Debate on student access tests

The new tests are for heavily over-subscribed courses

A debate is raging over the extent to which prospective law and medicine students in the UK can prepare for new university entrance tests.

The tests are designed to tease out the best applicants, part of the response to the glut of school-leavers with top A-level grades.

Commercial organisations say they can give students an edge when it comes to taking them.

University admissions tutors are telling people to save their money.

'Performing seal'

Two main tests have been developed, for medicine and law - known as BMat and LNat.

They have been adopted by a number of leading universities.

Tim Kaye says test strategies will be freely available

The BMat (BioMedical Admissions Test) website says an approach to developing the "thinking skills" required for part of the test can be taught "and the skills will improve with familiarity and practice".

"We encourage this because we think these skills are really worthwhile: they are useful skills in many walks of life, and very important for success in higher education," it adds.

But it says: "What you cannot do is to be taught to answer as if you were a performing seal."

Similarly the National Admissions Test for Law website suggests people familiarise themselves with the style of the test before taking the real thing in November.

"We also recommend reading a quality newspaper every day as the best preparation for the LNat."

But it also stresses: "We do not recommend that you enrol on any course claiming to 'prepare' you for the test."

Familiarisation

One of the coaching organisations, US-based Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, says that to do well "even top students will benefit from knowing what to expect, understanding specific question types, and knowing how to make the most of their time".

Another, British-based Cataga, "asserts with confidence that the LNat will not be impervious to preparation".

The University of Birmingham is co-ordinating the introduction of the law test.

Its undergraduate law admissions dean, Tim Kaye, said: "The lessons from the US and everywhere else that has these sorts of tests is that the most important thing is that you familiarise yourself with the format of the test."

That was why a sample paper was freely available - and within the next few weeks a commentary on it would be published telling people the best strategies to use in tackling it.

A sample LNat test on the Cataga website was unlike the real sample paper, he pointed out.

Coaching courses were "not only unnecessary but probably misleading". People should save their money, Dr Kaye said.

"You may be doing yourself more harm than good if you follow them."

'Naive'

Cataga's founder, Selwyn Lim, acknowledged that his sample questions were out of step with the official version now that it had been published, and said the website was being updated.

But he said the US experience was very clearly that preparation did work.

There were only about seven types of question, and a set of techniques for answering them.

"I would say they are being very, very naive to think that preparation is not going to make a difference."

But also he was trying to create a fairer, more equal system.

His own past experience, coming from a rural comprehensive in north Wales, was that he could not compete in the former Oxford and Cambridge admissions tests with friends who had been well prepared by their private schools.

Although Cataga would run some weekend coaching - costing less than £200 - its main focus would be on a book of test techniques.

"We don't want to exacerbate the problem of children from underprivileged schools being at a significant disadvantage," he said.