TSA to TARA score conversion, and the score to aim for at Oxford

Oxford has not made any offers using TARA yet. Its first TARA applicants sit the test in October 2026, for 2027 entry.

So there is no Oxford TARA cut-off to quote, and no official way to turn a TSA score into a TARA score.

What we can do is estimate. Our conversion table turns your TSA past-paper marks into a rough TARA practice score, one module at a time.

The typical Oxford applicant comes out at about 4.5, the middle of TARA's scale.

Here is what we suggest aiming for:

• Economics and Management, and PPE: 7.0 or higher in both scored modules.

• Experimental Psychology, History and Economics, Human Sciences and PPL: 6.0 to 7.0 in both, with 7.0 as the stretch aim.

• History and Politics: the same 6.0 to 7.0 range, as the course has no TSA record to go on.

These are GhostPrep's preparation targets. Oxford has not said you need any particular score.

If you are not yet sure whether you need to sit TARA at all, start with the complete TARA guide.

Most students preparing for TARA practice on old TSA papers. UAT-UK itself points TARA candidates to them, as the two tests share a common history.

The catch is that a TSA paper gives you marks on a different test with a different scale. This table turns your marks into a rough TARA practice score for each module, by asking where your mark would have ranked among Oxford's TSA candidates.

Here is the GhostPrep estimated practice conversion:

How to use the table

1. Mark your TSA paper, then split your correct answers into the two modules. A TSA paper mixes its 25 Problem Solving and 25 Critical Thinking questions together. As a rule of thumb, Problem Solving questions are number-based: you work something out from figures, a table, a graph or a diagram. Critical Thinking questions are text-based: you reason about a short passage. Our Critical Thinking and Problem Solving guides go through every question type if one is hard to place.

2. Read across from your mark out of 25 to the estimated TARA score for that module. You do not need Oxford's score conversion for your paper.

3. Keep the two modules apart. TARA scores them separately and never adds them together.

A mark of about 15 out of 25 in Critical Thinking, or 14 in Problem Solving, comes out at about 4.5 on TARA, which is where TARA places its middle candidate.

A TARA score of 7.0 lines up with about 20 or 21 out of 25 in TSA Critical Thinking, and 19 in Problem Solving. On the overall TSA scale, that is roughly 70.

TSA Critical Thinking papers varied more in difficulty from year to year, so on an unusually hard or easy paper your Critical Thinking estimate could be up to a point out.

If you only have an overall TSA score

Oxford reported TSA results as a Problem Solving score, a Critical Thinking score and an overall score, on a scale designed so that a typical applicant scores about 60.

If the overall score is all you have, this gives a rougher reading for each module:

Oxford's TSA scale drifted between years. In most years the typical candidate scored close to 60, but in 2018 it was nearer 65.

Use the marks table where you can, as it does not depend on the scale.

Why we convert by rank

TARA is scored against the people who sit it. Each year, UAT-UK gives the middle candidate in the October sitting a score of 4.5, and puts the top-10% line at 7.0.

For 2027 entry, Oxford uses only the October sitting, so Oxford applicants will make up most of the people you are scored against. That makes the useful question where your mark would have ranked among Oxford's TSA candidates.

Our table finds the TARA score at the same rank.

We rebuilt the table this way in September 2026. The first version matched the percentage of questions answered correctly, and took its TSA scores from papers including 2018, where 60 was a below-average mark.

That placed the typical Oxford applicant at about 3.0 to 3.5, where 4.5 is closer.

The first TARA results give those targets a footing.

UAT-UK published the full score spread for 2,626 candidates across the October 2025 and January 2026 sittings:

Oxford was not using TARA that cycle, so these are percentiles for everyone who sat it. They are a guide to the field, and they set no Oxford standard.

They give two useful markers:

• 6.0 in each module was above the top-quarter line in both.

• 7.0 was roughly top-10% performance.

UAT-UK fixes the October sitting's median at 4.5 and its 90th percentile at 7.0, then uses the same scale for January. The combined figures above differ slightly because they include January.

The scale is rebuilt every cycle, so a 7.0 next year will not mean exactly what it meant this year. The UAT-UK technical report sets out the method.

Oxford's TSA record then tells us which courses sit at the top of that range:

The ranking approach behind our conversion table also gives a rough fix on past offer holders.

