After the UCAT: Preparing for Your Oxford Graduate-Entry Medicine (A101) Interview

The UCAT window for this cycle ends on 24 September 2026, the last test day published by the UCAT Consortium, and booking closed at 15:00 UK time on 16 September 2026. For most medical applicants that is the application essentially done until interview season. For Oxford’s four-year graduate-entry course it is not: a second Oxford form, carrying two referees who cannot be your UCAS referee, is due at 6pm BST on 22 October 2026.

This page sets out what Oxford itself publishes about the A101 route from that point on — the shortlisting method, which differs from the standard course’s; the interview days, which are named and immovable; and the criteria you are scored against, one whole domain of which exists only for this course.

The A101 timetable from here

Every date below comes from either Oxford’s own Graduate Entry Medicine application process page or the UCAT Consortium’s published key dates.

Source: University of Oxford, Medical Sciences Division — Graduate Entry Medicine: Application Process, Entry Requirements, and Interviews and Selection; Oxford’s published interview timetables; UCAT Consortium key dates. All read 18 September 2026.

The supplementary form is the part worth acting on first, because it depends on other people. Oxford asks you to “give the names and positions of two referees, at least one of whom should be familiar with your most recent academic performance”, and then states the trap plainly: “These referees should not be the same as the referee provided on your UCAS application.” Two fresh people, in other words, and Oxford will not take their letters informally — “letters of references received via mail or e-mail will not be considered”. Requesting them early is the whole of the advice here, because the deadline covers their submission and not merely your request.

What the two interview days look like: four conversations, two colleges

Oxford’s graduate-entry admissions page gives the shape directly: “There will normally be more than one interview; typically two at each college, and every candidate will be interviewed at two colleges.” Two colleges, drawn from the eleven that take A101 students, and typically a pair of interviews at each — so about four conversations in total.

They are split across the two days. Oxford’s interview timetable states: “Medicine (Graduate Entry) Each shortlisted candidate will be interviewed by two colleges, with interviews with the first college on Thursday 17 December and interviews with the second college on Friday 18 December.” The same page confirms these are the 2026 timetables, and both weekdays check out against the calendar for December 2026.

The format is online, and Oxford says so for this course specifically: “Interviews will be held online on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 December 2026.” The University’s interview technology page names the platform — “Shortlisted applicants are interviewed online using Microsoft Teams.”

Who is in the room is different from the standard course too. Oxford: “Interviews and selection decisions will involve tutors from your chosen (or allotted) college as well as clinical tutors.” Shortlisting itself was done by “a group of medical tutors, including some medical tutors from those colleges that offer places on the course”.

And the dates cannot move. Oxford: “You must be available for interview on the published dates: candidates are not admitted without interview, and it is not possible to arrange interviews at times other than those designated. Please note that this will apply to all applicants regardless of location.” If you are working or abroad, both days need clearing now rather than in December.

What your UCAT did for A101, and what it did not

The A101 shortlist is not built the way the standard course’s is, and the difference is worth understanding because it changes what your score was actually used for.

Oxford describes the method: “As part of the process to decide which applicants were called to interview, UCAS forms, Oxford Application forms, and supplementary references were scored based on the published selection criteria by two independent assessors. Application scores were combined with a UCAT decile score based predominantly on the Verbal reasoning, Decision making and Quantitative reasoning sections of the UCAT. This formed the overall shortlisting score.”

Two things follow. First, your score entered as a decile — a band, not a raw total — drawn predominantly from the three cognitive sections. Second, it was only ever one half of a sum whose other half was your paperwork, read and scored by two people against the published criteria. That is why the supplementary form and its references are not administration: they are scored material.

Oxford also states the test’s purpose in one line: “The purpose of the test is to give us a single common point of comparison between all candidates.” A common point of comparison for a field of graduates whose degrees are not comparable to each other is a reasonable thing to want, and it is all the test is being asked to do.

What it cannot now do is be revisited. Oxford: “Please note that we are unable to consider any circumstances relating to the UCAT, as candidates who attend the UCAT are declaring they are fit to test.” Nor can an earlier sitting be substituted — “we are unable to consider results from previous UCAT tests or from alternative aptitude tests.”

Can your A101 interviewers see your UCAT score?

Oxford’s account of the A101 round carries the same sentence as the standard course: “Please note that colleges interviewed blind of college of choice (or allocation) and UCAT score.”

So whatever decile you landed in, it is not in the room. What happens after the interviews is described as follows: “Following interviews, colleges ranked all the applicants seen, on the basis of all information available to them at that time. After disclosure of the candidate rank from the second college, colleges reviewed their ranking and submitted a final rank.”

