BMAT cancelled from 2024
Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing, a part of the University of Cambridge, designs and administers several university admissions tests, including the Biomedical Admission Test, BMAT for short.
Several UK medical schools, Brighton and Sussex, Imperial, Lancaster, UCL, Cambridge, Leeds, and Oxford, use the BMAT test as part of their admission process for medicine.
Cambridge Assessment states that it will no longer administer the BMAT admission test from 2024/2025. This means students applying next in 2023 (for 2024 entry) will be the last cohort to take the BMAT test.
Update 15 July 2024 - Most BMAT medical schools have indicated they will use the UCAT exam instead.
Do medical schools need the BMAT exam?
Medical schools cannot interview every student who applies. So, they need some way of selecting students who all have excellent personal statements and actual and predicted grades. For Oxbridge, students likely have GCSE grades 9’s in all subjects, and many will also be predicted A*A*A* at A-levels.
This is where the BMAT exam (and also other medical school entrance exams such as the UCAT and GAMSAT) have a place. They help medical schools shortlist candidates for interviews and offers. If the BMAT exam was cancelled or not valid for some reason, the medical schools would likely go to your GCSE grades to shortlist, as these, for most candidates, would be the only actual grades that you have. Some medical schools already grade your GCSE scores as part of the admissions process.
The BMAT (and UCAT) was administered online for a short period during the pandemic, and some glitches and issues could affect the validity of the exam.
In the past, Oxbridge used to have its own entrance exams for medicine, which could be sat at your sixth form. It is possible they could go back to this. Current BMAT medical schools could simply switch to the UCAT, which would mean one standard entrance exam for admission to a UK medical school. An alternative outcome is that the BMAT universities could club together and set their own entrance exam, likely with elements similar to the UCAT exam.
Does the BMAT predict student performance at medical school?
Studies have shown that a high score on the BMAT exam is more likely to pass the MRCP exam. The MRCP exam is sat when you are a junior doctor pursuing a career in hospital medicine. A high score in section 1 of the BMAT exam, problem-solving and critical thinking, is a good predictor of performance in the MRCP PACES exam and passing on the first attempt.
The PACES is like an MMI exam. There are patients and actors with whom the candidate interacts, testing history taking, examination, and management skills. It has five stations, each 20 minutes in length, with two examiners at each station.
Similar outcomes were also found in the verbal reasoning scores of the UCAT exam, and some medical schools are now starting to increase the weighting of this section of the UCAT exam.
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