How to Prepare for TARA: Why Oxford and UCL’s New Admissions Test Is More Familiar Than It Looks

The Test of Academic Reasoning for Admissions, or TARA, is relatively new. For students applying to courses at Oxford and UCL, that can make preparation feel unusually uncertain.

There are fewer years of TARA papers to work through. There is less historical data. Unlike long-established admissions tests, students cannot simply look back through a decade of previous results and preparation materials.

That does not mean candidates are starting from scratch.

The most important thing to understand about TARA is that, while the test itself is new, many of the underlying skills are not.

The University of Oxford recommends previous TSA and BMAT papers as useful preparation for TARA.

That gives candidates a much stronger starting point.

What is the TARA?

The official UAT-UK TARA guidance explains that TARA assesses three areas.

Critical Thinking

22 multiple-choice questions in 40 minutes.

Problem Solving

22 multiple-choice questions in 40 minutes.

Writing Task

One essay-style response, chosen from three questions, completed in 40 minutes with a maximum of 750 words.

The first two sections are scored separately on a scale from 1 to 9.

The Writing Task is not scored numerically by UAT-UK. Instead, the response is provided to universities requiring it.

There is also no negative marking.

That seemingly small feature has major implications for how candidates should approach the test.

You have about 1 minute 49 seconds per question

Both multiple-choice sections give candidates 40 minutes to answer 22 questions.

That works out at approximately:

109 seconds per question, or 1 minute 49 seconds.

Candidates should not literally spend exactly 109 seconds on every question.

Some questions may take 30 or 40 seconds. Others may deserve two or three minutes.

The skill is learning to recognise which is which.

This is why I see TARA preparation as partly a test of reasoning and partly a test of resource allocation.

Your scarce resource is time.

If you can answer an easier question accurately in 45 seconds, you have effectively created additional time that can be invested elsewhere.

Conversely, spending five minutes trying to perfect one difficult answer can become very expensive if it prevents you reaching several more accessible questions later in the paper.

Why can TARA be particularly difficult for perfectionists?

One of the habits I work on most with students preparing for admissions tests is knowing when to move on.

Strong academic students are often used to solving something completely before leaving it.

That instinct can work against them here.

TARA rewards something closer to an 80/20 principle: reach a sufficiently strong judgement, select the best answer available and keep moving.

Because there is no negative marking, candidates should attempt every multiple-choice question.

If you can eliminate three clearly implausible answers but remain uncertain between two options, you have already substantially improved your position.

At that point, the question becomes:

Is another two minutes on this question really the best use of two minutes?

Sometimes the answer is yes.

Often, it is not.

Developing that judgement is part of test preparation.

Multiple choice is a skill in itself

Students sometimes think of multiple-choice questions as easier because the answer is sitting somewhere in front of them.

That is not necessarily the right way to think about them.

A good multiple-choice admissions question is designed so that several answers look plausible.

You therefore need two skills:

• working towards the correct answer
• working away from incorrect answers

The second is frequently underestimated.

Sometimes you do not need to establish immediately that Answer C is definitely correct.

You may instead recognise that A contradicts the information given, B relies on an assumption the argument never makes, D answers a slightly different question and E cannot mathematically be true.

You are left with C.

That is still successful reasoning.

When there is no negative marking, intelligent elimination becomes especially powerful.

Critical Thinking: learn to trust the first read

Critical Thinking is not fundamentally a test of how much you know.

It assesses whether you can handle arguments carefully by identifying conclusions, recognising assumptions, assessing evidence and spotting weaknesses in reasoning.

One of the biggest time drains I see is repeated reading.

A student reads the passage.

Then reads it again.

Then looks at an answer.

Then returns to the passage.

Then rereads another sentence.

By the time they reach a judgement, several minutes may have disappeared.

Practice should gradually reduce that dependence.

The objective is not to read carelessly.

You want to become sufficiently practised that your first reading becomes better.

You begin recognising what matters.

What is the author actually concluding?

Which statement is evidence and which is merely context?

What has to be true for this argument to work?

Does this new information strengthen the conclusion, weaken it or actually have little relevance?

Over time, these processes should become increasingly habitual.

You read once with purpose rather than repeatedly reading in search of certainty.

Problem Solving: the mathematics is only part of the problem

The Problem Solving section similarly does not require advanced subject knowledge.

TARA is designed as a test of academic reasoning rather than a curriculum examination.

However, basic mathematical fluency matters.

Percentages, ratios, rates, interpreting information, recognising patterns and manipulating numbers all become much harder when basic calculations themselves require substantial conscious effort.

This is an area where practice can create considerable improvement.

When I teach quantitative reasoning, I often focus on how I see the problem rather than simply presenting a formal solution after the event.

That can include drawing something.

Reframing a percentage as a fraction.

Working backwards from the answer choices.

Estimating before calculating.

Recognising that two pieces of information are actually irrelevant.

Using proportional reasoning rather than constructing an unnecessarily complicated equation.

The more problems a candidate has seen and properly reviewed, the larger their mental library of approaches becomes.

A question that initially looks completely unfamiliar can gradually become:

“I have seen this structure before.”

That recognition saves time.

TARA is new. The underlying preparation is not.

One of the most useful things candidates can do is look beyond the limited number of TARA-specific questions currently available.

There is meaningful overlap with previous admissions testing.

Oxford itself identifies TSA and BMAT past papers as useful TARA preparation material.

In particular, TSA Section 1 historically tested Problem Solving and Critical Thinking, while BMAT Section 1 also contained thinking-skills material.

This does not mean that every old TSA or BMAT question perfectly replicates a TARA question.

It does mean there is a substantial body of high-quality material available for developing many of the same underlying reasoning skills.

The challenge is knowing which material is relevant, what skill each question is testing and, crucially, how to learn from mistakes rather than simply accumulating completed papers.

Candidates who want structured support can explore one-to-one TARA preparation, including targeted work on reasoning, timing and test strategy.