Dental School UCAT Cut-Offs: Trends to 2027

Dental school UCAT cut-offs are the interview thresholds and lowest-shortlisted scores that UK dental schools publish after each admissions cycle. Eight schools publish a multi-year series; nine publish no figure at all. Almost every published number was recorded on the 3,600-point scale retired in 2025, and only Manchester's series carries a figure on both sides of that break: 2,840 at 2025 entry and 2,200 at 2026 entry.

That break is the whole difficulty with a five-year dental trend. Abstract Reasoning was removed from the UCAT in 2025, and the UCAT Consortium states plainly that scores from 2025 onwards are not directly comparable with those from before 2025. Plotting a 2022-entry threshold and a 2026-entry threshold on one axis produces a line that falls steeply and means nothing. Every figure below therefore carries two labels — the entry year it belongs to, and the scale it was measured on — and nothing on this page has been converted between the two.

Which Dental Schools Publish a UCAT History, and Which Publish None

The Dental Schools Council booklet for 2027 entry lists 17 standard-entry dentistry courses across the UK and Ireland, and describes itself as the only resource collating entry requirements directly from UK dental school admissions staff. Across all 78 pages it mentions the UCAT 28 times and gives no score figure for any school: the only four-digit numbers anywhere in the booklet are the years 2015, 2025 and 2027. Everything that follows had to be taken from the individual schools instead.

Read down the fourth column and the point of the table becomes clear. A "cut-off" at Manchester is a line above which an interview was automatic, and applicants below it were still considered. A "cut-off" at Dundee is the lowest score a person who was interviewed happened to hold. Those two numbers answer different questions, and stacking them in one league table — which almost every commercial guide does — produces a ranking of measurement conventions rather than of difficulty. Our companion page on how each dental school weights the UCAT works through the scoring mechanisms themselves.

Only Manchester's Series Crosses the 2025 Change

The University of Manchester publishes the minimum overall UCAT score thresholds above which A206 applicants were automatically invited to interview, together with the mean score of everyone who applied and of everyone shortlisted. It is the only dental series found with a figure on both sides of the scale change.

Taken at face value the standard threshold falls 640 points between 2025 and 2026 entry, from 2,840 to 2,200. No dental school became six hundred points easier in a year. The 2026-entry row is the first Manchester figure drawn from a test with three cognitive subtests instead of four, so it is a smaller number describing the same competitive position. The next section shows how far that reading holds.

Two details in this table are worth keeping. The 2025-entry cells are ranges rather than single values, because that year Manchester's threshold varied with the situational judgement band; by 2026 entry it is a single number again. And Manchester's threshold has never been an exclusion. The school states that an applicant below it is still assessed holistically and ranked on overall UCAT score, which is a materially different regime from a hard bar. Manchester also declines to consider anyone in situational judgement Band 3 or Band 4, so the band gate does the exclusion the threshold does not.

How to Compare a Pre-2025 Threshold With a Post-2025 One

There is one honest way to compare a figure from before 2025 with one from after, and it is not arithmetic on the scores. The UCAT Consortium publishes a decile table for each sitting, showing what total score sat at the 10th percentile, the 20th, and so on. A decile is a position in that year's national field, so it survives a change of scale even though the scores do not. Locating a school's threshold inside its own year's decile table asks a question the scale cannot distort: how far up the national field did this school draw its line?

Run Manchester's three published measures through it. The 2025-entry standard threshold of 2,840 sits between that sitting's 8th decile of 2,780 and its 9th of 2,920. The 2026-entry threshold of 2,200 sits between the 8th decile of 2,100 and the 9th of 2,220. Same band, both years. The mean applicant score behaves identically: 2,745 falls between the 7th and 8th deciles of the 2024 sitting, and 2,054 falls between the 7th and 8th deciles of the 2025 sitting. So does the mean shortlisted score, which clears the 9th decile in both years — 2,950 against a 9th decile of 2,920, and 2,240 against 2,220.

Three independent measures, three identical placements. The scale moved by roughly six hundred points and Manchester's position in the national field did not move at all. That is the finding a naive trend line destroys, and it is the reason this page reports deciles rather than a converted score.

One limit on the method, stated plainly: as at 18 August 2026 the UCAT Consortium published decile tables for two sittings only, 2025 and 2024. Earlier tables have been taken down, so a 2021-entry or 2022-entry threshold cannot be placed this way at all. The Consortium's own note is that mean scores shift between testing years and direct comparison is not always possible.

Sheffield Printed One Number for Five Entry Years, Then Replaced It With a Rule

Sheffield publishes the longest dental admissions series in the country, running from 2018 entry, in a spreadsheet linked from its selection-process page. Its UCAT row does something no other school's does.

The cut-off is 2,690 for five consecutive entry years. Over the same five years Manchester's mean dentistry applicant rose from 2,533 to 2,745, a difference of 212 points, and Sheffield's own applications climbed to 1,249 by 2025 entry. A nominal figure held constant while the field around it strengthens is not a constant standard; it is a bar that quietly drops in relative terms. By the last year it was published, 2,690 sat just above the 7th decile of the 2024 sitting.

