Scroll down to the bottom of the page to get your free tracker spreadsheet!
What is the UCAT?
The University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT) is a computer-based admission test used by universities in the UK to select applicants for medical/dental programmes. Around 37,000 applicants sit the UCAT each year.
It is composed of three cognitive subtests, scored 300-900 with a total cognitive scaled score out of 2700. These descriptors are from the UCAT Consortium:
- Verbal Reasoning (VR)
- Assesses your ability to critically evaluate information presented in a written form.
- 44 questions in 22 minutes.
- Decision Making (DM)
- Assesses your ability to make sound decisions and judgements using complex information.
- 35 questions in 37 minutes.
- Quantitative Reasoning (QR)
- Assesses your ability to critically evaluate information presented in a numerical form.
- 36 questions in 26 minutes
In addition, there is a fourth component:
- Situational Judgement Test (SJT)
- Measures your capacity to understand real world situations and to identify critical factors and appropriate behaviour in dealing with them.
- 69 questions in 26 minutes.
- You are given a Band 1-4 depending on your score, with Band 1 being the highest.
When to sit the UCAT?
The UCAT 2025 testing dates (for the 2025/2026 Application Cycle) are 7th July – 26 September. For first time applicants, this will fall in the summer between Year 12 and Year 13. When choosing a date, there are two key things to consider:
- Your preparation time – for most people, this will be 6 to 8 weeks.
- If you are in school, think about when you are going to finish and when you can realistically start revising to the best of your abilities. Add to this date approximately 8 weeks to select your test date.
- Any commitments you have.
- If you are starting Y13 in September, do NOT book the UCAT for after you go back to school. On average, people perform worse if they sit the UCAT in the last two weeks of September.
- This is shown by the fact that final deciles are always lower than preliminary deciles, sometimes by a significant amount (50+ points). Preliminary deciles only take into account people sitting until mid September. The start of Year 13 is a very busy period and the last thing you want is to have to do UCAT preparation alongside work for your A Levels. You have the summer, use it!
For the majority of people, the best time to sit will be mid to late August (around the 20th). Booking in this time range also gives you enough of a buffer in case you have to reschedule for later down the line, and if you have to catch up on any school work before you head into year 13.
If you are a gap year or mature student, this is a little more flexible. You might get away with booking for September time. In this case, just make sure you are giving yourself enough time to prepare.
Kickstarting Your Revision
The most important thing you can do for the UCAT is practice. Practice will help you to figure out what to focus on and which strategies do and do not work. Because of this, the more questions you do, the better.
The Official Question Bank is an excellent bank of free questions and mocks made by Pearson; being official, it is the most accurate resource out there. However, it is quite limited in what it offers.
Purchasing Medify or Medentry is recommended – just one is perfectly fine, both if you want to maximise your exposure to mocks. Complete practice questions, mocks and mini-mocks.
While both platforms will offer their own graphs to check your performance, having your own spreadsheet for mock scores can really help. Find below a free downloadable spreadsheet made by the site admin:
Features of this spreadsheet are:
- Conditional formatting – differentiate between bad and good scores with colourful formatting depending on your inputs. By default, overall scores will be highlighted blue if they break the 2200 mark. We aim high, and so should you!
- Graphs for overall scores – which show you in a visual way your progress. They automatically update based on your inputs.
- Sheets for raw and scaled scores – two sheets each so you can track both Medify and Medentry (24 mocks + 4 mocks for officials)
Don’t forget to check out the other pages in this section for further resources!