UKCAT GEP cut-offs 2008 - hearsay abounds!

[Linnaeus]

Of course, this is a highly speculative thread - no doubt it'll be full of reports from friend's of friend's big sister's neighbour's cat's, Ferris Bueller style. Still, seeing as a lot of med schools seem intent on ranking the god-awful UKCAT, I want to be as well armed as possible when making UCAS applications. I'll be damned if I use one of my four only for it to go completely unread after they've inspected my UKCAT.

Imperial have spoken of a 15% cut-off, Oxford a 40%. From trawling old threads, it seems that last year 650 was the cut-off for Oxford, with 760 supposedly 'guarenteeing' an interview, but this doesn't seem to map up with the notion that 700 represents 1 s.d. from the mean and hence top 15%.

I'm hopelessly confused, but hopefully we'll be able to cobble together a sense of what you need for where.

ps - sorry if this has been covered before - I'm new and couldn't see all this info in a single thread, so thought I'd start one.

Good luck to all those wrestling with the CAT in the coming weeks!

J

[Linnaeus]

I rang Pearson on Thursday and asked if I could get some sense of my percentile, but they told me they don't give out such data. This is OUTRAGEOUS! For a test which costs £60 at its cheapest, it really should give you this info - any other test worth its salt would, so why not the UKCAT?! Sorry, it's plain I have a real bee in my bonnet about this, as my poor girlfriend well knows - I promised not to bang on about the UKCAT after the test, but now I have more questions than I had before I took the bloody thing!

J

[AimsRJ]

I'm sorry but isnt this academic for you...surely your UKCAT score will tick that box for anywhere you apply?

[Psy]

I didn't do a-level maths and don't really know what I'm talking about here, but I think we can only assume what you assume, that 700 is 1 s.d.
I'm guessing it follows this 68-95-99.7 rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 300 mark likely corresponds to -3sigma on that graph, and 900 is +3sigma, which gets 99.7%. So as you say, 700 or 1sigma would put you in the top 15.7%.

While we're here, is it possible the 15% you referred to was the top 15% of scores of the people who applied to Oxford rather than the top 15% of all UKCAT scores?

I managed to waste one of my UCAS choices last year because Kings hadn't the decency to update their policy on their website until the last minute (so I had no idea CAT scores prioritised interviews).

The test is random and irrelevant enough as it is, but with the lack of transparency and inconsistency in how it's applied, it is impossible to know where to apply to give you "the best chance". With medicine as oversubscribed as it is (10 to 1 or whatever it is) I really think this is pretty unfair on us.

I mean just some of the issues spinning around in my head are:

How good does your score need to be for it to be worth applying for the places that ostensibly use it (which is basically your question)?

For the places that claim not to use it very much (or at all, like Bristol say), will you be competing with all the other people who didn't do very well (plus others, plus insurance choices), and therefore, in a sense, are you wasting any advantage that your score might give you? In other words, even if your score isn't superb, is there some advantage to be gained from it being slightly above average (say) for selection purposes, and therefore should you go for places that DO use it?

Did anyone see this? Sheffield University defends turning down straight A students - Telegraph
In addition to opaque and barbaric selection procedures it looks like we are also the victims of social engineering and positive discrimination (are you surprised?).

The fact they lower the thresholds in relation to economic hardship/educational disadvantage is quite revealing. The whole propaganda behind such tests is that they test innate aptitude and ability, if this is the case, such tweaking is clearly unfair (replace UKCAT with IQ and you can see how controversial all this is).

If they are not valid tests of innate ability, then they are not fit for purpose in the first place. They are another thing that can be crammed and prepared for, and of an even less relevant and much shallower nature than the much maligned a-levels.

Maybe they just pull names out of hats (actually, I'm starting to wonder whether this would be better than the current system).

[iheartmedicine]

Originally Posted by Psy

Did anyone see this? Sheffield University defends turning down straight A students - Telegraph
In addition to opaque and barbaric selection procedures it looks like we are also the victims of social engineering and positive discrimination (are you surprised?).

Perhaps the reason why they interview certain students and not others is because of the way they are able to convey their desire to study medicine. Is it not possible that some of the straight A students with high UKCAT scores are not going to make good doctors? Perhaps they want to have a diverse student body, because doctors treat a range of people, so it is prudent for doctors to come from different backgrounds. I think that the Telegraph has its own (political) agenda just like every other newspaper and that everything written therein should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, afterall, and it is always easier to blame others for our own shortcomings.

