CST Interview 2027: Stations, Timings and the Scoring Matrix

The Core Surgical Training (CST) interview is two 15-minute stations held online on the Qpercom platform: a management and clinical station with one management scenario and two clinical scenarios of five minutes each, and a portfolio station with a three-minute pre-prepared presentation, two minutes of questions on it, and two five-minute portfolio questions. Every item is scored on a 0 to 6 scale, and the selection score combines the MSRA at 10%, the portfolio station at 45% and the management and clinical station at 45%. That is the format NHS England published for the 2026 round; the 2027 pages are not yet updated.

Reviewed and updated 10 September 2026. Every timing and weighting below is from NHS England's core surgery interviews and applying pages, last reviewed in October 2025, and is labelled as the 2026 position until the 2027 pages publish.

Key takeaways

• The CST interview is two 15-minute online stations on Qpercom, taken in either order, with a panel of two on the management and clinical station and three or four on the portfolio station.
• The management and clinical station is three five-minute questions: one management scenario and two clinical scenarios, all given live so you "think on your feet".
• The portfolio station is a 3-minute presentation, 2 minutes of questions on it, then two 5-minute questions on domains the assessors choose.
• Every item is scored 0 to 6: 0 no evidence, 1 very poor, 2 weak, 3 satisfactory, 4 good, 5 excellent, 6 outstanding.
• The weighting is MSRA 10%, portfolio 45%, management and clinical 45%, out of 100; NHS England publishes the percentages, not raw marks per station.
• 2027 CST interview dates are not yet published; in 2026 interviews ran from Monday 2 to Wednesday 11 March.

What is the format of the CST interview in 2027?

The CST interview format is two 15-minute stations on Qpercom, a management and clinical station and a portfolio station, which applicants rotate between in either order. NHS England's interviews page says "All interviews will be undertaken online using Qpercom video platform".

Qpercom is the video-interview platform with integrated scoring that NHS England uses for CST; you pass a connectivity check, wait in a virtual lobby, show photographic ID, and pan your camera around the room before the station starts.

A lay representative may also sit on either panel to check fairness and consistency. The whole interview is therefore 30 minutes of scored time, and the coresurgeryinterview bank is split the same way, with 201 clinical, 45 management and 43 portfolio questions in its 299.

What happens in the CST management and clinical station?

The management and clinical station asks three questions in 15 minutes: one management scenario and two clinical scenarios, each with five minutes to answer, and each provided during the interview rather than in advance. NHS England's page says the questions are "provided during the interview and encourages the applicant to think on their feet".

What does the management scenario assess?

The management scenario is marked on three domains: probity and professional integrity with awareness of safety and ethics, judgement under pressure and prioritisation, and communication. A typical scenario places you as the SHO with a colleague, a patient or a system problem to handle safely within five minutes.

What do the clinical scenarios assess?

The two clinical scenarios are marked on clinical skills and knowledge, judgement under pressure and prioritisation, and communication. They are pitched at the level of a core trainee: assess the patient safely, start management, and escalate at the right point, rather than treat everything yourself.

However, "given live" is the detail that changes preparation. There is no reading time outside the room, so a structured opening you can say without thinking is worth more than any single fact.

What happens in the CST portfolio station?

The portfolio station opens with your three-minute pre-prepared presentation, followed by two minutes of questions on it, and then two portfolio questions of five minutes each on domains selected by the assessors. Before you join, the panel reviews the evidence you uploaded against your index sheet.

The presentation is marked on content, presentation skills and questioning; the portfolio questions are marked on skills and knowledge. Two official pages give the panel's review window as 10 minutes and 15 minutes respectively, so either is possible.

In practice the two portfolio questions are the domains where the letter you claimed invites discussion: a closed audit loop, a first-author paper, a teaching programme. You will not know which two until the panel asks.

How is the CST interview scored?

Each item in the CST interview is scored on a seven-point scale from 0 to 6, and the station scores are combined with the MSRA on a percentage weighting to give a selection score out of 100. NHS England publishes the scale and the weighting, but not the raw marks per station.

That said, the difference between a 3 and a 5 on a five-minute clinical scenario is rarely knowledge. It is whether the answer was structured, safe and finished inside the time, which is why the coresurgeryinterview spoken-practice mode marks a recorded answer against the same station domains.

What is the CST scoring matrix for 2027?

The CST scoring matrix, in its published 2026 form, is MSRA 10%, portfolio station 45% and management and clinical station 45%, for a total of 100. NHS England's applying page states: "Your total score will be a combination of MSRA (10%), portfolio station score (45%) and management and clinical station score (45%)".

Two things are not published: an appointability threshold, and the raw mark per station. Sites quoting a pass mark or a "score out of 216" are describing an older format, and the 2027 weighting will only be confirmed when NHS England updates the applying page.

How does the MSRA affect the CST interview?

The MSRA decides who is interviewed and contributes 10% of the final score. Every longlisted applicant sits it, and the ranking is used for shortlisting; in 2026, our fact table records that only the top-scoring 1,200 applicants at the MSRA were invited to interview and evidence upload, and the 2027 cut is not yet published.

Because the MSRA is scaled to a 0 to 10 band, a strong MSRA cannot rescue a weak interview. Ninety of the 100 points are decided in 30 minutes on Qpercom.

When are the CST interviews in 2027?

The 2027 CST interview dates are not yet published. The national Round 1 interview window is Monday 11 January to Friday 2 April 2027, and NHS England's core surgery timelines page says details of future rounds "will be added once available".

Slots are booked through Oriel on a first come, first served basis by the deadline in the invitation, so book the day the invitation lands.

How do you prepare for the CST interview format?

Preparation for the CST interview format means rehearsing five-minute spoken answers against the domains the panel marks, a three-minute presentation timed to the second, and two-minute answers about each portfolio domain you claimed. The format rewards structure under time more than breadth of knowledge.

1. Write a management opening you can deliver in 20 seconds: patient safety first, gather information, escalate, document, reflect.
2. Rehearse clinical scenarios with a structured assessment and a named escalation point, and stop at five minutes.
3. Script the presentation to three points and time it at 2 minutes 45 seconds, leaving room to slow down.
4. For every letter on your index sheet, prepare a two-minute account of what you did, what changed and what you learned.
5. Record yourself. The coresurgeryinterview bank's AI-marked spoken practice does this against the station domains; the free samples let you try it first.

This post will be updated the week NHS England publishes the 2027 CST interview pages.