What Is a Good UCAT Score for UK Medicine? Final 2026 Deciles Explained

The question every medicine applicant asks this week is brutally simple: what is a good UCAT score? With the UCAS deadline for medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses landing on 15 October 2026 at 18:00 UK time — six days away — applicants are no longer practising. They are placing their four medicine choices, and the score they sit on determines which medical schools are realistic.

The good news is that the guessing is over. The UCAT Consortium has published its final 2026 test statistics, covering all 42,359 tests taken up to 24 September 2026 — the most UCAT tests ever taken in a single year. The national average is 1,918 out of 2,700, the top 20% of candidates start at 2,140, and the top 10% at 2,250. This guide puts every final 2026 number in one place, explains what each decile actually unlocks, and walks through three worked applicant scenarios so you can see exactly where your score sits — and how to play your four UCAS choices.

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How UCAT Scoring Actually Works

The UCAT is not marked like an exam. There is no pass, no fail, and no grade boundary — your score only means something relative to the 42,359 other candidates who sat the test this cycle. Understanding the machinery matters, because nearly every mistake applicants make this week comes from comparing the wrong numbers.

The test has three cognitive subtests — Verbal Reasoning (VR), Decision Making (DM) and Quantitative Reasoning (QR). Each is scaled from 300 to 900, so your total cognitive score runs from 900 to 2,700. Alongside them sits the Situational Judgement Test (SJT), 69 questions in 26 minutes, which produces a separate band from Band 1 (best) to Band 4. The SJT is not part of your 2,700 total — it is assessed on its own, and as we will see, it can gatekeep applications even when the headline score looks strong.

One format change catches out every applicant who gets advice from an older sibling or an old forum thread: Abstract Reasoning was removed from the UCAT in 2025. The maximum cognitive total is now 2,700, not 3,600. Any “good score” figure from before 2025 — your uncle’s 2,800, a 2023 forum’s cut-off list — is simply not on the same scale. The rough ×0.75 conversion people quote runs around 20–25 points high, so do not trust converted figures when real 2026 data is available.

Universities use the score in three broad ways: as a threshold (below X, no interview), as a ranking (invite the top N scorers to interview), or as a weighted component blended with GCSEs, predicted grades, personal statement and interview performance. Which method each school uses is what makes the same score “good” at one university and irrelevant at another — and it is why checking each medical school’s own admissions page beats any generic advice.

The Final 2026 Numbers: Every Decile

Here are the definitive figures for the 2026 cycle (2027 entry), confirmed across the UCAT Consortium’s final statistics, MedEntry and The UKCAT People. Every boundary sits 10 to 40 points above 2025 — a normal year-on-year drift, not an upheaval, but enough to shift cut-off lines at the margin.

Decile	Percentile	2026 total	VR	DM	QR	2025 total
1st	Top 90%	1,590	500	520	530	1,580
2nd	Top 80%	1,700	540	560	580	1,680
3rd	Top 70%	1,780	560	590	600	1,760
4th	Top 60%	1,850	580	620	640	1,820
5th (median)	Top 50%	1,920	600	640	670	1,880
6th	Top 40%	1,980	620	670	700	1,950
7th	Top 30%	2,050	640	690	730	2,010
8th	Top 20%	2,140	670	710	780	2,100
9th	Top 10%	2,250	710	760	820	2,220

Headline figures: mean 1,918 (up from 1,891 in 2025), subtest means of VR 602, DM 640, QR 675, and 42,359 candidates — a record, roughly 1,000 more than last year and 12% up on two years ago, with medical school places expected to stay flat. This is the most competitive UCAT year on record.

The SJT got tougher

SJT band	2026 final	2025 final
Band 1	15%	21%
Band 2	40%	39%
Band 3	34%	29%
Band 4	11%	10%

Band 1 collapsed from 21% to 15% of candidates this year, while Band 3 swelled to 34%. The SJT matters more than most applicants realise — some medical schools deprioritise or reject Band 4 applicants outright, so a Band 4 can cap your options even with an elite cognitive score. More on that below.

Three things the numbers hide

1. The gaps between deciles are uneven. Only 60 points separate the 5th and 6th deciles (1,920 to 1,980), but 110 points separate the 8th and 9th (2,140 to 2,250). Near the top, small score differences move you a long way — 50 extra marks at 2,100 buy you far more than 50 extra marks at 1,900.