Worth being precise about what that does and does not say. The A101 page names the second college’s rank as the thing disclosed at that stage. The standard course’s equivalent page names the second college’s rank and the UCAT score including its situational judgement band. We are not treating the A101 page’s silence as evidence that the score plays no part there; it is simply not stated, and an absence is not a fact.

What Oxford assesses in A101 candidates and in no one else

Oxford publishes selection criteria for the graduate-entry course in three domains, and the third has no counterpart on the standard course.

Academic ability asks for “Strong evidence of academic ability and a strong academic track record”, “Originality of thought or initiative”, “Good comprehension and verbal reasoning”, “Ability to present ideas clearly in writing”, “Ability to handle and interpret quantitative data” and “Ability to think analytically”.

Suitability for and commitment to medicine covers listening and communication, a mature and professional attitude, empathy, honesty and integrity, organising life and work, understanding of ethical issues, a realistic understanding of the challenges of a medical career, and alignment with the values of the NHS constitution.

Personal suitability for the Oxford Graduate-entry Medicine course is the one that is A101’s alone. It asks for “Strong evidence of a proven and sustained interest in a scientific approach in the applicants’ discipline”, intellectual curiosity, self-motivation, and “Ability to work as a mature, professional and independent learner.”

Read that third domain next to the academic one and a pattern appears: your discipline, quantitative data, analytically, independent learner. Oxford is not asking a graduate to perform the same interview a school-leaver performs. It is asking what a scientific training did to the way you think, and whether you can still use it on something outside its own subject.

Who the other people on the shortlist are

Oxford publishes enough about the A101 field to calibrate against, which is unusual for a course this size. In the 2025 round it received 302 UCAS applications, of which “197 of the applications were complete and met the published selection criteria (and this total is used within the calculations below)” — so every percentage Oxford quotes for A101 is out of 197, not 302.

Of those applicants, “30% of applicants had not completed their first degree at the time of application”, 41% had or were completing a Master’s, and 11% had or were completing a doctorate. Among those who had finished a first degree, 59% held a First. By subject: “21% of applicants had, or were completing, a degree in Biomedical Sciences, 14% in Chemistry or Biochemistry, 8% in Biology, and 9% in Mathematics, Physics or Engineering.”

The interview field is sized the same way as the standard course’s: “The number of applicants called for interview was set at approximately 2.5 applicants per place available.” Colleges then “made 41 quota offers and 5 open offers”, and Oxford records “The overall success rate was 23% (approximately 1 in 4 applicants).”

Two further figures, each from its own surface and reported as such. The University’s course listing gives three-year admissions statistics for 2023 to 2025 of 41% interviewed, 16% successful, intake 35. The Medical Sciences Division’s course description separately calls it “A small course of approximately 45 students each year, currently from experimental science backgrounds, embedded within a relatively small medical school (c 200 students each year).” They are different measures published in different places, and this page does not try to reconcile them.

On international places, Oxford notes a quota and then says what it has meant in practice: “There is an Office for Students quota of 15 overseas students per year for entry to medicine as a whole (graduate-entry and undergraduate courses) at Oxford. To date the quota has not in practice been a limiting factor in selection for the Graduate-entry course.”

Preparing your own discipline for a clinical tutor’s questions

Put the criteria and the panel together and the preparation writes itself. You will be in front of college tutors and clinical tutors who cannot see your score, assessing whether you have “a proven and sustained interest in a scientific approach” in your own discipline and can “handle and interpret quantitative data”.

That means two kinds of rehearsal. The first is your own degree: the project you ran, the data you could not explain, the method you would change if you did it again. A graduate who cannot say what was weakest about their own experiment has not been examined on it before, and December is a poor time to find that out.

The second is unfamiliar material under questioning — taking a problem you have not seen, stating your assumptions, following them, and abandoning one when the evidence moves. That is what an interview pack is for. The Medicine pack runs ten questions across blood chemistry calculations, pedigree inheritance, kidney and fetal-circulation physiology, and ethics on euthanasia and confidentiality, each with the interviewer’s follow-ups held apart from the question. Medicine has no free sample — the hub’s own card says so, and the nine subjects that do are biology, chemistry, engineering, geography, german, history, maths, physics and vet med.

Physiology is the nearest neighbour for experimental reasoning and does carry the free biology sample, so you can read a full worked answer before deciding. For the standard six-year course’s very different timetable, see After the UCAT: Oxford Medicine (A100); for the format and the tutorial method, our Oxford Medicine interview page works a question through in full. Oxford’s own Graduate Entry Medicine: Interviews and Selection page is the primary source for everything dated above.

Frequently Asked Questions

Work a question properly before 17 December

Hide the follow-ups, attempt one out loud at full length, then read the worked answer against what you actually said. The full pack catalogue carries thirty subjects at £180 each.

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