookings and 2,626 candidates delivered, 8.0% of all its tests. For 2027 entry Oxford labels the test as new and lists Economics and Management, History and Economics, History and Politics, Human Sciences, Philosophy, Politics and Economics (with its Foundation Year), Experimental Psychology, and Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics. UCL used all three UAT-UK tests for the first time for 2026 entry, and UAT-UK's 2027 course list includes UCL computer science, mechanical engineering and robotics degrees; we could not read UCL's own pages. Cambridge does not use the TARA. Several tutoring sites say the TARA replaces Oxford's Thinking Skills Assessment; Oxford's page never mentions the TSA, and we found no official statement of that.

What is in the test, and how is it timed?

• Critical Thinking: 22 multiple-choice questions in 40 minutes, reasoning with everyday written language
• Problem Solving: 22 multiple-choice questions in 40 minutes, reasoning with numerical skills; no calculator, and basic maths is assumed
• Writing Task: one essay question chosen from three, up to 750 words, 40 minutes

Marks are for correct answers only, so a wrong answer costs nothing. UAT-UK does not score the Writing Task: a copy goes to each university, which uses it as it sees fit. Twenty-two questions in 40 minutes is about 109 seconds each, our arithmetic, and the test is fast: in the first cycle 8% of candidates left at least one Problem Solving item unreached, against 1% in Critical Thinking, and over 85% used between 35 and 40 minutes.

How accurate is a TARA score?

Less accurate than most candidates assume, and UAT-UK says so. The technical report gives raw-score reliabilities (Cronbach's alpha) of 0.69 to 0.79 for Critical Thinking and 0.59 to 0.75 for Problem Solving, and notes that a reliability above 0.70 is still satisfactory for modules of 22 items, though the usual rule of thumb is 0.80. The standard error of measurement of a scaled score is 0.87 to 1.24 points in Critical Thinking and 0.94 to 0.98 in Problem Solving. Under classical theory, the report explains, the true score lies within one standard error about 68% of the time and within two about 95% of the time.

On a 9-point scale with a standard deviation of about 1.8 or 1.9, a standard error near 1 is roughly half a standard deviation. Take a reported Critical Thinking score of 5.4, the 75th percentile of the first cohort. Plus or minus one point spans 4.4 to 6.4, which by interpolating the official percentiles is about the 57th to the 87th percentile. Two candidates on 5.0 and 6.0 are therefore not reliably different. The TARA is far shorter than an IQ battery, and it is not designed to rank candidates finely.

The technical report also records group differences. Men outscored women in both modules, by 0.27 points in Critical Thinking and 0.94 in Problem Solving, and candidates whose first language is English scored 0.95 points higher in Critical Thinking but only 0.11 higher in Problem Solving, which UAT-UK attributes to the module's greater language load. The 2025-26 report covers reliability, timing, item statistics and bias checks, but no study of whether the score predicts degree results.

Is the TARA an IQ test?

UAT-UK never calls it one. Its own pages describe the TARA as assessing generic thinking skills and the ability to express yourself in writing, and say universities use it to tell apart strong candidates with similar academic profiles. That overlaps with the content of IQ-style reasoning tests, but a TARA score cannot be turned into an IQ. The candidates are already a selected group, the score is a rank among them, and the scale resets each year. Our guide to achievement tests and IQ tests explains the wider distinction, and our guide to the average IQ of MIT, Oxford and Yale students covers what published scores imply about selective admissions.

What should candidates do with a score?

Treat it as one input. Compare the two module scores with the percentile lookup above, remember the one-point margin of error, and do not read a half-point gap as a difference in ability. To try similar reasoning formats, our critical thinking test and logical reasoning test are the closest on this site. Our guide to Watson-Glaser scores explains a comparable critical-thinking assessment, and our guide to UCAT scores explains another admissions-test scale.

To see how an IQ-scale result compares with the population, take the IQ Metrics test and read it against the percentile calculator.

Common questions