[Arch_Angel]

Originally Posted by Linnaeus

Of course, this is a highly speculative thread - no doubt it'll be full of reports from friend's of friend's big sister's neighbour's cat's, Ferris Bueller style. Still, seeing as a lot of med schools seem intent on ranking the god-awful UKCAT, I want to be as well armed as possible when making UCAS applications. I'll be damned if I use one of my four only for it to go completely unread after they've inspected my UKCAT.

Imperial have spoken of a 15% cut-off, Oxford a 40%. From trawling old threads, it seems that last year 650 was the cut-off for Oxford, with 760 supposedly 'guarenteeing' an interview, but this doesn't seem to map up with the notion that 700 represents 1 s.d. from the mean and hence top 15%.

I'm hopelessly confused, but hopefully we'll be able to cobble together a sense of what you need for where.

ps - sorry if this has been covered before - I'm new and couldn't see all this info in a single thread, so thought I'd start one.

Good luck to all those wrestling with the CAT in the coming weeks!

J

I wouldn't try and put any definate figures on it. The inner statistical workings of Pearson Vue (who are a bunch of incompentent fools that couldn't organise water being wet) will not be readily available to the people who you will speak to on the phone, nor will they make any effort whatsoever to help you. Also individual medical schools will have certain parameters, but they are under no obligation not to change them if they want more / less people fitting into their interview criteria.

The parameters are set to try and get the number of people they want to interview, which again is a factor of how popular the medical school is, the ratio of offers to places they usually give out etc.

You are well within the bounds for any course (and I suspect you know this well).

[Linnaeus]

Arch Angel, seriously, when you say 'I suspect you know this well', I don't. I honestly have no idea whether or not my scores are good enough for places like Imperial, let alone Kings GEP. I really, really don't want to waste one of my precious four UCAS spaces, and I've read some very scary things about cutoffs at the latter (like 775), but this was probably forum scaremongering. Credit to Barts for being pretty open about their cutoffs and being amenable to applicants calling to ask. I don't see why other schools can't at least give an indication of what might be an appropriate target score; it seems only fair.

Psy, I couldn't agree more with a number of the points you made. In answer to your Imperial 'top 15%' query, I don't know if it applies to the top 15% UKCAT nationally or to their applicants - am guessing the latter would be considerably higher. If this is the case, I have no idea what a 'top 15% of Imperial applicants' kind of score will look like. I tried calling their GEP admissions department on Friday but it went to answer machine. I'm going to try again tomorrow and will post if I get some joy.

Sometimes I agree that a 'names out of a hat' approach would be preferable to this veritable bugger's muddle.

[Psy]

Originally Posted by iheartmedicine

Perhaps the reason why they interview certain students and not others is because of the way they are able to convey their desire to study medicine. Is it not possible that some of the straight A students with high UKCAT scores are not going to make good doctors?

Yes, absolutely, but I object to changing the UKCAT thresholds based on your social group, for the reasons I mentioned.
Agreed about the Telegraph, but they say she got the information under the Freedom of Information Act.

[CheeseyChutney]

Originally Posted by Linnaeus

Credit to Barts for being pretty open about their cutoffs and being amenable to applicants calling to ask. I don't see why other schools can't at least give an indication of what might be an appropriate target score; it seems only fair.

I thought that Barts didn't give a cut-off for GEP, but just say they pick who to interview based on highest ukcat scores? (I know for their 5year course there is a 600av cutoff)

[tallulah]

Linnaeus,

I think your ukcat score is really high and you don't have anything to worry about - prob in top 5%, altho that's sheer speculation on my part really. I have read quite a few of the threads on here about ukcat scores, and very rarely are they higher than yours tho.

I can understand why the med schools won't reveal their cut-off scores... If their policy is to interview, say, the top 25% of applicants and they tell us that their cut-off last year was 700 then people who score under 700 are unlikely to apply at all. And they probably don't want to reduce the size of the applicant pool that much.

And I've heard that last year for the GEP, Kings chose the top ukcat scoring 100 applicants for interview automatically, and then selected the other 50 or so by weighing up the score with the PS, reference, experience, etc. Altho when I went to the open day, they said they select interviewees based on highest 25% ukcat scorers - not sure whether they meant nationally or of those who apply there. Somewhere I read that it's nationally - think it was on a thread here.

So, as you say, speculation-tastic!! Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, I'm deffo planning to apply to Kings...