Sheffield has since stopped publishing a number. Its Phase 1 screening for 2027 entry asks for an average or above total score in the cognitive components, plus band 1 or 2 in the situational judgement test, against the 71 places usually available. That is a relative rule, and it is scale-proof by construction: it means the same thing in 2027 as it did in 2019 without anybody having to restate it. Worth knowing before you write anything: Sheffield reads personal statements and references only for applicants who clear Phase 1.

Aberdeen's Table Names Neither the Cycle Nor the Scale

Aberdeen's dentistry UCAT page carries the most widely quoted dental table on the web: the lowest UCAT scores invited to interview, split between Home Scottish-fee and rest-of-UK applicants, over seven rows. The column heading is the single word "Year". There is no note saying whether a row is an entry year or a testing year, and no note saying which scale any row is on.

Take the top row and test both readings against the decile tables. If 2025 means the 2025 sitting, then 2,320 is above that year's 9th decile of 2,220, and Aberdeen's weakest interviewed Scottish-fee applicant was inside the strongest tenth of the country. If 2025 means 2025 entry, the applicant sat the 2024 test, and 2,320 falls between that sitting's 2nd decile of 2,260 and its 3rd of 2,360 — the bottom third. The same printed number describes either the top ten per cent or the bottom third, and the table gives no way to choose.

This matters more than a footnote. Aberdeen weights academic record at 60 per cent against the UCAT at 40 per cent and states that no minimum cut-off is used, so the table is the only quantitative signal it offers. An applicant reading it to decide whether to apply is reading a figure that could be off by seven deciles. The honest use of Aberdeen's table is as a record that the school interviews across a wide range, and no more than that.

Four Series That Stop at 2025 Entry and Measure Four Different Things

Newcastle, Queen Mary, Birmingham and Leeds all publish figures, all end at 2025 entry, and all measure something different. That shared stopping point is not a coincidence: 2025 entry was the last cycle decided on the retired scale, and none of the four has published a post-change figure.

Newcastle's four thresholds move without direction: 2,690, then 2,790, then 2,680, then 2,800, a spread of 120 points with no trend inside it. Newcastle says why on the same sheet — the threshold depends on the average score of applicants who apply, so it cannot be predicted, and a score is not directly comparable with previous years. Its contextual threshold sits between 80 and 100 points below the standard one in three of the four years and only 30 below at 2025 entry, which is a real and useful piece of information about how much a widening-participation flag is worth there.

Queen Mary is the only dental school found that labels the scale of its own historic table, in four words above it: the data comprises four cognitive subtests. Its home cut-off rose from 2,760 to 2,790 across three cycles while home applications fell from 835 to 619 for 67 places. Queen Mary has also changed the form of its published requirement rather than the number: the current statement is a decile position, at or above the 4th decile, not a score. Its page does still describe the removal of Abstract Reasoning in the future tense, which is a small sign of how quickly this material goes stale.

Birmingham's figures are the highest on the page and the least like the others, because Birmingham excludes contextual and widening-participation candidates from every UCAT statistic it publishes. Its 2025-entry lowest interviewed score of 2,870 is therefore the lowest among applicants assessed without any contextual adjustment, which is not the same quantity Dundee or Aberdeen report. Leeds is the newest to the test, having begun using the UCAT at 2024 entry, and its two data points move in opposite directions for its two UK cohorts — 2,730 down to 2,500 for standard applicants, 2,190 up to 2,260 for widening-participation applicants. Two points are not a trend, and Leeds says so itself by describing its data as limited. If a weak score is your position rather than a curiosity, our page on what a low UCAT actually rules out in dentistry works through the schools that say least about the test.

Dundee Keeps the Fullest Record and the Most Out-of-Date One

Dundee publishes more per cycle than any other UK dental school: applications, interviews, the average, highest and lowest UCAT among those interviewed, offers and matriculations, then the same breakdown again by fee status, graduate status, gender and contextual category. It is also the furthest behind, having last been updated on 20 June 2025.

The most recent cycle Dundee publishes is 2023/24 entry, decided on the 2022 sitting. Two admissions cycles have closed since. Dundee is also the only dental school stating in terms that its figures will not be directly comparable to a post-2025 result, because the maximum possible score changed from 3,600 to 2,700 — which is exactly the warning the rest of the sector leaves to the reader.

What Dundee's detail buys is the size of the contextual effect. At 2023/24 entry its Category 1 contextual applicants were interviewed at an average UCAT of 2,421 against 2,592 for non-contextual applicants, and 39 of 48 Category 1 applicants were interviewed against 257 of 654 non-contextual ones. The gap between the lowest and the average score interviewed that year was 627 points, which is a fair measure of how wide a genuinely holistic interview list can be.

The Only Two Dental Thresholds Published on the Current Scale

For a 2027-entry applicant sitting the UCAT in 2026, two published dental figures were produced on the same scale you will be scored on. Both are single points, not series.