2. Verbal Reasoning did not move. The VR mean was 602 — identical to 2025. The entire year-on-year rise came from Decision Making (up 12 points) and Quantitative Reasoning (up 14). QR now runs 73 points above VR on average, which means a 650 in Verbal Reasoning is a considerably better result than a 650 in Quantitative Reasoning. Do not compare your subtests raw; compare each against its own decile column. VR’s 9th-decile boundary is 710 while QR’s is 820 — a 110-point difference for the same percentile.

3. Interim statistics overstate scores. The interim 2026 figures (published in September) showed a mean of 1,970 and a 9th decile of 2,300. The final numbers came in about 54 points lower on average — a pattern that has repeated every year since 2022. If you benchmarked yourself against the interim table, re-place your score now. Only the final figures, published after the testing window closed on 24 September 2026, are the real benchmark.

What Counts as a Good UCAT Score in 2026?

So — what is a good UCAT score? The honest answer is that “good” is a planning range, not a single number. Based on the final 2026 data, the working bands used by admissions advisers this cycle are:

Planning band	Score range	Decile	What it means
High	2,140 and above	8th–9th	Top 20% nationally; 2,250+ is top 10%. Enough for interview at most UCAT-requiring medical schools.
Mid	~1,920 to 2,130	5th–7th	Mean to just under the 8th decile. Favour schools that blend UCAT with academics, interview and context.
Lower	Below ~1,920	Below median	Below the national mean. Lean into UCAT-light schools: interview-weighted, GCSE-weighted or holistic scoring.

The key threshold is 2,140 — the 8th decile. Per MedEntry’s guidance, a decile-8 score or higher is enough to secure an interview at most UCAT-requiring medical schools. Above 2,250 (9th decile), you are in the top 10% of a record cohort, and the question stops being “which schools will interview me?” and becomes “which SJT band and school policies narrow my options?”

For the mid band, the strategy flips. A score of, say, 2,020 is 102 points above the mean — a genuinely solid result — but it sits 120 points below the 8th decile. Schools that invite the top-ranked UCAT scorers to interview are a stretch; schools that give UCAT a smaller weight alongside GCSEs, predicted A-levels and interview performance are where this score works hardest.

The SJT: Your Score’s Quiet Gatekeeper

The situational judgement band is the part applicants underrate. Two facts from this year’s data change how you should read it. First, Band 1 is now scarce — only 15% of candidates earned it, down from 21% last year — so a Band 1 is a genuine differentiator on paper. Second, Band 4 is a hard filter at several medical schools, which reject or deprioritise Band 4 applicants regardless of the cognitive total.

This makes the SJT the one part of your result that can veto an otherwise outstanding score. A 2,300 with Band 4 (top 10% cognitively) can be worse than a 2,150 with Band 2 at a school that auto-filters Band 4. Before finalising your four choices, check the SJT policy on each university’s own admissions page — never assume, and never rely on a forum thread from 2024.

Three Applicants, Three Strategies (Worked Examples)

Here is how the 2026 numbers translate into real choice strategy. Each scenario is fictional, but the arithmetic is straight from the final decile table.

Priya: 2,050 total, SJT Band 2 (VR 650 / DM 700 / QR 700)

2,050 is exactly the 7th-decile boundary — top 30% nationally. It sits 130 points above the mean (1,918) and 90 points below the 8th decile (2,140). Her subtests are balanced: VR 650 is 40 points above the VR 7th-decile boundary (640), and her DM and QR are comfortably above their mean bands. Band 2 SJT keeps every door open.

Strategy: one aspirational choice at a school that invites broadly on UCAT around the 7th–8th decile, two realistic choices at schools blending UCAT with academics or interview, and one safer choice at a school weighting GCSEs or interview heavily. She should not anchor on last year’s published cut-offs — every 2026 boundary sits 10–40 points above 2025, so a school that interviewed at ~2,030 last year is a stretch, not a safety.

Daniel: 1,800 total, SJT Band 3 (VR 590 / DM 620 / QR 590)

1,800 sits between the 3rd decile (1,780) and the 4th (1,850) — roughly the 65th–70th percentile, and 118 points below the national mean. His VR and QR are each about 10–15 points above their 3rd-decile boundaries, DM about 30 above. Band 3 SJT is the most common band this year (34%) and will not filter him anywhere.

