Dr Chris Paton

The University Clinical Aptitude Test is the aptitude exam used by most UK medical and dental schools to inform admissions decisions, alongside academic grades, the personal statement, and (for many schools) interview performance. The test was formerly called the UKCAT and was renamed in 2019; in Australia and New Zealand the equivalent test is called UCAT ANZ.

The UCAT is a two-hour, computer-delivered test taken in the year preceding intended entry. It comprises five short sections — Verbal Reasoning, Decision Making, Quantitative Reasoning, Abstract Reasoning, and the Situational Judgement Test. The first four are cognitive sub-tests scored between 300 and 900; the SJT is reported in bands. Different medical schools weight UCAT performance very differently, with some treating it as a hard threshold, some scoring it alongside academic attainment, and others using it primarily as a tie-breaker.

Because school-level admissions policy changes every year, the only reliable source for how a particular medical school will use your UCAT score is that school's own admissions page for the year you are applying. Aggregated guides are useful for general orientation but quickly go out of date.