Frequently asked questions

Not under that name, as far as the public record goes. The Clearing House lists eight of around thirty courses as using short-listing tests, and describes all of them only as online or written tests or questionnaires. Where a course does publish its format it is usually a reasoning test — Lancaster and Sheffield use SHL deductive reasoning, Manchester a general mental ability test, Trent a written critical-thinking task.

A small number of courses decline to say what their test is, which is consistent with it being something they would rather applicants did not rehearse. We are not going to claim more than that.

What is widespread is scenario-based judgement at interview: role-plays with actors, filmed clinical scenarios with written responses, and values-based questioning. That is the reasoning this site rehearses. (Sources: Clearing House and individual course selection pages, checked 11 September 2026.)

A situational judgement test presents a realistic workplace scenario and asks you to judge how appropriate different responses would be. In the format used here, you rank five responses from most to least appropriate.

It is not a knowledge test. There is nothing to memorise. What is assessed is whether you can work out which professional principle takes priority when several point in different directions — which is exactly what a role-play or a values-based interview question is doing too.

Scoring is proximity-based. Each response earns 4 points if you place it in exactly the right position, 3 if you are one position out, 2 for two positions, 1 for three, and 0 for four. Each scenario is worth 20 points and a ten-scenario test is worth 200.

This is our scoring model, not a published course marking scheme — no course publishes how it marks. It is designed to reward sound reasoning even when the ordering is imperfect: getting the best and worst responses right matters more than the exact order of the middle three.

Not in the sense of memorising answers, but practice genuinely helps in two ways. It removes the surprise of the format, and it builds familiarity with the professional standards the rankings rest on.

Most people who find the SJT hard are not short of clinical instinct. They are unfamiliar with which principle a regulator expects to win when, say, confidentiality and safeguarding conflict. That is learnable, and it is what the explanations here are for.

Scenarios on this site are grouped into eight domains: Professional Boundaries, Risk Management, Ethical Dilemmas, Diversity and Inclusion, Clinical Decision-Making, Interprofessional Working, Trainee Development, and Service Delivery.

These reflect the areas the practice material covers. They are not an official list published by any course or selection body, and different programmes structure their assessment differently.

There is a model ranking, and it is defensible rather than arbitrary — each position is justified against a specific BPS or HCPC standard. But reasonable clinicians do sometimes disagree about the middle positions.

If you disagree with a ranking, read the explanation and the standard it cites before assuming you were wrong. If you still disagree, that is worth telling us — corrections are genuinely welcome.

No. You can take a full practice test without signing up for anything.

Your results are saved in your own browser so you can see your history and weakest domains. Nothing is sent to a server and nobody else can see it — which also means clearing your browser data deletes it, so export your history if you want to keep it.

A ten-scenario test takes most people around twenty minutes if you read the explanations, which is the part worth doing.

You can rank, submit, and read the feedback at your own pace. Real selection tests are timed; practice here deliberately is not, because the point is to learn the reasoning rather than to rehearse time pressure.

Scenarios are practice material written to mirror the format and the kinds of dilemmas that arise in UK clinical psychology settings. Explanations reference the HCPC Standards of conduct, performance and ethics and the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct by section.

This site does not reproduce any live selection test, and is not affiliated with the Clearing House, the BPS or the HCPC.

Yes, at the moment everything on the site is free to use with no account.

If that changes, it will be stated clearly and in advance rather than quietly.

Research methods and statistics are part of the doctorate and come up in selection, sometimes as a written test and often in interview. Most applicants last studied them as undergraduates.

The statistics section here covers the level typically assumed: levels of measurement, hypothesis testing and what a p-value actually means, choosing the right test, effect sizes against clinical significance, reliability and validity, and critical appraisal.

Applications are made through the Clearing House for Postgraduate Courses in Clinical Psychology, which distributes them to courses between November and January. Courses confirm shortlisting decisions by around the middle of March, with interviews running from late March into May.

Check the Clearing House website for the exact dates in any given cycle, as they shift year to year. (Source: Clearing House for Postgraduate Courses in Clinical Psychology.)

Very. Clinical psychology doctorates are among the most competitive postgraduate courses in the UK, and applying more than once is common rather than a sign of failure.

For current figures on applicants and places, the Clearing House publishes numbers by course and by year. We have deliberately not quoted a ratio here, because these change annually and a stale number is worse than none.