Why Simple Proportion Conversion Is Unreliable
The most intuitive conversion approach — multiplying a new score by 3/4 to get an old-format equivalent, or multiplying an old score by 4/3 to get a new-format equivalent — is a useful rough guide but not a precise conversion tool. The reason is that removing Abstract Reasoning did not simply reduce the total score range; it changed the composition of the test. AR had its own score distribution, and students' performance on AR was not perfectly correlated with their performance on the remaining subtests.
For example, if a student scored 700 on VR, 700 on DM, 700 on QR, and 700 on AR in the old format (total 2800/3600), their new-format equivalent would be 2100/2700. Multiplying 2800 by 3/4 gives 2100 — in this case, the proportion method works precisely. But students who were disproportionately strong or weak on AR relative to their other subtests will find that simple proportion conversion over- or under-estimates their equivalent performance.
The Percentile-Based Conversion Method
A more reliable conversion approach uses percentile ranking rather than raw score comparison. The principle is: find your percentile rank in the 2025 distribution, then find the score that corresponds to that same percentile rank in the 2024 distribution.
For example: a 2025 score of 2150 corresponds approximately to the 8th decile (top 20% of candidates). In 2024, the 8th decile was approximately 2910 out of 3600. So a 2025 score of 2150 is roughly equivalent to a 2024 score of 2910 in terms of relative performance among all candidates.
This percentile-based approach is more meaningful for application strategy because universities that use UCAT percentile thresholds for shortlisting are implicitly using a percentile-based comparison, even when they quote a raw score number. When Sheffield publishes a threshold of 1800 for 2026 entry, they arrived at that figure by identifying what raw score corresponds to approximately the 40th percentile — the same approach they used in previous years.
How to Use Conversion Data in Your Application Strategy
When researching a university's published historical UCAT requirements, note whether the threshold is quoted as a raw score or a percentile. Raw scores from 2024 or earlier must be converted using the percentile method before being meaningful for 2026 planning. Percentile thresholds (such as 'we interview the top 20% by UCAT') can be used directly — you simply find what raw score corresponds to the 8th decile in the 2025 data.
For universities that published threshold raw scores in 2024 terms and have not yet published 2026 equivalents, the percentile-conversion method gives a reasonable estimate. A 2024 threshold of 2800/3600 corresponds approximately to the 7th decile, which in 2025 terms is approximately 2070/2700. Use this as your working target for those institutions until they publish confirmed 2026 figures. MediSpoon's score planning tool incorporates this conversion logic to help you set realistic targets.