In PPE and Economics and Management, offer holders averaged 9 to 15 points above the applicant average on the TSA in every cycle from 2024 to 2026, including 2026, when every score came in lower.

In the years we have score charts for, about two-thirds of TSA candidates scored within 6 to 8 points of the average.

A gap of 9 to 15 points puts the average offer holder in these two courses around the top 10% of applicants or higher: about 7.0 to 8.5 on TARA's scale.

Those are averages, so many offer holders scored above them. A target set at the average would leave you behind a large share of the people who got in.

With that gap holding every year, and TARA's margin of error close to a whole point, we set the target for these two courses at 7.0 or higher.

The ranges are broad on purpose. TARA scores carry a margin of error of roughly 0.9 to 1.2 points.

A target of 6.4 for one course and 6.8 for another would claim a precision nobody has.

The Oxford data is also averages only. Without individual scores, nobody can place Oxford's offer holders precisely on the TARA scale.

Even 7.0 is a practice aim. Oxford weighs your test scores alongside your grades, the rest of your application and, if you are shortlisted, your interviews, as its applicant guidance explains.

The targets cover the two scored modules. TARA also has a Writing Task, unscored but sent to universities and compulsory for most candidates.

Whether yours counts, or whether you need to write it at all, depends on your course, which our Writing Task guide covers course by course.

Our targets lean on how Oxford applicants did on the TSA, the thinking-skills test most of these courses used before TARA.

We used Oxford's replies to freedom of information requests for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 cycles, plus Oxford's own course admissions reports where they gave a fuller figure.

The courses covered

For 2027 entry, Oxford requires TARA for the seven courses on this page:

Economics and Management; Experimental Psychology; History and Economics; History and Politics; Human Sciences; Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE); and Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics (PPL).

Oxford's admissions test list has the current requirements.

PPL runs under three UCAS codes:

Psychology and Philosophy, Psychology and Linguistics, and Philosophy and Linguistics. Oxford groups them in its statistics, so we do too.

We leave out PPE with Foundation Year, which also requires TARA. Counting PPL's three pathways separately, that makes ten courses, all listed in our Oxford TARA guide.

A note on dates: the "2026 cycle" means applying in autumn 2025 for 2026 entry. If you are applying for 2027 entry, you sit TARA in October 2026.

Here are the averages for applicants and offer holders, cycle by cycle:

Two things stand out.

Offer holders scored well above the average applicant in every course with full data, by about 5 to 15 points.

The 2026 cycle came in much lower across every course with data. PPE's offer-holder average fell from 73.5 to 61.5, and Economics and Management's from 74.7 to 62.9.

We have kept each year separate. Averaging the three years into one "offer score" would hide that shift, whatever caused it.

Oxford shortlists for interview after the test, which makes shortlisted candidates a useful second benchmark.

These are the whole-course figures we have for all three stages:

The pattern holds in every year with full data. Shortlisted candidates scored above the applicant average, and offer holders scored higher again.

The step from shortlist to offer was small:

0.5 to 2.9 points across all ten comparisons. Most of the gap between applicants and offer holders had already opened at shortlisting.

Interviews clearly matter once you are shortlisted, and higher TSA scores still went with getting an offer. These averages cannot tell you whether the test or the interview counted for more with any one candidate.

Oxford's own Economics and Management report adds that no particular TSA score guaranteed an interview.

Economics and Management

This is one of our strongest comparisons, because Oxford published applicant, shortlisted and offer-holder averages in all three cycles.

Offer holders averaged 69.8, then 74.7, then 62.9. The groups separate clearly, but a swing that size rules out any single, timeless TSA-to-TARA formula.

Aim high in both modules, and do not treat last cycle's 62.9 as a TARA equivalent.

Experimental Psychology

Applicant averages exist for all three years, but most colleges' offer figures were withheld. The offer averages in our table are partial.

Oxford published a combined Experimental Psychology and PPL report for the 2026 cycle. Across both courses, the TSA average was 46.2 for applicants, 53.7 for shortlisted candidates and 56.9 for offer holders.

That is a useful cross-check, though it cannot be split between the two courses.

History and Economics

For the 2024 and 2025 cycles, our average of the published college figures gives applicant averages of 58.1 and 60.5. Offer figures for those years were withheld.

Oxford's 2025–26 History and Economics report fills the latest gap: applicants averaged 49.6, shortlisted candidates 56.1 and offer holders 58.4.

