What is a Good UCAT ANZ Score?

University Admissions Medical Entrance

Thursday, 02 July 2020

Students who sit UCAT ANZ receive their UCAT Score Report on the same day, often within an hour of sitting the test. The format of UCAT scores can be confusing. This blog answers some common questions about UCAT ANZ scores.

How are UCAT ANZ scores calculated?

UCAT ANZ scores are calculated by converting the number of questions you got right into a ‘scaled score’. Scaled scores range from 300-900 in each subtest. Pearson VUE do not publicly release details of how they calculate scaled scores, but they use statistical tools involving IRT (Item Response Theory).

Your scores in each of the four cognitive subtests (UCAT Verbal Reasoning, UCAT Decision Making, UCAT Quantitative Reasoning and UCAT Abstract Reasoning) are added together to form an overall UCAT cognitive subtest score, which ranges from 1200 to 3600. Students also receive a separate score for UCAT Situational Judgement, ranging from 300-900.

What is a good UCAT ANZ score?

Ultimately, UCAT scores are a comparison of your own performance against others sitting UCAT. This means that achieving a ‘good score’ means performing well in UCAT compared to others. Statistics on how this year’s UCAT ANZ cohort performed will be available at the end of the UCAT testing cycle.

Test statistics are available from Pearson VUE for UCAT which took place in 2019.

These statistics showed that the approximate mean scaled score varied somewhat depending on subtest:

Subtest	Approx. UCAT Mean Score
UCAT Verbal Reasoning	571
UCAT Decision Making	618
UCAT Quantitative Reasoning	663
UCAT Abstract Reasoning	629
UCAT Situational Judgement	592

The following chart shows how each percentile converted to overall cognitive scaled scores in UCAT:

Percentile	Approximate UCAT cognitive scaled score
90^th+	2850+
80^th	2710
70^th	2610
60^th	2540
50^th	2470
40^th	2400
30^th	2330
20^th	2260
10^th	2150

Therefore, to be in the top 10% of students sitting UCAT in the past, you would need to have achieved an overall cognitive scaled score of over 2800.

Note that there may be differences between Australian / New Zealand students who sat UCAT previous years and this year, and therefore the above table cannot be applied accurately to this year’s UCAT ANZ cohort of students. UCAT ANZ test statistics will be published at the end of the UCAT testing cycle.

What UCAT ANZ score do I need to get into medicine?

In general, for standard applicants to medical courses in Australia, students need to be in the top 10% of those sitting UCAT. Rural students, students who live in certain regions (for eg for WSU), those from disadvantaged or low SES schools, those applying for Bonded Medical Places and those applying to dentistry may have lower UCAT score requirements for entry.

Furthermore, at some universities, offers for medicine will be made for students performing outstandingly well in their year 12 studies. Note that medical interviews are also a very important part of the medical selection process.