👨‍⚕️ Understanding the UCAT exam for getting into Medicine or Dentistry

Being accepted into Medicine is an exciting prospect, and the UCAT can help you get there! The UCAT or the University Clinical Aptitude Test is an online computer-based assessment designed to test your abilities across a range of different criteria. This examination period runs from July to mid-August each year and lasts 2 hours*, with various amounts of time being divided across 5 subsections:

• Verbal reasoning
• Decision-making
• Quantitative reasoning
• Abstract reasoning
• Situational judgement.

*Students with documented medical conditions or disabilities may apply for Access Arrangements to sit an extended version of the test.

What is it used for?

The UCAT is used for the direct entry (undergraduate) pathway into medicine and dentistry. The UCAT is used to help rank students who apply to each degree, alongside their ATAR and in some cases an interview. The exact requirements vary a bit between universities, but they all use a combination of these assessments with different weighting given to each component.

How is it scored?

For each of the four cognitive sections, you will get a score between 300 (the lowest possible) and 900 (the highest possible). Situational judgement is reported separately, as a band.

A larger pool of questions gets used each year, which are selected and presented randomly to each student to neutralise the possibility of cheating.

This cumulative score, which will be between 1200 and 3600 is the score most universities look at, with some universities placing a higher or lower priority on individual sections.

Overall, what is deemed a ‘competitive’ UCAT score varies each year and is hard to pinpoint exactly because the score is combined with ATAR and interviews. As a ROUGH guide, a score over 3000 sits in the ‘incredible’ range, a score between 2800-3000 will give you a red-hot chance for an interview, a score 2600-2800 gives you a fighting chance, and a score below 2600 should act as good motivation to get the highest ATAR possible.

Again, this is a very broad approximation – don’t count yourself out until the offers are released because scoring is multi-factorial, and you never know what will happen.

How do I prepare for the UCAT?

Check out our blog about exactly how the UCAT works, where we go through UCAT in-depth - such as how you can best prepare for it, exam advice from one of our top UCAT tutors, as well as the alternative pathways to getting into Medicine or Dentistry. Here are some additional free resources you can also use, where we explore the little-known tips and tricks to preparing for your UCAT exam.

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The UCAT can be a confusing journey to navigate, especially for students balancing UCAT studies with ATAR studies. However, we're here to help, if you need extra support with your UCAT studies, we have Australia's top-scoring Medical students in one place - KIS Academics. Our tutors are knowledgeable and can assist you with understanding exactly how to score top marks and land your dream university course.

Explore more of our topics below or browse some of Australia’s top-scoring UCAT tutors here.