How Oriel Breaks a Tied Score

With a national cohort sitting the same test, tied SJT scores are common. The handbook publishes exactly how they are separated, and the order tells you something useful about where to put your preparation.

The order

1. SJT Trial Item Total Score
2. Person-Centred Care SJT Score
3. Professional Integrity & Ethics SJT Score
4. Problem Solving, Clinical Analysis & Decision Making SJT Score
5. Multi-Professional Collaboration & Leadership SJT Score
6. Numeracy Test Score

Each is consulted in turn until the tie is broken.

Three things worth noticing

Trial items count. Unscored trial questions are seeded into the test and do not contribute to your total — but your performance on them is the first thing consulted in a tie. You cannot identify them, which is the point. It is a good reason to treat every scenario as though it counts, rather than trying to spot which ones are "real".

Person-Centred Care is first among the attributes. Of the five attributes the SJT scores, this is the one that separates level candidates before any other. It is also the one most people assume they will do well on by instinct. Those two facts sit together uncomfortably.

Numeracy is last. Five SJT-derived measures are exhausted before anyone looks at it. If you are treating a strong numeracy score as protection against a mediocre SJT, it is not — see does Oriel numeracy count towards your rank.

One deliberate omission

Communication & Consultation Skills is scored by the SJT, but it is not named in the tie-break sequence. That looks like an oversight and it is easy to "helpfully" add it when summarising. It is listed here exactly as published — if the handbook does not name it as a tie-break, we do not either.

That principle is worth applying to any Oriel resource you use. Where a summary is tidier than the source, the tidying usually lost something.

What to do with this

You cannot revise for a tie-break directly. What you can do is stop treating the five scored attributes as interchangeable. They are consulted in a published order, and the order is not arbitrary — it reflects what the scheme considers most important in a foundation pharmacist.

Prepare Person-Centred Care as though it will decide your placement, because if you finish level with someone, it will.

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Taken from the current NRS applicant handbook. Dose Up tags every SJT item with the attribute it tests, so you can see which of the five you are weakest on — try the free Oriel quiz.