You will write the University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT) just once the year of your application and your results will be compared to peers who write the exam the same year as you do. As such, it may feel that looking at UCAT results from previous years isn't so helpful. 

Although it is true that UCAT results change significantly from one year to another (the average can be over 100 points different), patterns in UCAT scores still repeat themselves and thus we can get interesting insights by looking closely at the previous year's cohort results.  

Since the UCAT exam was called the UKCAT up to 2018, when reviewing the final scores provided in this blog post, we will be referring to it as the UKCAT. If you are a prospective student planning on taking the exam this summer and apply to medical schools for entry in 2020, then you will be sitting the 2019 UCAT. In that case, you will be able to review the interim and final UCAT 2019 results in early autumn of 2019. 

Final UKCAT scores for 2017, 2018, 2019 entry

In order to get a feel for what is an low, average or good UCAT score, it's worth looking back more than just one year at UCAT scores. This also allows us to identify patterns that repeat themselves year after year.

Note that the Decision Making section the UKCAT was piloted in 2016, and as such, no scores were released to applicants, making the compound score based on three subtests only, the Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Abstract Reasoning. While the data does not go back far enough to make certain conclusions, you can see that during the last three years, the average score for Verbal Reasoning gravitates around the 570 mark each year, and for Abstract Reasoning - around 630. The final scores for Decision Making and Quantitative Reasoning have dropped slightly, which reflects the difference in the total scores achieved between 2018 and previous years. The average total score across all subsections seems to be relatively stable, gravitating mostly around the 630 score, which should also be your aim.

Note once again that the scores for 2016 are significantly lower due to the fact that Decision Making was not included in the total score of that year and as such, the final score is calculated based on three, rather than four, subsections. If you were to calculate the average score across all subsections considered, that final result would, in fact, be comparable to the average results for 2017 and 2018. 

Further information for prospective applicants