What replaced the Oxford MAT and TSA for 2027 entry?

Oxford's MAT and TSA were sat for the final time in October 2025. For 2027 entry, Oxford uses the UAT-UK testing system instead: the TMUA for maths-based courses, the ESAT for engineering and science courses, and the new TARA for PPE, psychology and related courses. Medicine and Law are unaffected and still use the UCAT and LNAT.

When is the booking deadline for the October 2026 TMUA, ESAT and TARA sitting?

Booking closes at 6pm UK time on 28 September 2026. This is a hard deadline with no late booking window, so applicants who have not yet booked should do so immediately rather than waiting.

What exact dates is the test sat on?

The October 2026 test window runs from 12 to 16 October 2026. You are given one appointment inside that window at your chosen Pearson test centre, and candidates in China, Hong Kong and Macau sit on a narrower subset of those days.

Do Cambridge applicants need the same tests as Oxford applicants?

Largely yes, since both universities use the shared UAT-UK tests for equivalent subjects — TMUA for Maths, Computer Science and Economics, and ESAT for Engineering, Natural Sciences and related courses. Cambridge Law still uses the Cambridge Law Test at interview rather than the LNAT, and Cambridge Maths applicants who receive an offer will also be asked to sit STEP papers later in the cycle.

When will I get my ESAT or TMUA results?

Results are released into your UAT-UK account on 16 November 2026, and are sent automatically to any listed university that requires the test for your course. Shortlisting decisions for interview typically follow within the next few weeks.

Oxford & Cambridge Admissions Tests 2026: TMUA, ESAT, TARA

For 2027 entry, Oxford has retired the MAT and TSA and moved onto the same UAT-UK testing system Cambridge already partly uses. The new tests — TMUA, ESAT and TARA — must be booked by 6pm on 28 September 2026 and are sat between 12 and 16 October 2026. This guide covers exactly which test your course needs, the full timeline, and how to use the days you have left.

A Testing System That Has Genuinely Changed

If you last looked at Oxford admissions tests more than a year ago, some of what you remember is now out of date. Oxford sat the MAT (Mathematics Admissions Test) and the TSA (Thinking Skills Assessment) for the final time in October 2025. For applicants going for 2027 entry — the cycle you are in right now — Oxford has moved onto the same third-party testing system that Cambridge has already been phasing in: UAT-UK, a joint venture between Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge. The tests are delivered by Pearson at computer-based test centres, not written on paper in your school hall.

Three tests sit under the UAT-UK umbrella: the TMUA, the ESAT and the TARA. Which one you need depends entirely on your course, not on your university, since the same test can be a requirement at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE or Warwick depending on what you are applying for. Medicine and Law have not changed: the UCAT and the LNAT are still the tests for those subjects at both Oxford and Cambridge, run entirely separately from UAT-UK.

The reason this matters right now, this week, is timing. Booking for the October 2026 sitting closes at 6pm UK time on 28 September 2026. If you are reading this in the days before that deadline, the single most useful thing you can do after finishing this article is create your UAT-UK account and book your slot, because there is no second chance for the October window and most Oxford and Cambridge courses will not consider an application without it.

Which Test Does Your Course Actually Need?

TMUA (Test of Mathematics for University Admission) — required for Cambridge Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics, and for Oxford Mathematics, Computer Science, Maths & Computer Science, Maths & Statistics, and Maths & Philosophy. Imperial, UCL, LSE and Warwick also use it for some of their most mathematically demanding courses, sometimes as a strict requirement and sometimes as one factor among several — check the specific course page rather than assuming. The test runs 150 minutes across two 75-minute papers: Paper 1 tests how you apply mathematical knowledge, Paper 2 tests mathematical reasoning and logic. No calculator is allowed in either paper.

ESAT (Engineering and Science Admissions Test) — required for Cambridge Engineering, Natural Sciences, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and Veterinary Medicine, and for Oxford Engineering, Materials Science, Chemistry, Biology and related sciences, Physics, and Physics & Philosophy. It runs 120 minutes as three 40-minute modules: a compulsory Mathematics section plus modules drawn from Physics, Chemistry and Biology depending on your course. Each module is timed separately and time does not carry over between them.

