LNAT score distributions and percentiles
Score-by-score data from Oxford, LSE, UCL and King's, percentiles for the Oxford pool, and a model of the national distribution.
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Try Jurica for freeThe LNAT Consortium does not publish a national score distribution, so in this guide we use the data that universities have released score by score. The two largest datasets are the applicant pools at Oxford (1,767 candidates with a score, for 2025 entry) and LSE (2,067 candidates, for 2021 entry), and there are smaller lists of offer holders’ scores from UCL and King’s College London. Because these datasets come from different years and describe different groups, we chart each of them separately. We then show a model of the national distribution, which is built from the mean and standard deviation that we calculate from the Consortium’s last public report.
How did Oxford’s applicants score?
Most of them scored between the low 20s and about 30, and the average was 24.51 out of 42. Oxford’s offer holders averaged 30.92.
Oxford’s reply to a Freedom of Information request for 2025 entry lists each applicant’s Section A score and whether an offer was made (the counts at each score are our own tally). A score is recorded for 1,767 of the 1,814 applicants. The averages of 24.51 for the whole pool and 30.92 for the 235 offer holders are in line with the figures of 24.5 and 30.96 in the Faculty’s own report on that round. This is one selective applicant pool in a single admissions cycle, so it should not be read as a national distribution.
Section A scores of Oxford Law applicants for 2025 entry
All applicantsOffer-holdersPool average (24.51)
Oxford Law (M100), 2025 entry, FOI 202506/653, as set out in our Oxford LNAT guide. Oxford released one row per applicant; the bars are our tally of the 1,767 records with a Section A score, out of 1,814 in the disclosure. The two averages (24.51 for applicants, 30.92 for the 235 offer-holders) are calculated from these rows. The Faculty’s own report on the same round, which also counts Law with Law Studies in Europe, gives 24.5 and 30.96.
As you can see, the applicants’ scores are spread widely and roughly evenly on either side of the middle, with the largest numbers between 23 and 28. The offers lie further to the right and are much more concentrated: 168 of the 235 went to candidates who scored between 28 and 35. However, the two groups overlap a great deal. For example, of the 155 candidates who scored 31 or 32, 107 received no offer, because the LNAT is only one part of a decision that also takes into account grades, the personal statement and the interview.
Only 68 of the 1,767 candidates reached 35 or more, and the highest score was 41. In this pool, a score of 36 was at about the 99th percentile of Oxford Law applicants.
What percentile is my score?
Among Oxford’s 2025 applicants, a score of 24 was at about the 48th percentile, 28 at the 72nd and 30 at the 81st.
The table below converts Oxford’s counts at each score into percentiles. Each row gives the share of Oxford Law applicants who scored at or below that mark. A percentile in the modelled national distribution (see below) is a different measure: for scores from 24 to 30 it is ten to thirteen points higher than the Oxford figure, because Oxford’s applicants score above the national mean. For scores of 18 or below, it is slightly lower, by up to two points.
| Section A score | Percentile in the Oxford pool |
|---|---|
| 15 | 8th |
| 18 | 18th |
| 20 | 27th |
| 22 | 37th |
| 24 | 48th |
| 25 | 53rd |
| 26 | 60th |
| 28 | 72nd |
| 30 | 81st |
| 32 | 90th |
| 35 | 98th |
These figures are calculated from the 1,767 records with a score in Oxford’s disclosure for 2025 entry (out of 1,814 applicants in all). The percentiles are cumulative and rounded to the nearest whole number.
What do the other published distributions show?
In both applicant pools, Oxford’s and LSE’s, the scores are centred on the low to mid-20s. The UCL and King’s lists contain offer holders only, so they show far fewer low scores.
The next chart puts the four datasets on the same percentage scale. UCL’s list has 658 scores for the 2020/21 admission cycle, and King’s has the scores of its offer holders for 2018/19.
Four published LNAT score distributions
Oxford 2025LSE 2021KCL 2018/19UCL 2020/21
Counts from the FOI disclosures cited in the Oxford 2025 (FOI 202506/653), LSE 2021 (FOI 4064), KCL 2018/19 (FOI 536.19) and UCL 2020/21 (FOI 021/225). Each bar is a share of its own dataset, so that samples of different sizes can be drawn on one axis. Note that two panels show applicants and two show offer holders, which are different groups.
King’s offer holders in 2018/19 were spread more widely than UCL’s, whose scores begin at 23 and peak at 27. These differences reflect each university’s admissions policy as well as the performance of its candidates, so they should not be read as a ranking of the universities. LSE has since released the scores of its 438 offer holders for 2024 entry. They average 28.04, which is 2.7 marks higher than the average of its offer holders for 2021 entry. We chart them in our LSE guide.
Does the same score give the same chance of an offer everywhere?
No: Oxford and LSE have both released each applicant’s score with the admissions decision, and when we group the scores into the same bands, the offer rate rises with the score in very different ways at the two universities.
Offer rate by LNAT score band at Oxford and LSE
Oxford 2025LSE 2021
Oxford FOI 202506/653 (the 1,767 applicants with a Section A score, 2025 entry) and LSE FOI 4064 (2,067 applicants, 2021 entry), via our Oxford and LSE guides. Both universities released a score for each applicant; the bands are our own grouping, with 33 and over as one band. The cycles and the applicant pools differ, so you can compare the shapes of the two series, but the gap between them at a given score means little.
