FRCOphth Part 2 Written Questions: Format, Dates and How to Prepare

Part 2 FRCOphth Written is a 180-question multiple-choice exam made up entirely of single-best-answer questions. The questions are split into two papers of 90, both sat online on the same day, and the exam runs twice a year. Every item asks you to pick the one best answer from four options.

The questions are based on the Level 1 to 3 learning outcomes of the OST curriculum, as set out in the College's Curriculum 2024 assessment strategy. OST trainees must pass Part 1 by the end of Level 1, and Level 1 outcomes are still in scope here, so earlier material has not gone away; Part 2 extends the range to Levels 2 and 3.

The College's current Part 2 Written page and exam listing give the two-paper, 90-question structure but not the length of each paper. The Part 2 Written information pack linked from that page was unavailable when this guide was reviewed, so take paper timing from your own candidate instructions rather than from second-hand figures.

The College's 2026 rules for its online-proctored written examinations do not allow calculators. They permit one sheet of white paper and a pencil for rough work, and candidates can skip questions and return to them. Check the rules and technical requirements issued for your sitting well before exam day.

The College opens Part 2 Written to doctors in OST years 4 to 7, or with equivalent training, who have already passed Part 1 FRCOphth. Before you apply for a sitting, check each of these:

Part 2 Written and the Refraction Certificate can be taken in either order, but both must be passed before the Part 2 Oral. OST trainees also face a training deadline for refraction: the Refraction Certificate must be passed before year four. All RCOphth exams are held in English; no IELTS score is required, but the College expects candidates to work at about IELTS Level 7.

The next sitting is online on 2 December 2026. Applications close on 16 October 2026, and results are due on 8 January 2027. Dates for the 2027 sittings were not in the official sources reviewed for this guide.

The 2026 fee is £725. Under the College's examination terms, withdrawing after the closing date is allowed only in exceptional circumstances with evidence, and it costs a 20% administration charge plus £50 from the online exam provider for written exams. Lack of preparation is not accepted as a reason, so decide whether you are ready before 16 October 2026.

You have a maximum of four attempts at Part 2 Written, and a pass stays valid for seven calendar years. That window matters later: to sit the Part 2 Oral, you need Part 1, the Refraction Certificate and Part 2 Written all passed within the last seven calendar years.

The pass mark is the Ebel score plus one standard error of measurement (SEM). Ebel is a standard-setting method, and adding one SEM raises the bar above the raw Ebel figure. The result is not a fixed percentage: for Part 1, which also uses Ebel, recent pass marks have ranged from 60.7% (October 2024) to 65% (October 2025).

In December 2025, 205 candidates sat Part 2 Written and 166 passed, a pass rate of 81.0%. The pass mark was 113 out of 177 (63.8%).

That is well above recent Part 1 sittings (41.2% in January 2026), but the groups differ: every Part 2 candidate has already passed Part 1 and is further into training. Read 81% as context, not reassurance; 39 of the 205 candidates still did not pass.

None of the official pages used for this guide mention negative marking. Confirm the scoring rules in your candidate instructions; if wrong answers carry no penalty, leaving a question blank can only cost you.

Fellowship needs four exam passes: Part 1 FRCOphth, the Refraction Certificate, Part 2 Written and the Part 2 Oral, followed by College membership to use the FRCOphth post-nominals. Passing Part 1 and Part 2 Written together also earns the CertRCOphth, which carries its own post-nominals and eligibility for Affiliate Membership.

The Part 2 Oral is the last exam before Fellowship and tests whether you perform at the standard of a general ophthalmology consultant. It combines a Structured Viva of five 10-minute stations with an OSCE of five 20-minute clinical stations plus a 10-minute Communication Skills station. The 2026 UK fee is £1,395, and at the York sitting in November 2025, 60.1% of 143 candidates passed.

Plan the sequence early. December 2026 Written results (8 January 2027) arrive after the application deadlines for every Part 2 Oral sitting in the College's calendar when this guide was reviewed: Swansea (9-13 November 2026), Cairo (23-25 November 2026) and Singapore (15-16 January 2027, applications close 6 November 2026). UK spring 2027 Oral dates were not yet in the calendar. If you still need the Refraction Certificate, the upcoming sittings the College lists are Cairo (21-23 November 2026) and Singapore (11-12 January 2027).

For OST trainees, College documents disagree on the Oral deadline: the June 2026 information pack says by the middle of ST6, while the 2026 exams calendar says by the end of year seven. Confirm your own deadline with your training program.

In an SBA question, more than one of the four options may be defensible; you are asked for the single best one. The skill is ranking rather than recall, so in review, make sure you can say why the second-best option is second.

Habits that hold up across SBA exams:

Pacing is the other half. The current exam page does not state paper length, so take the timing from your candidate instructions and rehearse at that pace in at least two full-length mocks.

A question bank earns its place in three ways: it finds weak subspecialties early, it trains the SBA ranking skill, and it lets you rehearse a 90-question paper under time pressure. Work untimed while you are learning a topic, switch to timed blocks as the exam nears, and read every explanation, including for questions you got right.

OphthoMentor, an independent company not affiliated with or endorsed by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, has a free public question library at ophthomentor.com/ophthalmology-questions, organized by the 13 BCSC sections. A free account (no card, no trial clock, no expiry) opens all 713 published questions as of 26 September 2026, all with explanations, many with decision flowcharts. The site also has timed mock exams, weak-topic drills, a spaced-repetition review queue and a readiness dashboard. The dashboard's pass line and confidence interval are OphthoMentor's own estimate, not a prediction of the College's Ebel pass mark. Premium, at 299 SEK per year, extends spaced-repetition review to every question and unlocks every oral case (viva) station.

Be clear about fit: OphthoMentor's SBA questions are original and organized by the 13 BCSC-aligned subspecialties rather than by OST learning outcome, and the bank also includes EBO-style true/false items that the FRCOphth does not use. Stick to the SBAs, and use them for clinical reasoning across subspecialties alongside the OST curriculum.

Several providers sell Part 2 Written banks. As listed on 26 September 2026: OphthoQuestions sells an FRCOphth Part 2 add-on of 499 questions for $199.99, which requires an active base subscription (from $329.99 for six months); Eye Academy lists a Part 2 Written bank from £325.00 with three- or six-month access and a 10-question free trial; and eyeQ by Eyedocs lists Part 2 at £79 for three months or £99 for six, with a free Basic tier of 100 questions for Part 1 and Part 2. OphthoMentor publishes this guide and is one of the products you might compare, so check each provider's own page for current terms.