Has my TARA score really improved?
TARA Critical Thinking practice marks
Enter two marks out of 22
Your result
TARA Pro
Score 7.0 or your money back
£229 once
Price rises to £379 on 1 January. Save £150 by joining before then.
At least 12 months of access
No VAT is charged. Conditions
A TARA score can move by about 2 marks out of 22 by chance alone, roughly 0.9 to 1.2 scaled points.
Questions people ask
How much can a TARA score vary by chance?
UAT-UK's published measurement error for 2026 was about 2 raw marks out of 22 in each module, or roughly 0.9 to 1.2 scaled points. That is one standard error; about 95% of the time the noise stays within twice that.
My mark went up 3 marks. Have I improved?
Maybe, but one jump of 3 is within normal noise on a 22-question paper: luck alone produces a change that size fairly often. Several unseen, timed papers moving the same way is much stronger evidence.
Can I compare my TARA score with last year's?
No. Each cycle's scale is set afresh, anchored to its own October candidates, so scores from different years cannot be subtracted as progress.
Does redoing the same paper count?
Not as evidence of progress. Remembering questions raises the mark without any change in skill. Compare first attempts on papers you have not seen.
Is the TARA exam hard?
It is tight on time: each module gives 22 questions in 40 minutes, and the average Critical Thinking candidate used 2,324 of the 2,400 seconds. The average score was 4.2 out of 9.0 in Critical Thinking.
More free tools
Keep going
How we work this out
What it does
Check whether a jump between two practice marks is bigger than normal test noise, using UAT-UK's published measurement error.
Two marks out of 22 on TARA-style practice papers in the same module, or one real TARA score from the 2026 cycle. Measurement error is UAT-UK's published standard error of measurement (SEM) for each module and sitting.
Method
- We take the largest published SEM for your module: 2.12 raw marks for Critical Thinking and 2.00 for Problem Solving, or 1.24 and 0.98 scaled points. Using the largest keeps the answer cautious.
- The difference between two marks, each with that error, has a spread of the SEM times the square root of 2. A change of 1.96 times that spread or more happens by noise alone less than 5% of the time: 5.9 marks in Critical Thinking and 5.5 in Problem Solving.
- The chance figure is how often noise alone would move a mark at least as far as yours, using a normal curve.
- For one real score we show plus or minus 1.96 SEM around it, capped at 1 and 9.
- For an official score, the one number shown is the middle of the retest band, which is the score itself; the band is listed under your result.