A course-by-course audit of every UK dentistry route in the 2027 admissions cycle.
Book a Free ConsultationA UK dental school without a UCAT requirement does not exist at standard entry for 2027: all sixteen five-year dental degrees open through UCAS require the test, including the new schools at Portsmouth and Norwich taking their first students in September 2027. Three UK dentistry routes do set no admissions test — King's A204, Plymouth's A205 and Liverpool's 0AAW — and each is closed to ordinary school-leaver applicants.
That is the whole answer, and it is worth stating before anything else because the pages currently ranking for this question do not state it at all. They answer a different question: where to apply with a weak score. This page answers the literal one, course code by course code, against the cycle that actually matters.
The Dental Schools Council publishes an entry-requirements booklet each cycle, and it describes itself as the only resource that collates entry requirements directly from admissions staff in UK dental schools. Its 2027-entry edition lists seventeen schools under Standard Entry Dentistry. Fifteen are in the UK, and every one of the fifteen gives the same answer in its Admissions test row: UCAT.
Two of those fifteen are brand new. Portsmouth's Dental Academy opens its BDS to home applicants for September 2027 as the first dental school in the South East, and its course page states that all applicants will be required to sit the University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT) in year of application. The sixteenth course does not appear in the booklet at all, because it did not exist when the booklet was compiled: the University of East Anglia's new Norwich dental school takes its first cohort in September 2027, and it too requires the test.
| Dental school | UCAS code | Length | Admissions test for 2027 entry |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Birmingham | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of Bristol | A206 | 5 years | UCAT |
| Cardiff University | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of Dundee | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of East Anglia | A200 | 5 years | UCAT (first intake September 2027) |
| University of Glasgow | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
| King's College London | A205 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of Leeds | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of Liverpool | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of Manchester | A206 | 5 years | UCAT, with Band 3 or 4 in the SJT rejected |
| Newcastle University | A206 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of Plymouth | A206 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of Portsmouth | A758 | 5 years | UCAT (first home intake September 2027) |
| Queen Mary University of London | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
| Queen's University Belfast | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
| University of Sheffield | A200 | 5 years | UCAT |
Aberdeen is absent from that table for a reason worth knowing: its Institute of Dentistry runs no five-year course. Its only BDS is the four-year A201, open to graduates and to UK applicants alone, and it requires the UCAT as well. So does the University of Lancashire's four-year A202. There is no UK dental school that offers dentistry at standard entry and asks nothing of you as an admissions test.
Sitting the test is not the same as being beaten by it. If the UCAT is now unavoidable for your list, the question becomes how much of your score is preparation rather than aptitude. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades, and our admissions work runs from timed section drills through to the situational judgement bands that Manchester screens on.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe exceptions are real, and they are not schools. They are three specific courses, and none of them is chosen the way a candidate chooses between Cardiff and Sheffield. Each one is defined by an eligibility gate that is decided before you write a word of a personal statement: one wants a doctor, one wants a documented history of educational disadvantage, one wants a break from formal education. If you do not fit the gate, the absence of an admissions test is irrelevant to you.
That is the useful way to read this list. Sort it by whether you qualify, not by which university you like.
King's College London runs a Dentistry Entry Programme for Medical Graduates, UCAS code A204, over three years. Its entry-requirements page is unambiguous: applicants are not required to sit the UCAT aptitude test prior to applying to this programme.
The gate is the hardest in UK dentistry. Applicants must be qualified doctors registered with the UK General Medical Council who have completed Foundation Years 1 and 2, and who intend a career in either oral and maxillofacial surgery or oral medicine and pathology. There are ten places. The programme is not open to overseas fee payers. In practice this is a specialist conversion route for surgeons, not an alternative way into dentistry, and the fact that it appears on lists of no-UCAT dental courses has misled a great many sixth-formers.
This is the only route on the list that a school-leaver can actually use. Peninsula Dental School's BDS Dental Surgery with Integrated Foundation Year runs six years under UCAS code A205 at institution code P60, and its page states plainly that the UCAT is not required for this course.