At LSE, 16% of applicants who scored 21 to 23 received an offer, and the rate was about 32% for scores from 27 to 32. At Oxford, the rate was close to zero below 24, and then rose from 9% for scores of 24 to 26, to 27% for 30 to 32 and 53% for 33 and above.
One reason is that the two universities use the test differently. LSE considers the LNAT together with the rest of the application, whereas Oxford uses both sections of the LNAT to decide whom to shortlist for interview. The value of an extra mark therefore depends on the university and on where in the range of scores it falls.
The two datasets are not directly comparable. Oxford’s data is for 2025 entry and LSE’s is for 2021 entry, and each pool is made up of the candidates who chose to apply there. For this reason, we suggest comparing the overall shapes of the two charts and treating any single pair of bars with caution.
How many applicants and offers were there in each band?
| Score band | Oxford applicants | Oxford offers | LSE applicants | LSE offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0–14 | 113 | 0 | 156 | 1 |
| 15–17 | 139 | 1 | 201 | 7 |
| 18–20 | 231 | 4 | 351 | 21 |
| 21–23 | 277 | 5 | 445 | 71 |
| 24–26 | 293 | 25 | 506 | 116 |
| 27–29 | 307 | 45 | 264 | 85 |
| 30–32 | 233 | 62 | 112 | 36 |
| 33 and above | 174 | 93 | 32 | 8 |
| Total | 1,767 | 235 | 2,067 | 345 |
The bands are our own grouping of the scores that the two universities released, with 33 and over as one band. Oxford’s total of 1,767 counts the applicants with a recorded Section A score, out of 1,814 in the disclosure.
What would the national distribution look like?
We can only estimate it, because the Consortium has not published national counts for each score. The chart below is therefore a model based on two figures from its 2015/16 technical report, and it should not be read as a measurement.
The report gives a mean and standard deviation for each of its five test forms (7,849 candidates in all), but no counts. From those tables we calculate an overall mean of 22.97 and a standard deviation of 5.24, and the chart draws the normal curve that these two figures imply. Measured scores on a 42-question test would not follow a perfectly smooth curve.
A national model based on the 2015/16 report
Modelled national curveOxford 2025 applicant average
Modelled, not observed. Curve is a normal distribution with the candidate-weighted equated mean (22.97) and standard deviation (5.24) that we calculated from the form-level statistics in the Pearson VUE LNAT technical report for 2015/16 (7,849 candidates); the report states neither figure itself. The Consortium has not published per-score national counts, so the curve shows what those two figures imply and is not a count of candidates. The percentile labels are based on the same assumption. The dashed line is the average of Oxford’s 2025-entry applicant pool, calculated from its FOI disclosure.
On this model, about two thirds of all candidates would score between 18 and 28, and fewer than one in fifty would score above 34. Oxford’s 2025 applicant average of 24.51 is above the national mean, which is what you would expect of applicants who chose to apply to Oxford.
Any national percentile is an estimate. A precise percentile must either come from one university’s pool or be modelled from the 2015/16 national figures. Before you compare a percentile with your own score, we recommend checking which of these two methods produced it.
What are the limits of this data?
Each dataset describes one university in one year, which limits what it can show in four ways:
- Every chart on this page covers Section A only. Oxford’s and UCL’s disclosures do list essay marks beside the Section A scores, but each university marks the essay on its own scale, so we have not charted those marks here.
- Each dataset covers a single year: Oxford’s is for 2025 entry and LSE’s for 2021 entry. If you want to see how scores have changed from year to year, we suggest looking at the averages over time.
- The offer rate in each band depends on candidates’ grades, their written work and anything else the university takes into account, as well as on their scores.
- Each dataset is a pool of applicants to one university. A given percentile among Oxford Law applicants is harder to reach than the same percentile among all candidates nationally.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an official LNAT score distribution?
No, the Consortium does not publish a national distribution, and its public results page gives no statistics. The distributions that do exist come from universities, most of them in reply to Freedom of Information requests.
What percentile is a 30 on the LNAT?
Among Oxford’s applicants for 2025 entry, a score of 30 was at about the 81st percentile. Among all candidates it would be higher (about the 91st percentile on our model), because Oxford’s applicants score above the national mean. No table of national percentiles has been published, however.
What was the highest LNAT score anyone got?
In Oxford’s pool for 2025 entry, the highest score was 41 out of 42, achieved by one candidate. The 2015/16 national report records a highest reported score of 38 across its five test forms.
Does a high score guarantee an offer?
It does not. Even among candidates who scored 33 or more, Oxford made offers to 93 of 174 for 2025 entry, so almost half did not receive one. Oxford considered each candidate’s score together with the rest of the application.
How we checked this
The Oxford distribution comes from FOI 202506/653, for 2025 entry, and the LSE distribution from FOI 4064, for the 2021 admissions cycle. The King’s offer-holder scores come from FOI 536.19, for 2018/19, and UCL’s 658 offer-holder scores from FOI 021/225, for the 2020/21 admission cycle. LSE’s list for 2024 entry is FOI 5823. Each is listed with its link in our Oxford, LSE, King’s and UCL guides. The national figures come from the Pearson VUE LNAT technical report for September 2015 to June 2016, and we read the Consortium’s results page again on 24 October 2026. The national curve is a normal curve with the overall mean and standard deviation that we calculate from that report’s tables for each form, and it is marked as a model wherever it appears. Every other chart plots counts taken from the scores the universities released; the score bands, the percentiles and the averages marked on the Oxford chart are our own calculations from the same records. We have left out universities that have not released a score-by-score distribution.
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Average LNAT score
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