The LNAT, decoded.
Section A and Section B together count for 20% of the 2025-26 shortlist rank.
Oxford Law
LNAT
Section A & B at a glance
Essay and MCQ carry equal weight on the LNAT side. Under the 2025-26 weighting the two components together account for 20% of the shortlist rank.[12]
OFFER MCQ AS % OF 42
Section A
Section A presents 12 short passages with 3-4 inference questions each — 42 questions total in 95 minutes. The mark is your raw count of correct answers (0-42); there is no negative marking.[17] The 2025 cycle is the cleanest dataset that exists publicly: per-applicant scores released by Oxford for all 1,814 candidates.[1]
Figure 1 · 2025 MCQ distribution
All applicants (1,814)
Offer holders (235)
Every Section A score, every applicant
Per-applicant data, n=1,814. [1]
The distribution is left-shifted relative to what most candidates assume. The mode sits at 26-27 (110 applicants scored 26, 102 scored 27); the median is 25. A score of 25 puts you above half the applicant pool but well below the offer-holder average of 30.48.[1] Candidates scoring below 18 — about 280 of the 1,814 — almost never receive an offer (just 2 from this band did).
The offer pool (dark navy bars) is concentrated in the 28-35 range. The peak of the offer distribution sits around 32. Above 35 the absolute number of offers falls because there simply aren't many candidates who score that high — only 68 candidates scored 35 or higher in 2025.[1]
Offer rate by Section A score
The same data as a probability — P(offer | MCQ score).
Figure 2 · Offer-rate curve
P(offer)
Offer-holder avg
Probability of an offer at each Section A score
Each dot is one MCQ score; size scales with the number of applicants. [1]
| Section A score band | Applicants | Offers | Offer rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-14 | 113 | 0 | 0.0% |
| 15-17 | 139 | 1 | 0.72% |
| 18-20 | 231 | 4 | 1.73% |
| 21-23 | 277 | 5 | 1.81% |
| 24-26 | 293 | 25 | 8.53% |
| 27-29 | 307 | 45 | 14.66% |
| 30-32 | 233 | 62 | 26.61% |
| 33-35 | 141 | 70 | 49.65% |
| 36-41 | 33 | 23 | 69.7% |
The shape of the offer-rate curve. Below 24, the curve is flat at 1-2%. Between 24 and 30, it rises steadily. Above 30 it accelerates: 22% at 29-31, 39% at 32-34, 66% at 35+.[1] The marginal value of every extra MCQ mark above 28 is large; below 24 it is nearly zero.
Prep that lifts you from 22 to 26 is worth more than prep that lifts you from 32 to 36. The first moves you across the threshold where Oxford starts to take you seriously; the second adds margin you don't need.
Calculator
The calculator below uses the 2025 cycle data.[1] Set the sliders to your projected MCQ and essay scores and you'll see the historical offer rate at that score level.
29
62
22%
Historical offer rate at this score (2025 cycle)
Solidly competitive. You are at the offer-holder mean. Your essay score and interview will decide it.
Section B
Section B is one essay (typically 500-700 words) chosen from three prompts in 40 minutes. The prompts are deliberately broad — public-policy questions, ethical dilemmas, contestable claims — and the right answer is whichever one you can defend with clarity and structure. Oxford does not get a raw essay mark from the LNAT consortium; instead each essay is paired against many other Oxford applicants' essays via the No More Marking comparative platform, then converted to a 0-100 scaled score.[4][17]
What Oxford rewards
Oxford's Information Compliance Team disclosed the criteria assessors apply to distinguish high-mark essays from low-mark ones.[4] Both lists below are direct from the FOI release:
High-mark features
Application — close attention to the question(s) asked and sustained and focussed treatment of the issues.
Reasoning — well-drawn distinctions, a keen eye for relevance, awareness of more than one possible line of argument, and an element of independent critical judgment.
Communication — clear and fluent writing and notable clarity and appropriateness of structure and argument.