The gate here is contextual rather than academic. Plymouth says the programme is designed to make dentistry more accessible to those who have faced challenges in their education, and that both the academic and the non-academic criteria must be met; applicants who do not meet the required contextual markers are directed to the five-year A206 instead. The typical academic offer is BBB including grade B in Biology and grade B in a second science, which is materially below the A*AA to AAB range Plymouth quotes for A206.
Read that pairing carefully, because it is the single most consequential fact on this page. A candidate with the contextual markers has a route into a five-year-equivalent qualification at a lower grade profile and with no admissions test at all. A candidate without them has neither concession, and Plymouth will say so.
Liverpool's foundation year, UCAS code 0AAW, is recorded in the Dental Schools Council booklet with an admissions test of N/A, and it leads to progression onto the Dental Surgery BDS. Liverpool describes it as a year zero foundation programme, designed for mature students who have typically been out of formal education for some time or who have taken non-traditional qualifications.
The exclusion is explicit in the booklet: Liverpool will not consider A-level students or school leavers, though consideration may be given to candidates who studied some time ago. The academic requirement is five GCSEs at grade B or numerical grade 6, including Mathematics, English Language and a science. That is a low bar by dentistry standards and it exists because the course is aimed at people whose formal qualifications are years behind them, not at applicants sidestepping a test.
The most common belief behind this search is that going in through a graduate or widening-participation door removes the test. In UK dentistry it does not, and five named courses settle the point.
| Course | UCAS code | Route type | UCAT for 2027 entry |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Aberdeen | A201 | Graduate entry, 4 years, UK only | Required |
| University of Lancashire | A202 | Graduate entry, 4 years | Required |
| King's College London | A202 | Graduate and professional entry, 4 years | Required |
| University of Bristol | A208 | Gateway to Dentistry, 6 years, contextual | Required |
| King's College London | A206 | Enhanced Support Dentistry, 5 years, contextual | Required |
Two of those are widening-participation courses with eligibility gates as tight as Plymouth's A205, and they still ask for the test. Bristol's A208 is open only to applicants who attended an aspiring state school, spent time in care, or were eligible for free school meals, and it excludes anyone predicted AAB or above. It requires the UCAT regardless. King's Enhanced Support Dentistry Programme, A206, works the same way.
The top-voted reply on the most visible public discussion of this question tells applicants that postgraduate entry or an access qualification is the way through. For the 2027 cycle that advice is wrong on the first half. If you are weighing the graduate route on its own merits rather than as a UCAT escape, our comparison of graduate-entry dentistry courses in the UK sets out what each one actually asks for.
One second admissions test does appear in UK dentistry, and it is routinely misreported as a UCAT substitute because that is exactly what it is in medicine. It is not that here.
Peninsula Dental School states that it uses the Graduate Medical School Admissions Test (GAMSAT) as an alternative entry route to A levels. It cannot consider previous degree study for A206 other than through its internal transfer routes, so candidates holding degrees or without suitable A-levels sit the GAMSAT to meet the entry criteria. Plymouth is careful to add that although the GAMSAT is called a graduate admissions test, you do not need to be a graduate to sit it or to apply with it, and that results from the test are the only academic qualification that will affect shortlisting. GAMSAT results are valid for two years and must be sat by September in the year of application at the latest.
What the GAMSAT displaces at Plymouth is the academic profile, not the aptitude test. A206 still carries UCAT in its Admissions test row, and Plymouth says that performance in the UCAT is among the factors influencing the threshold for interview selection. The one genuine exemption Plymouth publishes is narrower still: an applicant who completes Plymouth's own Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery programme may apply to stage one of the BDS with no time restriction and will not be required to sit the GAMSAT.
The Dental Schools Council covers Ireland as well as the UK, and the two Irish entries are the only five-year dental degrees in the booklet with no admissions test at all. University College Cork's Dental Surgery BDS, CAO code CK702, gives N/A. Trinity College Dublin's Dental Science B.Dent.Sc gives N/A too.