That cycle, the TSA made up 33.5% of the shortlisting score and 20% of the ranking after interview. One full year is useful, but too little to justify a narrower target than 6.0 to 7.0.

History and Politics

History and Politics has no TSA record, because it did not use the TSA. For applications made in autumn 2025 (the 2026 cycle) it had no admissions test at all, while History and Economics required TSA Section 1, according to Oxford college guidance.

Borrowing History and Economics' figures would pass off another course's applicants as this one's. Use the general 6.0 to 7.0 range until Oxford's first TARA cycle gives real data.

Human Sciences

Oxford's Human Sciences admissions report is unusually complete. It gives whole-course applicant, shortlisted and offer-holder averages for all three years.

In the latest cycle they were 50.2, 54.6 and 55.1. That shows a real difference between the groups, and some candidates below the offer-holder average still got offers, as with any average.

PPE

Oxford's reply for PPE gives whole-course averages and medians at all three stages. For the 2026 cycle, the averages were 51.4 for applicants, 59.1 for those shortlisted and 61.5 for offer holders.

That is a big drop from 2025. Anyone quoting a "70-plus TSA" for PPE without naming the year is describing a different cycle.

Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics

Our average of the college figures gives PPL applicant averages for all three years. PPL-only offer averages are unusable, because nearly every college's offer figure was withheld.

That is why we give one target for all three pathways. The combined Experimental Psychology and PPL report confirms test scores formed part of selection, but does not split the two courses.

The conversion

TSA Section 1 gave a Problem Solving score, a Critical Thinking score and an overall score, and Oxford's published averages use the overall one.

TARA reports two separate scores, plus an unscored Writing Task that goes to universities, as the UAT-UK TARA page sets out.

UAT-UK points TARA candidates to TSA papers for practice, but publishes no conversion between the two.

So we built one in four steps:

1. We took the score charts that the TSA's test provider, Cambridge Assessment, published for the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2018 papers. Each shows the share of Oxford TSA candidates at every score, module by module, and we read those shares off the charts.

2. For each mark out of 25, we worked out what share of candidates scored below it on each paper. In 2013 and 2014 one Critical Thinking question was withdrawn, so we scaled those papers' marks to 25.

3. We found the TARA score at the same rank in UAT-UK's October 2025 results, using the median, top-quarter, top-10% and bottom-quarter lines in the technical report.

4. We rounded to half-point steps and set the final ranges by judgement, leaning towards the higher readings where the four papers disagreed.

Problem Solving barely moved from paper to paper: the typical candidate got 13 or 14 out of 25 on all four. Critical Thinking moved more.

Candidates got 57% right on average in 2014 and 72% in 2018, which makes its estimates less certain.

The main assumption is that the Oxford applicants sitting TARA in October 2026 will spread out much like Oxford's TSA candidates did. UCL applicants sitting in October will make the field a little different.

There is also no data on students who sat both tests, so the conversion cannot be checked directly.

The Oxford figures

We used Oxford's whole-course averages wherever they exist. Otherwise we took a simple average of the published college averages for each course and cycle, marked †.

Withheld figures were left out, never counted as zero. Where both an official average and our college-based one exist, they differ by 0.4 points at most.

We do not report a PPL offer average from a single visible college, or History and Economics offer averages for 2024 and 2025.

The course targets start from TARA's top-quarter and top-10% lines, then use Oxford's TSA record to decide which courses belong at the top of the range. We never add or average the two TARA scores.

Oxford's first TARA cycle, from October 2026, will give the first directly relevant data, and we plan to update this page when it arrives.

• Oxford freedom of information responses on TSA Section 1 scores for the 2024 to 2026 cycles: whole-course PPE averages and medians, and college-level averages for Experimental Psychology, History and Economics and PPL.

• UAT-UK TARA Technical Report 2025–26: cohort percentiles, scaling method and margins of error.

• Cambridge Assessment's TSA Oxford explanations of results for 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2018: score charts for every Oxford TSA candidate, and the scale's design (archived copies).

• Oxford's 2018 TSA score conversion, used to match that year's chart to marks out of 25 (archived copy).

• Oxford Economics and Management admissions reports for 2023–24, 2024–25 and 2025–26.

• Oxford Human Sciences 2025–26 report, covering three years at all three stages.

• Oxford History and Economics 2025–26 report, including selection weightings.

• Oxford Experimental Psychology and PPL 2025–26 report.