A Guide to TMUA Scores and Scaling 2025

By

Amelia Calladine

The administration of the TMUA was taken over by University Admissions Testing UK (UAT UK) and Pearson VUE in 2024. The structure of the test remains the same: candidates sit two 75-minute papers consecutively, each consisting of 20 multiple-choice questions. Candidates receive marks for correct answers (they aren’t penalised for incorrect answers), and their raw mark for each paper is converted to a scaled score of 1.0 to 9.0, with 1.0 being the lowest score. The scaled score enables candidates and university admissions departments to compare their performance on the test to the rest of the cohort, and accounts for changes in difficulty of the test from year to year.

However, there were a few important changes made to scores and scaling:

Before 2024, candidates would receive three separate grades from 1.0 to 9.0: two scared grades for their performance on each paper, and a scaled overall grade. From 2024, candidates receive a single score scaled from 1.0 to 9.0. This enables UAT UK to compare scores from different sittings and versions of the test, as it is now taken over several dates.

The scaling curve has changed, such that the score achieved by the average candidate is lower than before.

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The latter change led to a misconception among students that the TMUA was marked more harshly in 2024, but this is untrue. The scale was adjusted across the whole range of marks, and the universities’ TMUA requirements/thresholds were lowered to reflect the change, so it did not affect the outcome for students.

However, the scaling change poses one issue for students preparing to take the TMUA, which is comparing their scores on past papers to universities’ current TMUA requirements/thresholds. This is the issues that we will address for the remainder of the article.

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UAT UK Explanation of Results

After the 2024-25 TMUA test sittings, UAT UK released a statement explaining the changes to TMUA results. The key points are:

Typical candidates score around 4.5

Approximately 10% of candidates will achieve scores higher than 7.0

They also released a graph showing the percentage of candidates achieving each score:

Be aware that there are two versions of the UAT UK explanation of results. The first was released after the October 2024 sitting but before the January 2025 sitting. The second, which is shown above and used to produce the graph below, was released after both exam sittings, so shows the statistics for October and January combined. If you compare the two graphs, you will notice that the percentages of candidates scoring lower marks (1.0-4.0) was greater in the second graph (October + January). This is to be expected, because the January cohort would not include any Cambridge applicants, who might be expected to score more highly on the test.

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Comparison of Scales

Using the data from the UAT UK graph above, and data provided by the University of Cambridge in response to old Freedom of Information requests, we can compare the old and new scales. This enables students to roughly compare their scaled scores from pre-2024 past papers to the current scale, and the current university TMUA requirements.

From this graph, we can see:

Approximately 50% of candidates scored 5.1 or higher in 2022/23, compared to 50% scoring 3.8 or higher in 2024.

Approximately 35% of candidates scored 6.0 or higher in 2022/23, compared to 35% scoring 4.5 or higher in 2024. UAT UK states that 'typical' candidates score 4.5 on the new scale.

Approximately 20% of candidates scored 6.7 or higher in 2022/23, compared to 20% scoring 5.4 or higher in 2024.

Across all three years, approximately 5% of candidates scored 7.5 or higher.

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To summarise briefly, in practical terms:

The upper end of the scale remains very similar to previous years: scores of 7.0 or higher are likely roughly equivalent between the current test and past papers.

However, students scoring around the middle of the scale on past papers should be very cautious when comparing their score to current university TMUA thresholds.

For pre-2024 past paper scores of between 4 and 6.5, the grade on the current scale would likely be 1-1.5 lower. You can convert between a past paper score and new score by using the graph.

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Whilst we have endeavoured to make this article as accurate as possible for students preparing for the TMUA, you should not rely heavily on this graph. It seems unlikely that UAT UK will revise the scale again in 2025-26, but it remains a possibility. You should aim to do as well as you can regardless.

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