The catch is not the entry standard, it is the application system. Both are CAO courses rather than UCAS courses, which means a separate application, a separate timetable and, for a school-leaver, a points calculation built around the Irish Leaving Certificate. Trinity does publish a UK-qualification route: an A-level grade B plus grade C in two of Physics, Chemistry or Biology, with the caveat that competition sets the real threshold rather than the minimum. Cork interviews international students for fifteen minutes and requires English and Irish for all programmes unless the applicant is exempt from Irish.
These are legitimate options for a UK candidate who will not sit the UCAT, and they are almost never mentioned in the UK-facing guides that rank for this search. They are also a genuinely different proposition from a UK BDS, and the decision should be made on that basis rather than on test avoidance.
If the real worry is not sitting the test but being eliminated by it, there is a more useful question than which school drops the UCAT: which school publishes no threshold to fall below. For 2027 entry the answer is the newest one.
The University of East Anglia states that UEA does not have a cut off score. A high score is advantageous; a low score does not disqualify an applicant from consideration. UEA has 25 UK places and 11 international places for 2027 entry. Applications pass a primary screen on academic criteria, personal statement, reference and a UCAT sat in the summer before applying; only if interview capacity is exceeded does a secondary screen rank applicants on overall UCAT score. After interview, the interview score and the UCAT score are weighted equally.
Two constraints come with it. UEA considers a dentistry applicant for two consecutive years only, and the UCAT is valid solely in the year of application, so a reapplicant sits the test again. UEA also flags that the UK Government plans to require newly qualified dentists to practise in the NHS for a minimum period, as announced in the 10 Year Health Plan for England, and that this is expected to apply to those entering a dental course of study from academic year 2027/28.
Where the rest of the sector sets its thresholds is a separate exercise. We keep that in one place, in dental schools ranked by UCAT score for 2027 entry, alongside a strategy piece on what to do with a low UCAT score in dentistry.
A meaningful share of the people searching this question are not looking for an easier application. They cannot sit a four-hour computer-based test in a Pearson centre, for reasons of disability, distance or circumstance. For them the answer is administrative, it is published, and no page currently ranking for this search mentions it.
Access arrangements cover rest breaks, extra test time and other accommodations. They must be approved by the UCAT Office before booking a test, and the Consortium states it is not possible to add approved access arrangements to an existing booking. Applications open on 20 May 2026 and close on 10 September 2026 at 15:00 UK time, which is six days before the booking deadline itself. Applying with the wrong supporting evidence can delay test booking by up to two weeks, so the practical deadline is earlier than the published one.
On geography, the UCAT is delivered in Pearson test centres across the UK and in more than 130 countries. Where travel to a centre is difficult because of distance, pandemic, war, civil unrest or natural disaster, the Consortium points candidates to online proctored testing before they book. On cost, an approved bursary is applied automatically at booking to waive the test fee; bursary applications and evidence close on 24 September 2026 at 15:00 UK time, with refund requests closing on 16 October 2026 at 17:00 UK time.
Not sure which of these routes you actually qualify for? Contextual eligibility, mature-student status and graduate criteria each turn on documentation rather than opinion, and getting the answer wrong costs a UCAS choice. We will go through your circumstances against the published criteria for each course named on this page.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppEvery route on this page except three depends on holding a valid 2026 UCAT score. The Consortium is explicit about which sitting counts: applicants are required to sit the UCAT between 13 July and 24 September if they are intending to apply for entry in 2027, or deferred entry in 2028, and the test may be taken only once in any cycle.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 20 May 2026, 14:00 UK time | Registration opens; bursary and access arrangement applications open |
| 23 June 2026, 14:00 UK time | Test booking opens |
| 13 July 2026 | Testing starts |
| 10 September 2026, 15:00 UK time | Access arrangement application deadline |
| 16 September 2026, 15:00 UK time | Booking deadline; registration closes |
| 24 September 2026 | Last test day; bursary evidence deadline at 15:00 UK time |
| 16 October 2026, 17:00 UK time | Bursary refund request deadline |
The gap between 23 June and 16 September is the whole of the booking window, and centre availability in the popular late-August slots disappears well before the deadline. The Consortium notes that the test is the same difficulty throughout the cycle, so the choice of date is a scheduling decision rather than a tactical one. Candidates who intend to rely on Plymouth's A205, Liverpool's 0AAW or King's A204 are the only dentistry applicants who can ignore this table entirely, and each of them should confirm eligibility with the school before deciding to.
