Free. No signup. Official 2024-25 figures.

What is a good ESAT score?

A good ESAT score depends on the module and the course. Use the free score converter to place a scaled score in the published distribution, then read the course-specific context below.

“Is 6.56.5 competitive?” depends on the module, the course and the evidence that university publishes. This page keeps that course context separate from the converter's raw-mark estimate.

Every number on this page comes from the UAT-UK ESAT Technical Report 2024-25 or the official ESAT site, cited beside the claim. Nothing is estimated.

Put a score on the real distribution

11,919 people sat the ESAT for 2025 entry. Everyone takes Mathematics 1; most take two more modules, and the commonest combination by a distance is Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2 and Physics, chosen by 72% of them. Here is what they scored.

Where does a score land?

11,919 candidates, October 2024 and January 2025
5%10%15%123456789mediantop 10%5.4Candidate share
5.4

Top quarter

Above the 75th percentile (5.4), below the 90th (6.7). 21% of Mathematics 1 candidates scored in a higher band, and 8% were in the same band as you, 5.25 to 5.75.

Read it loosely. Mathematics 1 scaled scores carry a standard error of 0.67 to 0.75 (Table 18), and a true score sits within one standard error of the reported one about 68% of the time. So 4.7 and 6.2 are not results you can reliably tell apart.

Mean
4.46
Median
4.2
Top quarter from
5.4
Top 10% from
6.7

Is 6.56.5 competitive for your course?

Imperial publishes historic 2025 outcome means by department. Cambridge publishes how it uses the test, but no offer-holder average for any ESAT course. Choose the exact course to see the number that exists, or the reasoning that replaces one when it does not.

Cambridge and Imperial, course by course

What did typical offer-holders score?

Cambridge · 2027 entry

Engineering

Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2 and Physics.

6.56.5

Top quarter. Top quarter from 5.45.4; top tenth from 6.76.7.

6.56.5

Top quarter. Top quarter from 5.55.5; top tenth from 6.86.8.

6.56.5

Top quarter. Top quarter from 5.65.6; top tenth from 6.86.8.

Your score vs the field

Required-module mean
Your mean 6.56.5October cohort middle 4.54.5October top tenth 7.07.0

The honest answer

There is no honest Cambridge offer-holder number to put beside your 6.56.5 module mean.

33 of your 33 selected scores reach the top quarter of their published module fields. Cambridge calls a strong test performance usually necessary for interview, but publishes no course average or cut-off.

All three modules are fixed. Cambridge says a strong admissions-test performance is usually needed for interview, then reads the scores with the rest of the application.

Cambridge admissions-test policy2027 module requirements

Imperial publishes a department-level sum of required module scores. The per-module figure shown here is that sum divided by the number of required modules. It is our arithmetic for readability, not a second Imperial statistic and not a UAT-UK overall score. Sources checked 6 August 2026.

What the number actually is

One score per module, and no total

You get a separate 1.0 to 9.0 score for every module you sit, to one decimal place. There is no overall ESAT score. Any guide quoting you a combined figure has invented it.

Technical report, page 4

Every module has its own distribution

UAT-UK reports each module separately. Read a score within its module's distribution rather than comparing the same number across Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2 and Physics.

Technical report, pages 5 and 7

Paper form changes the comparison

The testing window used more than one paper form. Equating accounts for differences in form difficulty, so a practice mark is not an official scaled score until the relevant form has been processed.

Technical report, page 6

It is built to be hard on purpose

27 questions in 40 minutes per module, no calculator. UAT-UK tells candidates not to expect the marks they get in school exams, and the report found Physics and Mathematics 2 were too difficult for many people in this cycle.

Official ESAT site; technical report, pages 3 and 33

Guessing costs nothing

No marks are deducted for a wrong answer, so a blank is strictly worse than a guess. Almost everyone uses the full 40 minutes: the median module time was exactly 40:00 for four of the five modules.

Official ESAT site; technical report, page 35

Read the score in context

Universities read an ESAT result alongside the rest of an application. The converter's FAQ keeps the current Cambridge and Imperial wording, source links and admissions qualifications in one place; the course comparison above then shows the evidence that is published for a particular course.

So what should you aim for?

There is no single target that means the same thing across every module. Use the distribution controls above to see the percentile context for the module you chose, and use the course comparison to check what the relevant university actually publishes.

Have a mark out of 27 from a practice paper? UAT-UK publishes the scaled score, not a fixed raw-mark conversion table. The canonical converter keeps that boundary clear and shows a modelled range rather than inventing one official number.

Estimate an ESAT score from a practice mark

Sources

UAT-UK ESAT Technical Report 2024-25 (PDF): Pearson VUE for UAT-UK. Scaled score summary statistics and percentiles, Table 5, page 9. Binned distributions, Figures 1 to 5, pages 9 to 11. Scaling method, Tables 2 and 3, page 7. Scaled score reliability and standard error, Table 18, page 34.

UAT-UK, Test Results: the score scale, the absence of grade boundaries, and how results reach universities through UCAS matching.

UAT-UK, about the ESAT: test format, module choice, no pass or fail, no penalty for wrong answers, and the four universities that use the test.

Imperial College London, Understanding your ESAT and TMUA scores: how one of the four reads the score, plus its historic 2025 department outcome dashboard.

UniGenius is an independent study resource. We are not affiliated with UAT-UK, Pearson VUE or any of the universities named above.

So which number would you get?

The chart tells you what a score means. It cannot tell you which one you would walk out with. Our diagnostic can: a short run of real ESAT questions, adapting as you go, then a starting level for the topics it sampled plus the first gap worth closing. No account, no card.

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