TARA (Test of Academic Reasoning for Admissions) — the newest of the three, and the direct replacement for what the TSA used to cover. Required for Oxford PPE, Experimental Psychology, Psychology & Philosophy, Psychology & Linguistics, and Human Sciences. It runs around 120 minutes across multiple-choice critical thinking and problem-solving sections, followed by a written task, and deliberately does not test subject-specific knowledge — it is checking how you reason and how clearly you write under time pressure, which is exactly what the TSA used to check under a different name.

If your course does not appear in any of the three lists above, check your specific course page on your university's admissions site directly, since a small number of courses (Classics and some Modern Languages routes at Oxford, for example) may still carry their own separate written requirement rather than a UAT-UK test.

The Full October 2026 Timeline

1 June 2026, 3pm — UAT-UK registration opened, including access arrangement and bursary requests
20 July 2026, 3pm — Test booking opened
14 September 2026, 6pm — Deadline to request access arrangements (extra time, rest breaks, and similar)
21 September 2026, 6pm — Deadline to apply for a fee bursary
28 September 2026, 6pm — Booking closes. No late bookings are accepted after this point, no exceptions
12–16 October 2026 — The test window. You are given one slot inside this window at your chosen Pearson test centre, not a single fixed day for everyone
16 November 2026 — Results become available in your UAT-UK account, and are also sent automatically to any UAT-UK university listed on your UCAS form that requires the test for your course

A second window exists in January 2027, but it is not an alternative for most Oxford or Cambridge applicants. It exists mainly for candidates applying to non-Oxbridge UAT-UK universities on the later UCAS deadline, plus two specific Oxbridge exceptions: mature applicants to a Cambridge college with a January admissions round, and applicants to Oxford's Astrophoria Foundation Year. If you are applying to a standard Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate course with the 15 October UCAS deadline, October is your only realistic sitting.

If You Have Not Booked Yet

Do not wait for a reminder email. Create your account directly through the UAT-UK site, confirm which of the three tests your course requires (some applicants genuinely need to check two course pages if they are applying to joint courses at different universities that use different tests for the same subject), and book the earliest slot you can get at a centre near you. Slots at popular local centres — particularly school-based ones — do fill up inside the booking window, and travelling to a second-choice centre a city away is a far smaller problem than missing the deadline entirely.

If the 28 September deadline has already passed by the time you read this and you have not booked, contact the admissions office of the specific university and course directly. There is no guarantee of flexibility, since UAT-UK and the universities using it have been explicit that late bookings are not accepted, but a small number of students each cycle have valid extenuating circumstances that are handled case by case — silence and hoping it resolves itself is the one strategy guaranteed not to work.

How to Use the Time Before Your Test

With roughly two weeks between the booking deadline and the test window, the most useful preparation is not last-minute content revision. TMUA and ESAT both draw on GCSE and AS-level material you already know; what separates a strong score from an average one is speed and unfamiliarity tolerance, not additional facts. Spend your remaining time on timed past papers from the official UAT-UK site, reviewed test question by question rather than just scored, so you can see exactly where minutes were lost. For TARA, the written task rewards a clear, structured argument far more than an unusual or clever one, so practising writing a tight 300-word response to an unfamiliar prompt in 20 minutes is worth more than reading around a topic broadly.

What Comes After the Test

Passing the admissions test threshold does not end your application — for most Oxford and Cambridge courses, it is one filter that determines who gets invited to interview in December. The subject-by-subject interview questions that Oxford and Cambridge tutors actually ask are covered in depth elsewhere on this site, with a compiled question bank covering the most repeated question types across every major subject. See the Full Oxford and Cambridge Interview Question Bank Here if you want to start building interview familiarity now rather than waiting for your shortlisting result in November, since the six weeks between booking your test and hearing about an interview are exactly the window most successful applicants use to get ahead.

Whichever test you are sitting, treat the next few weeks as one continuous process rather than two separate hurdles: book the test, sit it seriously, and start interview preparation in parallel rather than waiting for a result before you begin. The applicants who are least stressed in December are consistently the ones who started that overlap early.

Oxford and Cambridge Admissions Tests 2026: TMUA, ESAT and TARA Explained