Become a test centre

Become a test centre

Test-takers sit our admissions tests at approved Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing centres. If you are an Exams Officer and wish to become an approved centre, please read the information below.

What does it mean to be an Admissions Testing centre?

If you are approved as a centre, you will:

• register test-takers for our tests* within the booking window;
• collect registration fees from test-takers (please see the Fees section below);
• run our tests at your venue on the scheduled dates and at the scheduled times under secure examination conditions;
• provide experienced and trained invigilators to oversee the secure administration of the tests;
• receive, store and return test materials in a timely and secure fashion.

We do not pay centres to run these tests. You may charge test-takers a reasonable administration fee to cover expenses such as hiring an invigilator, room hire and courier costs. Please contact us if you require further guidance.

You do not need to offer any preparation courses for our tests. We will provide you with all the materials and guidance you need to manage bookings and administer the tests. Depending on what sort of centre you are (see below), you can either accept external test-takers or only accept your own students.

Approval as a test centre lasts for 3 years after approval is granted, or after you last ran one of our tests, whichever is most recent.

* This information refers to all of our tests which are booked via centres. Currently, this covers:

• STEP tests in June
• BMAT in November
• University of Oxford admissions tests in November
• University of Cambridge pre-interview assessments in November
• MAT in November
  
• TMUA in November.

Applying to become an Admissions Testing centre

If you wish to apply to become a centre, please complete and submit the Centre approval request form. Please note this is separate from being a Cambridge Assessment centre.

You can apply to become a centre at any time; but the final deadline to apply to become a test centre for November 2020 tests is 30 September 2020. To ensure your application can be processed in time before the test registration deadline, we advise applying as soon as possible if you think you might have a test-taker for our admissions tests.

To accommodate the differing needs of institutions, there are two types of Admissions Testing centre which have eligibility to administer our suite of tests:

Open centres

Your contact details will appear on our Find a centre page and test-takers will be able to contact you directly about registering to take a test at your centre.

Internal centres

Your contact details will not appear on our website and you will only administer tests for your own students.

For existing Cambridge Assessment centres, please be aware that this status only applies for Admissions Testing.

You can withdraw from being an Admissions Testing centre at any time, as long as you do not have test-takers registered for upcoming test sessions. To withdraw, please contact us.

Fees

We do not pay centres to run these tests. You may charge test-takers a reasonable administration fee to cover expenses such as hiring an invigilator and room hire. Please contact us if you require further guidance.

Application process

Once you have submitted the Centre approval request form, we will review your application. As part of your application, you will be asked to provide photographs of your secure storage facilities and inform us of the maximum capacity of your centre. We may also need to conduct a remote inspection of your premises. If this is the case, we will inform you by email.

After submitting the form, you will receive an email confirming receipt of your application. We will then contact you as soon as possible to inform you of the outcome of your application. Please note, the length of time it takes for your application to be processed depends on a range of factors and we cannot specify how long the approval process may take.

If you are approved as a centre, you will receive login details and training notes for Entries Extranet, the candidate registration system, as well as access to our centre support site where you can find lots of useful information about running our tests.

Need more information?

Please visit our Requirements for Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing Centres page for additional information.

Please contact us if you have any other questions.