Low-mark features
Application — poor attention to the question(s) asked, no sustained and focussed treatment of the issues.
Reasoning — poorly developed arguments, a preponderance of irrelevant points, few or no well-drawn distinctions, a lack of awareness of more than one possible line of argument, no evidence of independent critical judgment.
Communication — lack of fluency and clarity and no clear or appropriate structure or argument.
"Independent critical judgment" is what separates top-band essays from competent ones. An essay can be technically clear and well-structured but still rank in the bottom half if it just rehearses standard talking points without taking a real position. Oxford rewards essays that are recognisably arguments, not surveys of arguments.[4]
The essay score distribution
Where Section A scores spread across a 0-42 range, the No More Marking platform's logistic conversion compresses essay scores into a much narrower band. About 60% of all 2025 applicants scored 60-65 on the essay;[1] the mode is 63 with 286 applicants at this exact score.
Figure 3 · 2025 essay distribution
All applicants
Offer holders
Every essay score, every applicant
- Above 70 is rare. Roughly 5% of applicants score 70+. These are the candidates who came through the comparative ranking near the top.
- Below 55 is also rare. Just 4% of applicants score below 55. The platform's scaling pulls the distribution toward the middle.
- The bulk is between 60 and 65. Around 60% of all 2025 applicants scored in this range.
Why the distribution is so narrow
The No More Marking comparative system pairs essays against each other. Each pair produces one judgment: this essay is better than that one. Aggregating across many pairs produces a stable ranking. The conversion to 0-100 maps this ranking through a logistic curve, which compresses the middle.[4]
For prep: if you're producing 60-65 essays, you're in the densest part of the distribution where small improvements in clarity and structure produce meaningful score lifts. If you're producing 55-60 essays, structural problems are likely the issue — work on argument structure, not vocabulary.
Are essay and MCQ correlated?
Only weakly. Strong essay writers aren't necessarily strong MCQ scorers and vice versa. The two sections measure overlapping but distinct skills: MCQ rewards careful reading and inference under time pressure; the essay rewards positional reasoning and structural coherence.
Figure 4 · Essay × MCQ
Applicants (n=197)
Essay score vs MCQ score, individual applicants (n=197)
Tomkinson FOI sample, n=197. Sample skews low on MCQ (12–21) — likely shortlisting-pool subset, not the full applicant range. Correlation is weak (r ≈ 0.18). [5]
A high MCQ doesn't compensate for a poor essay at Oxford in the way it might at KCL or LSE. The gap between applicant essay average (62.38) and offer-holder essay average (65.21) is just 2.5 points[1] — but in the compressed essay scale, a 2.5-point gap is meaningful.
Sources cited on this page
Every numerical claim above ends in a [n] superscript that links here. Each link opens the primary FOI attachment, faculty-published report, or official course page.
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[12]
Faculty of Law — Annual Admissions Report 2025-26 REPORT
First publication of the 80%/10%/10% (cGCSE/MCT/essay) shortlisting weighting. Without-cGCSE 50/50 fallback. Spreadsheet-of-strong-candidates rescue mechanism.
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[1]
FOI 202506/653 — Per-applicant LNAT data, 2025 cycle FOI
Per-applicant Section A, essay, college, and offer outcome for all 1,814 applicants to BA Jurisprudence in the 2025 cycle.
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[4]
FOI 20210901/4 — LNAT essay marking criteria FOI
Oxford Information Compliance Team disclosure of the No More Marking platform criteria distinguishing high-mark from low-mark essays.
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[17]
LNAT consortium — Test format and scoring PAGE
Section A (42 multiple choice, 95 minutes) and Section B (1 essay, 40 minutes). Section A maximum 42 marks; essay scored 0-100 by individual universities.
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[5]
FOI 20210201/6 — LNAT, interview & GCSE shortlisting data 2021 FOI
Tomkinson dossier — per-applicant GCSE counts, LNAT scores, and shortlisting outcomes for the 2021 cycle (n=1,567).