University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT)

All applicants for the standard five-year (A106), six-year (A104) and Graduate Entry (A101) Medicine courses are required to sit the University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT), formerly known as the UKCAT.

About the UCAT

UCAT has been designed to help universities determine whether you have the best combination of cognitive abilities, attitudes and professional behaviours appropriate for an aspiring healthcare professional.

The test is taken online at centres throughout the UK and internationally. The UCAT is intended to probe innate skills and competencies rather than test acquired knowledge.

Paid-for preparation courses are not known to be of any benefit (they may even worsen performance in some circumstances), and we advise applicants that such programmes are completely unnecessary. However, we do recommend that you complete the free practice tests (available on the UCAT website) under timed conditions as part of your preparation for sitting UCAT.

Further details are available through the UCAT website. You are advised to visit this website early in the application process.

The UCAT result is valid only for the year in which you apply (either for direct or deferred entry). If you are making a second application, you must retake the UCAT.

Use of the UCAT threshold

We will calculate our UCAT threshold for each year of entry following receipt of UCAT results in November.

The threshold will be based on the standard of scores for that year, so we are not able to confirm what our threshold is in advance of the UCAT deadline. The threshold does vary year-on-year. You can see our previous UCAT thresholds on our application data page.

If you meet the UCAT threshold we apply, and you achieve Band 1 or 2 in the Situational Judgement Test (SJT), you will likely be invited to interview as long as you meet our minimum academic requirements (for example, GCSE).

There are, however, some operational constraints on the number of interviews available in any given year. Where the number of highly scoring candidates exceeds the number of interview slots available, we will rank candidates according to UCAT total score and SJT band.

We do not consider applicants who achieve Band 3 or 4 in the Situational Judgement Test (SJT) element of the UCAT.