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Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing
For test-takers
For institutions
Administering our tests
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Our tests are a global mark of excellence that set the quality standard. Backed by extensive research, they provide a fair measure of skills and aptitude, offering a valued tool for universities, organisations and governments.
Our tests are guided by the following key principles:
Our tests are designed to have a positive impact for test-takers. Any time spent preparing for our tests helps test-takers develop skills directly beneficial for their future academic studies.
Admissions tests provide a snapshot of a student’s ability at the time of their application to university study. Our research shows that admissions test performance also predicts later performance on the university course.
Many of our tests focus on knowledge and skills that should already be familiar to applicants. We aim to minimise the amount of new learning or study needed, to ensure that preparation is accessible to all test-takers.
The institutions that use our tests have input into our research programme and we hold regular meetings with them. We also fund research in partnership with institutions to explore the impact of our tests in their own admissions contexts.
We monitor the performance of all our test items to ensure they are of the highest quality. Advanced statistical analyses are used to monitor the performance of different test-taker groups (e.g. gender, school background) to guard against any potential bias.
An admissions test is one part of the admissions process and our research covers wider approaches to selection. We look at the broader context such as widening access initiatives, applicants’ perceptions of admissions processes, and the relationship between admissions test scores and other parts of the admissions process.
The research volume Applying the socio-cognitive framework to the BioMedical Admissions Test brings together the key research on BMAT, our admissions test for Medicine, Biomedical Science and Dentistry courses.
Download the executive summary