Subjects Admissions test
TMUA
Two papers, 20 questions each, no calculator — and a very different skill from A-Level.
The test
Two papers, each 20 multiple-choice questions in 75 minutes, with no calculator. The two scores combine into a single result reported from 1.0 to 9.0. There’s no pass mark — universities set their own expectations, and a strong score can turn into a reduced offer.
- Paper 1 — applying familiar A-Level mathematics to unfamiliar situations
- Paper 2 — mathematical reasoning: logic, proof, implication, counterexamples
Requirements change every admissions cycle, so always check your specific course pages. Broadly, it’s used by Cambridge, Imperial, Warwick, Durham, LSE and a growing group of others.
Why I can help
I sat the TMUA and scored in the top 10% nationally. That was recent enough that I remember the actual experience of the clock — which is most of what makes this test hard.
What we work on
Speed without carelessness. 75 minutes for 20 questions sounds generous until you meet a question that could eat fifteen of them. The skill is recognising that question and leaving it.
Eliminating rather than solving. These are multiple choice. Substituting a convenient value, checking a limiting case, or testing the sign of an expression will often kill three options in twenty seconds. Solving forwards is frequently the slow route.
Paper 2 properly. This is the paper most students under-prepare, because nothing in A-Level trains it. Necessary versus sufficient, the negation of a statement with a quantifier, spotting the exact line where a “proof” goes wrong — these are learnable, and quickly, but only if you practise them deliberately.
A common trap: students prepare for the TMUA by doing more A-Level questions. It doesn’t work. The content is almost entirely familiar — the difficulty is in the reasoning and the pace. Prepare with real past papers from the start.
How preparation usually runs
Six to ten weeks, one session a week, with timed practice between sessions. We start with a full paper cold to get a baseline, then alternate: one session on reasoning technique, one on reviewing a timed paper question by question. Every error gets classified — gap, too slow, careless slip, or misread — because the pattern tells us what to do next far better than the score does.
This can also be student-led, with paper and topic being provided before the session, and access to exclusive resources that I will provide in the lesson
Free TMUA resources
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