• Bristol A206, 2026 entry: a final threshold to be invited to interview of 2,340 for home applicants and 1,970 for overseas applicants. Bristol builds its shortlisting total from all subtests except situational judgement, and states the number changes year on year. Against the 2025 sitting, 2,340 clears the 9th decile of 2,220.
• Manchester A206, 2026 entry: 2,200 standard and 2,100 for Widening Participation Plus, with a mean applicant score of 2,054 across 981 home and 135 overseas applications, 319 home shortlisted and 139 home offers.

The two are 140 points apart and are the only genuinely like-for-like comparison in UK dentistry: same cycle, same sitting, same scale. Even here the definitions differ — Bristol's is a final threshold reached at the end of shortlisting, Manchester's is an automatic-invitation line with a holistic route beneath it — so 140 points is not a measure of which school is harder.

A third reference point is not yet in existence. The UCAT Consortium publishes preliminary mean scores and deciles for a sitting in mid-September, with final figures shortly after testing ends. UCAT 2026 testing runs from 13 July to 24 September 2026, the booking deadline is 16 September 2026, and the UCAS deadline for dentistry is 15 October 2026. So the national distribution you will be judged against is published between your test and your application, not before it.

What the Nine Schools That Publish Nothing Say Instead

Absence is the majority position in dentistry, and it is a policy rather than an oversight. Every commercial guide fills the gap with an estimate; the schools themselves are clearer than the guides.

• King's College London states it does not have a threshold UCAT score in any particular year, because it depends on the range of scores received each cohort.
• Cardiff scores applications on achieved qualifications and says the UCAT score may also be used — a secondary input, with no figure attached.
• Glasgow lists the UCAT and an interview among its 2027-entry requirements and publishes no scoring method, ranking rule or threshold at all.
• East Anglia has no cut-off score and says a high score is advantageous while a low score does not disqualify an applicant.
• Portsmouth takes its first dental students in September 2026 under UCAS code B758, so no historic series is possible before its second cycle.
• Liverpool, Plymouth, Queen's Belfast and the University of Lancashire require the UCAT and publish no threshold and no admissions statistics for it.

Newcastle's position is the most explicit of all, and it comes with the numbers attached: it publishes its historic thresholds and then says it cannot predict the current one, because the figure depends on who applies. Read together, these statements are the sector telling applicants that a cut-off is an output of a cycle rather than a standard set in advance. The routes that set no admissions test at all are covered separately in our page on dentistry courses that do not require the UCAT, and the wider process in our UK dentistry admissions guide.

Five Questions to Ask of Any Dental UCAT Figure

Every failure on this page comes back to a missing label. These five questions catch all of them, and they take about a minute per number.

1. Which entry year is this? An entry year and a testing year are a year apart, and Aberdeen's table shows what happens when a source does not say which it means.
2. Which scale was it measured on? Anything from 2025 entry or earlier came from a four-subtest test. Only Queen Mary labels this on the table itself.
3. What exactly does the number count? A threshold above which interviews were automatic, a final cut-off at the end of shortlisting, and the lowest score a person who was interviewed happened to hold are three different quantities.
4. Who is excluded from it? Birmingham leaves contextual and widening-participation candidates out of its statistics; Dundee reports them separately; Leeds and Manchester publish a second threshold for them.
5. Does it apply to your fee status? Queen Mary's overseas cut-off was 30 points above its home cut-off at 2024 entry, and Bristol's home threshold sat 370 points above its overseas one at 2026 entry.

Applied to the current cycle, the practical answer is short. Two thresholds exist on your scale, both for 2026 entry, and the 2026 sitting's own decile table will not exist until mid-September 2026. Until then the defensible way to read your score is against the 2025 distribution, whose mean was 1,891 and whose 9th decile was 2,220, and to treat every pre-2025 dental figure as evidence about a school's behaviour rather than a target. If you are still preparing, our UCAT preparation guide covers the 2026 sitting, and the equivalent analysis for medicine is in our page on medical schools ranked by UCAT score.

Where Each Figure Came From and When It Was Read

Every number above was taken from the source that produced it, on 18 August 2026, and each is tied to a named school document rather than to a third-party summary. Manchester's and Sheffield's figures come from their own admissions data files; Newcastle's and Birmingham's from published documents whose text was extracted directly rather than summarised; Aberdeen's, Dundee's, Queen Mary's, Bristol's and Leeds's from the schools' live pages. Leeds's table is delivered as an image and was read from the rendered page, which is why it cannot be found by searching that page's text.

The national distributions are the UCAT Consortium's own published statistics for the 2025 and 2024 sittings. Where this page places a school's figure inside a decile band, that is our arithmetic and not the school's, and the inputs are shown in the tables above so the working can be checked. Nothing here has been converted between the two scales, and no figure has been estimated, interpolated or carried across from a similar school. Where a school publishes nothing, that is what this page says.

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