MRCP Part 1 pass rate: what the official data actually shows

MRCP Part 1 pass rate: what the official data actually shows

The MRCP(UK) Part 1 pass rate is one of the most searched-for numbers in postgraduate medicine, and one of the most misunderstood. There is no single pass rate. There are several, they differ by more than 30 percentage points depending on which candidate group you look at, and the one that applies to you depends on where you trained and how many attempts you have already made.

This guide explains where the official figures come from, how to read them, and what they should change about your revision.

Where the official numbers come from

MRCP(UK) is run by the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians. It publishes pass rates after each diet, an annual performance report for each part, and an annual equality report breaking results down by graduate group, gender and ethnicity. Those documents are the only figures worth quoting:

• Pass rates explained — The Federation
• Part 1 examination information

Anything you see on a forum or a revision-course landing page should be checked against those pages, because pass rates move diet to diet.

The scale of the exam

The Federation's 2025 Part 1 annual performance report records three diets in the calendar year and 11,766 sitting candidates (including candidates sitting more than once). Of those, 1,507 declared they were in UK training.

That ratio is the single most important thing to understand about the published pass rate. Roughly one in eight candidates at a Part 1 diet is a UK trainee. The rest are largely international candidates, many sitting at overseas centres, many on a repeat attempt. So the "all candidates" pass rate is dominated by a very different population from the one a UK IMT1 doctor belongs to.

Why the headline figure understates your own odds

Every Part 1 diet report separates candidate groups for exactly this reason. Two things reliably push the all-candidates figure down:

1. Repeat attempts. Candidates who have already failed once sit again in the same pool, and repeat-attempt pass rates are consistently lower than first-attempt rates.
2. Preparation route. Candidates in a structured UK training post, with ward exposure to UK guidelines and protected study time, perform better than candidates preparing alone at distance.

If you are a UK trainee sitting for the first time, the number that describes people like you is the UK trainees, first attempt row — not the overall percentage.

The other reason it moves: equating

Part 1 does not use a fixed percentage pass mark. It is equated, meaning scores are statistically adjusted so a given standard of knowledge earns the same result whichever diet you sit. Recent Part 1 diet reports publish a pass equated score of 540, alongside reliability (Cronbach alpha around 0.93) and a standard error of measurement of roughly 3%.

Practically: you are not competing against the other candidates in the room, and there is no quota. A harder paper does not raise the bar. It also means chasing "what percentage do I need?" is the wrong question — see our guide to how the Part 1 pass mark works.

What the pass rate should change about your revision

Pass-rate data is only useful if it changes behaviour. Three evidence-aligned conclusions:

1. Volume of questions beats volume of reading. Part 1 is 200 best-of-five items across two three-hour papers. Recognition speed under time pressure is a trained skill, and it is trained by doing timed blocks, not by re-reading notes.

2. Cover the whole blueprint, including the small specialties. The specialties that candidates skip — ophthalmology, dermatology, psychiatry, geriatric medicine — are worth marks that are cheap to bank because the question pool is narrower. See the Part 1 syllabus breakdown.

3. Track your weak topics numerically. Candidates who fail rarely fail everything; they fail because two or three systems sit far below their average and they never noticed. Per-topic accuracy tracking is the fastest way to find them.

First attempt matters more than it looks

Because first-attempt pass rates are the highest of any group, the cheapest strategy improvement available to most candidates is simply not sitting early. Deferring a diet costs one application fee. A failed attempt costs a fee, three to four months, and moves you into a group with a lower base rate. If your timed-mock accuracy is still hovering near the borderline four weeks out, sitting the next diet is usually the better expected outcome.

How Examrix helps

Examrix is built around exactly the behaviours the pass-rate data rewards: single-best-answer questions written to the Part 1 blueprint, timed exam mode in realistic block lengths, syllabus-mapped tutorials for every topic, per-topic analytics so weak areas surface early, and anonymised peer comparison so you can see where you sit.

• Browse MRCP Part 1 note previews
• See the MRCP Part 1 exam prep hub
• Compare subscription plans

Frequently asked

Is there a fixed pass mark for MRCP Part 1? No. Scores are equated across diets, and the published pass equated score is the standard you must reach.

Do repeat attempts count against me? Not in marking — the standard is identical. But repeat-attempt pass rates are lower as a group, which is a reason to sit only when you are ready.

Which pass rate should I quote to my supervisor? The UK-trainee first-attempt figure from the most recent diet report, with the diet named. Always cite the diet, because the number changes.

Figures above are taken from the Federation's published Part 1 performance reports. Always check the Federation website for the most recent diet before relying on any number.