BMAT cancelled from 2024
Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing, which is a part of University of Cambridge, designs and administer several university admissions tests, including the Biomedical Admission Test, BMAT for short.
The BMAT test is used by several UK medical schools, Brighton and Sussex, Imperial, Lancaster, UCL, Cambridge, Leeds and Oxford, as part of their admission process for medicine.
Cambridge assessment states they will no longer administer the BMAT admission test from 2024/2025. This means for students applying next year in 2023 (for 2024 entry) will be the last cohort that will sit the BMAT test.
Do medical schools need the BMAT exam?
Medical schools cannot interview every student that applies to them. So, they need some way of selecting students that all have an excellent personal statement, actual and predicted grades. For Oxbridge, it is likely that students 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 the UCAT and GAMSAT) have a place. They help medical schools shortlist candidates for interview 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 there were glitches and issues that could affect the validity of the exam.
In the past Oxbridge used to have their 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, which will likely have elements similar to the UCAT exam.
Does the BMAT predict student performance at medical school?
Studies have shown that a high score in the BMAT exam are 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 at the first attempt.
The PACES is like an MMI exam in which there are patients and actors in which the candidate has to interact with, testing history taking, examination and management skills. It has 5 stations, each 20 minutes in length with two examiners in each station.
Similar outcomes were also found on 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 as a result.
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