The numbers a teacher should know

This is the number that sets the emotional baseline for a whole cohort, and it is the one most often quoted wrongly. Students arrive with a figure they have absorbed from somewhere, usually a headline ratio of applicants to places, and they treat it as their personal odds. It is not. The ratio counts every application, including those from candidates who have not met the academic requirements at all, so the effective competition for a well-prepared applicant with a defensible list of four is very different from the headline.

The genuinely useful version of this number is not a single ratio but a shape: how many applicants there were, how many places existed, and how those places are distributed. Places are capped for these courses, and the cap is set nationally rather than by demand, which is why strong years do not simply produce more admissions. It is also why a dropped grade behaves differently here from other degrees.

What to do with it: use it to make the case for a serious fifth choice and an early start, not to frighten a cohort. A student who understands that the ratio includes unprepared applicants, and that their job is to be in the prepared group with a well-spread list, takes away something actionable. A student who takes away only the ratio takes away dread.

Offer rates are the most misused numbers in this sector, because almost every quoted rate describes a different denominator. A university's offer rate counts offers against applications to that university. A national rate counts offers against applicants. A tutoring provider's rate counts a selected cohort of its own students. These are three genuinely different quantities, and a student comparing them is comparing nothing.

The test to apply to any offer-rate claim is the same four questions every time. Who is in the denominator, and were they selected? How many people is it, so is the figure stable or a small-sample artefact? What counts as success, an offer anywhere or an offer at the university in question? And what period does it describe? A published rate that cannot answer those four is not evidence, whoever is quoting it.

We publish our own offer rate for students who reached interview after a defined amount of one-to-one tutoring, with the cohort definition, the denominator and the reporting period all stated. It describes a selected group of tutored students and is not a national rate, so it should never be read as one. It is linked here as a worked example of what a claim with a stated methodology looks like, which is what your students should expect before they believe any number they are shown.

These are the numbers most likely to be quoted out of date, and the damage is real: a student told in September that they need a score they no longer need, or that their score is fine when it is not, makes four choices on a false premise. Two things make this area treacherous. First, the test changed. Since the 2025 cycle the UCAT is scored out of 2700 across three cognitive subtests, so any cut-off figure above 2700 belongs to the retired 3600-scale test and cannot be compared with a current score at all. Second, most cut-offs are not published in advance: universities commonly set them after seeing the cohort, so last year's figure is a historic observation, never a promise.

That is why the decile is the more useful number. Deciles express where a score sits against the candidates who sat the test that year, so the ninth decile means the same thing every year even as raw scores drift. When a student asks whether their score is good, the honest and useful answer is a decile position, not a comparison against a remembered threshold.

The third number in this group is the university's own weighting. A score that falls below a threshold at one university may carry only forty per cent of a combined shortlisting score at another, where GCSE grades make up the rest. Knowing which model applies matters more than the score itself, and it is the thing that turns a disappointing result into a workable list of four.

This is a scheduling number rather than a statistic, and it is the one a school can act on most directly. Interview invitations are issued across the winter, often with very little notice, and they land in the middle of mock exams, university open days and coursework deadlines. A student who is invited to interview with ten days' warning while sitting mocks is in trouble in a way that has nothing to do with their ability.

Knowing the typical windows by university lets a school do two useful things. It lets you avoid scheduling an unmissable internal commitment across a peak interview period for your applicants, and it lets you tell a student in November roughly when they should expect to hear, which removes weeks of refreshing an inbox. It also makes the difference between an interview a student prepares for and one they attend.

Treat published windows as patterns rather than guarantees. Universities move dates, add rounds and interview in waves, so the value is in knowing the shape of the winter, not in relying on a specific date.

For international applicants the fee is frequently the number that decides the application, and it is the one families are least prepared for. Medicine and dentistry are among the most expensive undergraduate courses in the UK, the clinical years usually cost more than the pre-clinical ones, and the total is a multi-year commitment rather than a single figure. A family looking at a headline annual fee is often looking at less than half the real number.

There is a second constraint that catches schools out: the number of international places on these courses is capped separately and is small. That makes the international application materially more competitive than the home one at the same university, quite apart from the cost. Both facts are better delivered in Year 12 than in Year 13.

The same conversation applies in a quieter form to home students. These are long courses with placement travel and accommodation costs in the later years, and bursaries and scholarships exist that families routinely do not know about. A student who can see how the whole degree is funded applies with more confidence than one privately worried about year five.