If the test is on your list, the preparation question is covered separately in our UCAT preparation guide, and the interview stage that follows it in our guide to dental school interview questions and MMI stations. The wider picture of how dentistry admissions differ from medicine sits in our dentistry admissions overview, and the medicine equivalent of this page is medical schools without the UCAT for 2027 entry, where the answer is genuinely different.
No. The Consortium requires the test to be sat between 13 July and 24 September 2026 for entry in 2027 or deferred entry in 2028, and it may be taken only once in a cycle. A reapplicant carrying a score from an earlier cycle therefore sits it again. The University of East Anglia spells this out, noting that you will be required to retake the UCAT because it is valid only in the year of application, and that a dentistry applicant is considered for two consecutive years at most.
Sometimes, and King's is the clearest example. It states that applicants can apply to both A205, its five-year BDS, and its four-year graduate and professional entry programme A202 through UCAS, with each application assessed independently. Plymouth works differently: A205 and A206 are alternatives rather than a pair, because A205 is open only to applicants who meet the contextual markers and Plymouth directs everyone else to A206. Check each course page before spending two of your four dentistry choices at one institution.
No UK dental hygiene or therapy degree uses the UCAT for 2027 entry. Most set no admissions test at all, and several use the Casper situational judgement test instead. Manchester's Dental Hygiene and Therapy BSc, B840, requires all applicants to take the Casper test before the UCAS January equal consideration deadline. King's Dental Therapy and Hygiene BSc, A900, also uses Casper. These are three-year degrees leading to registration as a therapist or hygienist rather than as a dentist, so they answer a different question from the one on this page.
The situational judgement section, at Manchester. Its entry for the five-year A206 states that it does not consider applicants who achieve Band 3 or Band 4 in the SJT element of the UCAT. That is an absolute bar rather than a ranking, so a strong cognitive score cannot compensate for it. Most other dental schools rank on the overall score instead; the University of East Anglia folds the SJT subsection into its interview score rather than screening on it, and publishes no cut-off for the overall score either.
The test runs in Pearson centres across the UK and in more than 130 countries, so the first step is the Pearson centre locator rather than an assumption. The Consortium says universities expect applicants to take the test, which for some candidates could mean travelling to another country. Where travel is difficult because of distance, pandemic, war, civil unrest or natural disaster, it directs candidates to information on online proctored testing before they book. That decision has to be made before the booking deadline of 16 September 2026 at 15:00 UK time.
It is a different route rather than a softer one, and only some applicants are allowed to use it. A205 asks for BBB including grade B in Biology and a second science and sets no admissions test; A206 asks for A*AA to AAB with grade A in Biology and requires the UCAT. The concession exists because A205 is restricted to applicants who meet Plymouth's contextual criteria, it runs six years rather than five, and Plymouth tells applicants who miss the markers to apply to A206 instead.
Possibly, and it is worth factoring in now. The University of East Anglia advises applicants that the UK Government plans to require newly qualified dentists to practise in the NHS for a minimum period, as announced in the 10 Year Health Plan for England, and that this is expected to apply to individuals entering a dental course of study from academic year 2027/28. The detail is still to come from the Department of Health and Social Care, so treat it as a published intention rather than a settled rule.
In almost every case, yes. Only three UK dentistry routes set no admissions test, and each is narrow: ten places at King's A204 for GMC-registered doctors, contextual eligibility at Plymouth's A205, and mature or non-traditional status at Liverpool's 0AAW. A UCAS form carries four dentistry choices, and without a 2026 UCAT score the other three are unusable. Sitting the test between 13 July and 24 September 2026 keeps every option open; declining to sit it commits you to a single course.
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Whether your route runs through the UCAT or around it, the decisions that matter are made months before the deadline. We work through course eligibility, test preparation and interview technique with dentistry applicants each cycle.
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