ESAT, TMUA and TARA for September 2027 Entry

UAT-UK now runs three admissions tests, not two: the ESAT, the TMUA and the TARA. For September 2027 entry, sixteen named Oxford undergraduate courses require one of them, alongside seven at Cambridge. Booking for the October sitting closes at 6pm on 28 September 2026, and a candidate may sit only once in an admissions cycle.

The Correction: Oxford Does Set These Tests

An earlier version of this page carried a sentence telling Oxford applicants, in bold terms, that neither the ESAT nor the TMUA was required for Oxford courses and that Oxford ran its own suite of tests including the MAT and the PAT. That was wrong, and it contradicted the table printed directly above it on the same page.

Oxford's own guidance is unambiguous. From 2026 the university uses admissions tests owned and managed by UAT-UK, in addition to the LNAT and UCAT for Law and Medicine. The ESAT, TARA and TMUA are taken by Oxford candidates where their chosen course requires one. If you also apply to another university that uses the same test, you sit it once.

If you read the earlier version of this page and concluded you had no UAT-UK test to sit, check your course in the table below before you do anything else. Booking for the October sitting closes on 28 September 2026, and failing to register for a required test can invalidate an application.

Which Test Your Course Needs, Oxford and Cambridge

Both universities publish their own course-by-course lists. Neither publishes the other's, and no page ranking for this term puts them side by side. This table does, and it carries nothing that is not on one of those two pages.

Two entries in that table are worth pausing on. Cambridge Veterinary Medicine takes the ESAT, which surprises applicants who expect a medicine-style test. And Cambridge Computer Science applicants to Peterhouse or Trinity sit the college's own Computer Sciences Aptitude Test in addition to the TMUA — a second, separate assessment that the UAT-UK timetable says nothing about.

UCL also uses the TARA for some courses. If your list runs beyond Oxford and Cambridge, check each university's own course pages: UAT-UK publishes a full course list, but the requirement is set by the university, not by the test owner.

The 2027-Entry Timetable, and the One-Sitting Rule

There are two sittings, and for most Oxbridge applicants only one of them is available. UAT-UK states that applicants to Oxford or Cambridge are required to sit in October, with two narrow exceptions: mature applicants to a Cambridge mature college with a January admissions deadline, and applicants to Oxford's Astrophoria Foundation Year, which also has a January deadline. Everyone else may choose, and UAT-UK says there is no advantage either way.

The rule that catches people is the one in the same paragraph: you can only sit once within an admissions cycle. There is no second attempt in January if October goes badly, and no resit later in the year. That makes the access-arrangements and bursary deadlines more consequential than they look — both fall a week or more before booking closes, and a request made late cannot be rescued by moving to the other sitting.

Candidates sitting in China, Hong Kong or Macau have a different October window from everyone else: the ESAT runs on 12 and 13 October, the TARA on 14 October and the TMUA on 15 and 16 October, rather than all three running on all five days. A candidate in those territories sitting two tests has the dates chosen for them.

What Does Each Test Actually Contain?

The three tests are not variations on one paper. They differ in length, in structure and in what is scored, and a candidate sitting two of them is preparing for two genuinely different things.

The TARA's Writing Task is the outlier and the most commonly misunderstood element. It is one essay chosen from three, with a 750-word limit and 40 minutes, and UAT-UK states plainly that it is unscored. It is not marked into your result; it is sent on for the admissions tutors to read. Treating it as a throwaway because it carries no score is a mistake, and so is spending preparation time on it as though it were marked. Our complete TARA guide goes through the two scored modules question type by question type.

Across all three, no marks are deducted for wrong answers and no calculator is allowed. Guessing the questions you cannot finish is straightforwardly correct, and the mental arithmetic that a calculator would otherwise absorb is part of what is being tested.

Which ESAT Modules Do You Choose When Two Courses Disagree?

Every ESAT candidate sits Mathematics 1. Most then sit two further modules from Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics 2, and some courses specify which. That creates a problem UAT-UK has a published rule for, and almost no guide quotes it.

The rule has two parts. Where you are applying to two courses that require the ESAT and one of them leaves the module choice open, you sit the compulsory module for the other course. Where both courses have compulsory requirements that conflict, you contact UAT-UK for advice, and you do it before booking rather than afterwards.

That last point is the expensive one: modules cannot be changed without cancelling and re-booking the test. A candidate who books the wrong combination in July and notices in September is inside the booking-close window with a cancellation to arrange. Work out the module list from your course pages before you book, not after.

How Do You Prepare When There Are Almost No Past Papers?

The honest constraint is that there is no deep bank of past papers for any of these tests, and there will not be one for several more cycles. UAT-UK publishes the specification and practice material for each test, and that is the first and most reliable thing to work through.

Beyond that, the useful preparation follows from the format rather than from a question bank. The TMUA is 20 questions in 75 minutes, twice: that is under four minutes a question, on content pitched at Higher Level GCSE and AS mathematics, so the difficulty is in the reasoning rather than in the syllabus. Working slowly through hard A-level material is the wrong training; working quickly through unfamiliar applications of familiar mathematics is the right one.

The ESAT is 27 questions in 40 minutes per module, which is under 90 seconds a question. At that pace, recall has to be automatic. Retired MAT and PAT material still transfers in places and is worth using selectively, but it was written for longer, structured questions and rewards a different habit — use it for content, not for timing.

For the TARA, the two scored modules are generic reasoning rather than subject knowledge, so the preparation is practice at the question types and at the pace, not revision. Our ESAT preparation, TMUA preparation and Oxbridge interview pages cover each stage in more detail, and the ESAT versus TMUA comparison works through which one a Cambridge course actually needs.

One last practical point about sequencing. The October window sits four days before the 15 October UCAS deadline for Oxford and Cambridge applicants, and results do not arrive until 16 November. That means the application is submitted, and in most cases the personal statement finished, before anyone knows how the test went. Candidates who plan to “see how the test goes” before deciding where to apply have the order wrong: the choices are locked first, and the score arrives afterwards. Build the application on the courses you want, and treat the test as one input the tutors will read alongside it.

Reviewed August 2026: the course requirements for both universities checked against Oxford's and Cambridge's own admissions-test pages, and every date, module structure and scoring rule confirmed against UAT-UK's published deadline and test-format tables. UCL's TARA courses are named but not listed individually here because they are set on UCL's own course pages.

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