- What it said
- A UCAT 100 or more under the line where a school's 2026 ranking stopped read “Impossible”, and so did any score under the floors read from Oxford's and King's own statistics. At 2,150, Imperial read “170 below the 2,320 confirmed cutoff: far too far to be shortlisted.” Those lines move every cycle, so none of that was a rule. Scores just under Edinburgh's published 2027 minimum of 1,850 read only “Unlikely”, when Edinburgh does not consider them at all.
- What it says now
- “Impossible” now comes only from a rule a school has published for the cycle: an SJT band it rejects, a minimum set in advance, a decile it will not consider, a missing A-level subject or a GCSE requirement. Under a past line reads “Unlikely”, with the gap and the kind of line stated, e.g. “170 below the 2,320 cutoff for 2026 entry.”