TL;DR

No, not all UCAT candidates sit the same test questions. Candidates are randomly provided one of several possible test forms to ensure security. The UCAT uses a robust scoring system involving standardisation, equating, and scaling to maintain consistency and fairness across different test versions. Medify uses similar methods to ensure our mock exams accurately reflect the official UCAT scoring system.

How does the UCAT Consortium ensure that different test forms are comparable?

The UCAT Consortium employs a sophisticated scoring system to ensure fairness and accuracy, even though different candidates may receive different test forms. Here’s how the scoring system typically works:

1. Standardisation

   • Each question is carefully calibrated for difficulty using Item Response Theory (IRT) based on pre-testing.

   • IRT is used to assess how effectively each question differentiates among candidates of varying ability levels, ensuring each question's appropriateness and fairness.

   • This standardisation allows the UCAT Consortium to ensure that all candidates are assessed equally, regardless of the test form they encounter.

2. Scoring per section

   • Candidates are scored on each section of the exam based on the number of correct answers.

   • There is no negative marking for incorrect answers.

   • Some UCAT questions are unscored – but you can’t tell which ones. These are likely being tested for future test forms.

   • The raw score (the number of correct responses) is then converted into a scaled score for each section.

3. Equating

   • To adjust for any variations in difficulty across different test forms, the UCAT uses a statistical process known as equating.

   • Equating ensures that the scores are comparable across different versions of the test, meaning a specific score represents the same level of performance, no matter which form was administered.

   • As a result, two candidates sitting different forms who answer the same number of questions correctly could end up with slightly different UCAT scores.

4. Total score

   • The scaled scores from different sections are summed to produce a total score, which can then be used to compare all candidates.

This method ensures that the UCAT remains fair and reliable as an assessment tool, despite the variability in the test forms administered to different candidates.

What is Medify's approach?

Just like the UCAT Consortium, Medify employs IRT analysis to assess the difficulty and performance of our questions. This allows us to create a range of mocks that accurately reflect the actual UCAT Test Day experience. We then apply scaled scoring to each mock, just like in the official UCAT exam. This means that, no matter how easy or difficult the mock may be, our scoring will be an accurate reflection of your performance.