Ophthalmology ST1 portfolio tips: 14 rules that win points

The published criteria tell you what scores. They do not tell you how a portfolio is actually read, or how candidates lose points for work that should have scored.

We've created 14 rules that help you go from having the right experience to scoring points for it.

Understanding what scores

1. Read the evidence folder line by line before you claim anything. People are not reading it carefully enough: one of the presenters of SmartOST's portfolio webinar says almost every portfolio they have looked at has some mistakes, which is a point lost to reading rather than to achievement. Alternatively, you can read the guidance when you go to upload in the SmartOST portfolio tool. What to include shows what reading for wording turns up.

2. Go as far back as you can. Medical school projects, an audit from a foundation post, first place in the RCOphth Essay Prize for Foundation Doctors. Most experience has no time limit, and we've found that candidates often miss out on points purely because they forgot something they did that would have scored. What to include names the parts of the form that do have one.

3. Think about whether your item can score better somewhere else. One piece of work counts once, and where it goes is yours to decide: the guidance says only "Please choose which domain to include the work in." Our advice is that the best home for an item depends on where all the others have gone, so the placements cannot be settled one at a time. List every domain each piece of work could plausibly reach, then place them together. The second and third domain an item could reach are rarely the obvious ones, but if you have maxed out the caps in another domain it might be the best place for it. Placing everything in one pass is worked through step by step.

4. Use a supervisor letter to turn borderline work into scoring work. A letter from your supervisor that sets out what you actually did, and names the evidence type it meets, lets an assessor easily award the points without having to infer anything that is lacking in the documents you have already. See what to ask a supervisor for before you send the request to your supervisor. The exception is quality improvement and audit at 4 or 5 points, where the 2027 guidance says a supervisor's letter "is not enough evidence for 4 or 5 points, please include data demonstrating this". Four needs demonstrated improvement to practice or a completed audit loop, and five a peer-reviewed journal or guidelines implemented supra-regionally with clear evidence of impact. For teaching, taster weeks and work like them, a letter still does the job.

5. It is fine to push a little. Where to push and where not to comes down to whether you can prove the work met the line. If you're not sure where you can push, book a session with one of our coaches.

6. Stop adding once an item does not earn its place. Take out what clearly will not score: evidence that does not meet the criteria can detract from the rest of your submission. Once a domain is capped, more items earn nothing there: points past a domain's cap are lost. An item can still be placed under another domain it qualifies for that has room, and it scores there. And padding a domain can cost you points: the 2027 guidance says "marks may be deducted for including unnecessary information". When to stop adding takes each of these further.

Presenting each item

7. Every scan has to be legible. High resolution, the right way up, the whole page in frame. An assessor who cannot read a certificate cannot award points for it (and they won't email to ask you for a better copy!). Scans at one size are part of the consistency an assessor looks for.

8. Title each supervisor letter for the domain it supports. "Letter of support" tells an assessor nothing. A title naming the domain and the item it backs puts the letter in the right place before anyone has read a word of it. Supervisor letters shows where the title goes.

9. Make the letter say, in words, how the work meets the evidence type. Supervisors write warmly and vaguely by default, because that is what a reference usually needs to be. Send them a short template setting out what the evidence type requires, so that the letter comes back saying it. We've made a handy template here for you to use.

Presenting each domain

10. Layout is worth 3 points. Overall portfolio layout and quality is a scoring domain in its own right, and it is one many candidates overlook. Why it is scored at all is worth holding on to for the four rules below: an assessor is working through a large pile of portfolios, and evidence that is not presented clearly can be missed even when it genuinely meets the criteria. How to lay out a portfolio takes each of these rules further.

11. Give every domain a contents page. A short list of what the domain contains, each item under a descriptive title with its page range, so that the whole domain can be taken in before any of it is read. What a contents page has to carry is set out in full.

12. Title your items the way the evidence folder titles them. Use the evidence type's own wording rather than your own. An assessor matching your title against the evidence folder should not have to translate it first. How to title them has an example.

13. Order your items the way the evidence folder orders them. Follow its sequence within each domain, so that an assessor reading down the evidence folder and an assessor reading through your portfolio are working the same list in the same order. What to do about the gaps is covered too.

14. Make the joins between items obvious. It should never be unclear where one item ends and the next begins. An assessor unsure whether page four is still the same piece of work has to read back to find out, or guess. What a join looks like is up to you, as long as it is the same every time.

Where to start

If you do one thing from this list, do rule 3: lay out every item against every domain it could reach, and place the lot in one sitting. It costs nothing, needs no new work, and it is the rule that moves the most points.

Then check the total against how the self-assessment is scored, which walks the point ladders domain by domain.