Am I Ready for the UKMLA AKT? A Five-Signal Readiness Check
Two unseen, fully timed mocks at 70–75%, no heavily-weighted specialty dragging far below your average, and a paper you finished without rushing the last twenty. Recent pass marks have sat around 62–68% — here's the margin that means, the three ways a good score lies, and what to change if the answer is 'not yet'.
The short version: you're ready when you've scored comfortably above the pass mark on two or more realistic, unseen, fully timed mocks, with no heavily-weighted specialty dragging far below your average, and you finished each paper without rushing the last twenty questions. Recent AKT pass marks have landed around 62–68%, so "comfortably above" means roughly 70–75% — one score, untimed or on questions you'd seen before, tells you almost nothing.
This page is a readiness check, not an explainer. If you want the mechanism behind the pass mark, that's here; if you want to know how to sit and review a mock properly, that's here. What follows is how to decide whether you're on track — and what to change if you aren't.
First, the honest caveat
Nobody publishes a conversion from question-bank percentages to AKT outcomes. No bank's 70% is calibrated against the real exam, banks differ in difficulty, and the GMC doesn't release item-level data anyone could calibrate against. Anyone who tells you "75% in [bank] means you'll pass" is guessing, however confidently.
What is known: the pass mark is standard-set per sitting rather than fixed, and recent sittings have produced marks in the region of 62–68% of items correct. The exact figure for your paper isn't published until after you've sat it.
So the target below isn't a prediction. It's the published pass-mark range, plus a margin for the fact that a mock is easier than the real thing in the ways that matter — familiar interface, no adrenaline, no consequences — and for the fact that your paper might be one of the harder ones.
The five signals
Score yourself honestly. The point isn't the total; it's finding which one is red.
| # | Signal | Ready | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Score on a realistic, unseen, timed mock | 70–75%+ | Below ~68% |
| 2 | Number of such mocks | 2 or more, stable or rising | 1, or a scatter with no trend |
| 3 | Worst heavily-weighted specialty | Within ~10 points of your average | 20+ points below, in a 6–14% area |
| 4 | Blueprint coverage | Practised questions in every area of the content map | Whole areas you've never touched |
| 5 | Timing | Finished with minutes to spare; last 20 answered properly | Rushed or guessed the final stretch |
Why "unseen" is doing so much work in signal 1. If you've worked through a bank once, your second pass through the same questions measures recognition, not knowledge. People routinely gain ten to fifteen points this way and mistake it for progress. A readiness mock has to be on questions you have never seen. It is also why a single question bank stops being able to measure you at the point you need it most — the mechanism, and the free fixes.
Why signal 3 is weighted, not raw. A 40% in Breast is a rounding error — it's 1–2% of the paper. A 45% in Heart & Vasculature is a genuine problem, because that area alone carries 10–14%. Look at your weakest specialties next to their weighting, not in a league table.
Why signal 5 catches people out. A score achieved by rushing the last twenty questions isn't the score you'd get on the day, in either direction — you may have guessed several right, or thrown away questions you knew. Either way the number is noise. The AKT is around 200 SBAs, usually split across two papers of 100 (PLAB 1 is 180 questions in three hours), and pacing is a trainable skill in its own right — the exam-day playbook covers it.
If you have no recent unseen timed score to put in row 1, that's the first thing to fix. Sit the free 50-question mock — it's short enough to do today, and it returns a per-specialty breakdown, which is what signals 3 and 4 need.
Three ways a good-looking score lies
The propped-up average. 71% overall, made of 88% in the three specialties you enjoy and 52% across four you've been avoiding. The average clears the bar; the exam doesn't ask for averages, it asks 200 questions sampled across the whole map. This is the most common false positive, and the per-specialty breakdown is the only thing that reveals it.
The single good mock. One score above target, taken as settled. Mock scores bounce by several points on item mix alone. Two mocks that agree tell you far more than one that pleases you — and if your two disagree by fifteen points, neither is a reading of your level yet.
The comfortable mock. Sat in your own room, over two sittings, with a break in the middle, phone within reach, nothing riding on it. It measures your knowledge with none of the conditions that make the exam hard. If you can't reproduce exam conditions exactly, at least reproduce the two that matter: unbroken time, and no lookups.
What "on track" looks like at each stage
Readiness isn't binary until the last fortnight. Earlier on, the question isn't "would I pass today" — it's "am I moving fast enough".
8–12 weeks out. You should have a baseline, and it can be well below the pass mark without meaning anything bad. What matters is that you know your weak areas by name and your plan allocates time to them in proportion to their weight. A first mock at 55% here is information, not a verdict. If you don't have a plan built round the weighting, we'll generate one from your exam date.
6–8 weeks out. Full timed mocks start now. Expect the first to be uncomfortable. You want the trend across two or three to be upward, and you want signal 4 — coverage — to be closing rather than static.
2–3 weeks out. This is where the five signals become a genuine verdict. Two unseen timed mocks at 70%+ with an even spread means you're ready and the remaining job is maintenance, not new material. Consistently 60–68% means you are close and the highest-value work is your weakest heavily-weighted specialties, not another pass through everything.
Final week. Stop taking new information on board past the point it can consolidate. Retrieve what you have, keep the pacing warm with timed blocks rather than full papers, and sleep. A readiness check this week is for reassurance and last-minute triage, not for restructuring your revision.
If the answer is "not yet"
For most UK students the exam date isn't a lever — your school schedules the AKT, and moving it runs through their mitigating-circumstances process, not a preference. If you're an IMG booking PLAB 1 yourself, the date is a lever, but it has cut-offs attached: check the booking and refund windows before assuming you can move cheaply.
Which means, in nearly every case, the thing you change is the plan and not the date:
- Rank your weak areas by weighting, not by how weak they are. Six points recoverable in a 10–14% area beats twelve points in a 1–2% one.
- Convert passive time into retrieval. If you're re-reading notes at three weeks out, that time is being spent at a fraction of its value.
- Fix the error you're actually making. Wrong because you didn't know it, misread the stem, reasoned from the wrong anchor, or ran out of time — those have four different fixes, and people usually assume the first when it's the second or third.
- Keep sitting timed papers. The instinct when scores are low is to stop mocking and go back to content. That removes the only instrument you have.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage should I be scoring before the UKMLA AKT? On realistic, unseen, fully timed mocks, aim for 70–75%. Recent pass marks have sat around 62–68%, so that's the published range plus margin — not a validated predictor, because no published mapping from bank scores to AKT outcomes exists.
Is one mock above the pass mark enough? No. Mock scores move by several points on item mix alone. Two unseen timed mocks that agree are worth far more than one that flatters you.
I'm scoring well overall but badly in two specialties. Am I ready? Depends entirely on which two. Check their weighting in the content map: 20 points below average in a 6–14% area is a real risk to your total; the same gap in a 1–2% area is not worth reorganising your revision for.
How close to the exam should I stop doing full mocks? Most people find the last full paper is best placed around three to five days out — near enough to be a fair reading, far enough that a bad one doesn't wreck the final days. Keep short timed blocks going after that.
Can I defer if I'm not ready? If you're a UK student, generally not by choice — the sitting is set by your medical school and deferral goes through their process. If you're sitting PLAB 1, you control the date, but rescheduling has deadlines and refund cut-offs.