Strategy: avoid UCAT-heavy threshold schools entirely — a hard UCAT cut-off of 2,000+ ends his application before it starts. His applications live or die on schools that weight UCAT lightly or not at all: GCSE-weighted scoring, strong interview performance models, and holistic review schools. His four choices should all sit in that lane, with the safest anchored where his GCSE/predicted profile is strongest. This is also where predicted grades do real work — see our guide on how predicted grades feed into conditional offers.

Aisha: 2,300 total, SJT Band 4 (VR 740 / DM 760 / QR 800)

The paradox case. 2,300 is 50 points above the 9th decile — top 10% of 42,359 candidates, an elite score. Every subtest sits at or above its 9th-decile boundary (VR 710, DM 760, QR 820). But her SJT is Band 4, held by only 11% of candidates — the group several medical schools deprioritise or reject outright.

Strategy: her headline score qualifies her almost everywhere on cognitive ranking, so her four choices must be filtered the other way — only schools that explicitly accept or de-emphasise Band 4. One aspirational choice is fine, but every choice needs its SJT policy verified on the university’s own admissions page, because a single Band-4 filter turns a top-10% score into a rejection. Her score is a reminder of the week’s most important lesson: the number and the band are two separate admissions currencies.

Your 4-Choice UCAS Strategy Before 15 October

Medicine applicants get four medicine choices on UCAS (not five — the fifth must be a non-medicine course such as biomedical science, and it can be added later, any time up to the January deadline). With six days to the 15 October 18:00 deadline, here is how to place them using the 2026 data:

• Choice 1 — aspirational: a school where your score sits at or just below its historical interview range. Take the school’s published 2025 cut-off and add upward pressure: every 2026 decile is 10–40 points above 2025, so treat last year’s threshold as a ceiling, not a floor.
• Choices 2 and 3 — realistic: schools where your score sits comfortably above last year’s published range after the upward adjustment, or schools that blend UCAT with your strongest other currency (GCSEs, predicted grades, interview).
• Choice 4 — safe: a school where you clear the bar by a margin even if 2026 cut-offs drift higher than expected — or a UCAT-light school where your non-UCAT profile does the lifting.

Three rules keep this honest. First: verify every cut-off on the university’s own admissions page — published thresholds from 2025 were set against last year’s cohort, and 2026’s rising deciles mean “it was 2,020 last year” is a rough guide, not a promise. Second: do not put all four choices at UCAT-heavy threshold schools above your decile; one zero-interview cycle is the avoidable disaster. Third: align with your academics — a strong UCAT does not rescue weak predicted grades, and conditional offers hinge on both (see our predicted grades guide).

Five Mistakes That Misread a Score

1. Benchmarking against interim statistics. The September interim figures (mean 1,970, 9th decile 2,300) flattered everyone by ~54 points. Only the final numbers above are real.
2. Comparing against pre-2025 scores. Anything quoted on the old /3600 scale — forum cut-offs, a sibling’s 2,750 — is a different test. Abstract Reasoning is gone; only 2025 and 2026 figures are comparable.
3. Reading subtests as equals. 650 in VR beats 650 in QR by a full decile’s worth of difficulty. Compare each subtest against its own decile column, not against the others.
4. Ignoring the SJT band. A Band 4 can veto a top-10% cognitive score at filtering schools; a Band 1 is a genuine edge in a year only 15% earned one.
5. Cloning last year’s cut-offs. With deciles up 10–40 points across the board, last year’s published thresholds are a floor for this year’s pressure, not a guarantee.

Conclusion

A good UCAT score in 2026 is not a mystery number — it is a position on a published table. 2,140 and above opens nearly every UCAT-requiring door; 1,920 to 2,130 is competitive where academics and interview carry weight; and below the mean the game is about picking the schools whose scoring model fits your profile, not chasing thresholds you cannot reach. Whatever band you sit in, place your score against the final deciles, read your SJT band as a second currency, and give every choice the same scrutiny — four considered picks beat one brilliant score applied carelessly.

The arithmetic of this cycle is unforgiving in one direction: 42,359 candidates, flat places, and deciles that drifted up 10–40 points. But it is also clarifying. You no longer have to guess what your score is worth — the table above tells you. Use it, spread your four choices across the tiers, verify every school’s own admissions page, and submit before 15 October 18:00. The score is fixed; the strategy is still entirely in your hands.