What a Fourth-Quartile CASPer Result Actually Means

A fourth-quartile CASPer result places you in the highest of four relative performance bands for your cohort. It is a strong result, but it is not a perfect score, a detailed percentile, or a guarantee that a school will interview or admit you.

Fourth quartile is a band, not a perfect score

Quartiles divide a distribution into four groups. They do not tell you the exact numeric score, the distance between you and another applicant, or whether every answer was excellent. Acuity's applicant report is intentionally broad: it provides a general sense of relative performance.

The official explanation also notes that scores near a boundary can fall into different quartiles even when the underlying difference is small. That is another reason not to treat the label as a precise measurement of every skill.

What the result suggests

Acuity identifies qualities that may appear in stronger responses, including effort, empathy, impartiality, communication, and familiarity with the response format. A fourth-quartile result suggests your combined responses compared strongly with the relevant cohort—not that one memorized framework was automatically rewarded.

CASPer's current process combines typed and video responses into one overall result. Individual questions are evaluated within their scenario context, and responses are anonymized before raters see them. Read Acuity's current scoring explanation for the operational details it makes public.

What fourth quartile does not prove

• It does not mean you answered every question perfectly.
• It does not reveal your exact raw score or competency breakdown.
• It does not guarantee an interview, ranking, waitlist movement, or offer.
• It does not transfer to a future admissions cycle or a different test type.
• It does not make a third-party practice score official.

How admissions programs may use it

Programs control their own admissions rules. Acuity says CASPer may be used for early filtering, interview decisions, rankings, or offers, but also advises applicants that most programs consider all quartiles and use CASPer as one data point among several.

The practical takeaway is simple: a fourth-quartile result is favorable evidence within the CASPer portion of an application. Its actual value depends on the school, cycle, applicant pool, and the rest of your file.

How to use a fourth-quartile result

You normally do not need to turn the quartile into a personal-statement talking point. Confirm that Acuity delivered the result to every selected program, continue meeting the rest of your deadlines, and avoid assuming the result offsets unrelated weaknesses automatically.

If you are still preparing, focus on repeatable behaviors: gather missing facts, consider multiple stakeholders, take a proportionate action, explain your reasoning, and practise both typed and spoken responses under the current timer. Our five-part preparation guide turns those behaviors into drills.