How the TMUA is scored
How 40 raw marks become a score from 1.0 to 9.0, why there is no negative marking, and why raw-to-scaled conversion changes every year.
The TMUA gives you 40 raw marks to play for — 20 per paper — and reports a score on a scale from 1.0 to 9.0, to one decimal place. Understanding what happens in between changes how you should sit the test.
Raw marks first
Every question is worth exactly the same. There is no weighting for difficulty, and there is no negative marking. A question you guess blindly has the same expected cost as one you skip — except that guessing might land.
The practical rule follows immediately: never leave an answer blank. On a multiple-choice question you cannot start, an instant guess is free expected value. Budget the last minute of each paper for filling in anything untouched.
Then the conversion
Raw marks are converted onto the 1.0–9.0 scale. Two things about that conversion matter:
- It is recalculated every year. A given raw mark does not map to a fixed scaled score across sittings. A paper that turned out to be harder is compensated for in the conversion, which is the point — it makes scores comparable between years.
- There are separate conversions for each paper and for the overall score. You get a score for Paper 1, a score for Paper 2 and an overall score, and the overall one is not simply the average of the other two.
This is why you should be sceptical of anyone quoting a precise raw-to-scaled table as if it were permanent. It describes one past sitting, not yours.
What score do you need?
There is no single answer, and this is where most published advice overreaches. Universities use the TMUA differently: some as a shortlisting filter, some as one factor among many, some as a route to a reduced offer. The thresholds that circulate online are typically informal estimates or averages from previous cycles, not published requirements.
So: check the course page for each university you are applying to, and treat any number you read elsewhere — including any number you might read on a preparation site — as hearsay until the university itself says it. More on that here.
What this means for practice
Because the conversion moves, chasing a target scaled score on past papers is not very meaningful. Raw marks out of 20 per paper are the stable, honest measure of whether you are improving — and the gap between your Paper 1 and Paper 2 raw marks tells you where the next hour of work should go.
QED tracks raw marks per paper and shows the trend across attempts, so the comparison is like-for-like. It also shows an estimated scaled score, but treat that as indicative: it is derived from a provisional curve, not from the official conversion for your sitting.
Start with a real past paper — an untimed one is fine — and use the raw mark as your baseline.