UCAS Deadline Week for GAMSAT Applicants

If you are applying to UK graduate-entry medicine for 2027 with a GAMSAT result, this is the week that decides whether you are in the cycle at all. UCAS closes at 18:00 UK time on Thursday 15 October 2026. ACER's own step for UK applicants closes on 31 October. Your September result arrives in mid-November, after both.

The whole sequence, and why September sitters apply before their score exists, is in our UK timeline post. This one is the deadline-week list: what has to be finished, what has to be checked and what has to be sent, in the order the week will ask for it.

Complete means received, not nearly done

UCAS is precise about what the deadline means: your completed application must be received before 18:00 UK time on 15 October, with every section complete, paid for and sent. An application that is finished but unsent at 17:59 is not on time. If you apply through a school, college or other centre, sending it to them does not count; it has to reach UCAS.

18:00 UK time is the middle of the night in Australia

A good share of GAMSAT candidates applying to the UK are not in the UK. UK clocks are still on summer time on 15 October, so the deadline is 17:00 UTC, which lands in the early hours of Friday 16 October across Australia. If you are working to "Thursday evening", you are working to the wrong evening. Put the deadline in your own calendar in your own time zone, then set your real target a day earlier.

The reference is the part you do not control

UCAS will not let an application be sent without a reference included. Everything else on the form runs on your own schedule; the reference runs on someone else's week. If it is not in by Monday, chasing it is the first job of the week, not the last. Ask your referee what they need from you rather than assuming they have it.

The personal statement is three questions now

From 2026 entry onwards, UCAS replaced the single free-form statement with three questions, answered within the same 4,000-character limit, spaces included, with at least 350 characters for each. If your draft was written to an older guide, check it against the three questions before anything else. A graduate applicant usually has more material than the limit allows, so the work this week is cutting to what answers the question actually asked.

Four medicine choices, chosen before your score exists

UCAS gives you four medicine choices, and a September sitter picks all four without a result. What helps is knowing that UK schools use the same score in genuinely different ways. Some rank candidates on the GAMSAT to decide who is interviewed; some set minimums and then a cut-off drawn from that year's applicant pool; some weigh the GAMSAT together with the interview rather than using it only as a gate; and some treat it as a threshold while other parts of the application do the ranking. Most set the cut-off that actually decides interviews after the deadline, from the pool, and do not publish it in advance.

That is a reason to spread your four choices across those shapes rather than stack them in one. Our GAMSAT scores for medicine page carries the school-by-school detail; the school's own admissions page, read this week, is the one that binds you. Meeting a published minimum is not an offer — selection also uses GPA, interview, portfolio and rank.

The fifth choice can wait

UCAS allows five choices in total, and only four can be medicine. The fifth does not have to be decided this week: courses without the 15 October deadline run to 18:00 UK time on 13 January 2027, and UCAS lets you add choices with later deadlines after you have applied, up to the five-choice total. Do not let an undecided fifth choice hold up the four that are due now.

Then the step UCAS does not do for you

Submitting to UCAS tells ACER nothing. ACER asks UK applicants to log into their GAMSAT account, indicate on any of their current registrations (March 2025, September 2025, March 2026 or September 2026) that they are applying to a UK program by ticking "UK", and provide their UCAS Personal ID and the institutions and courses they are applying to. The deadline is midnight GMT on 31 October 2026, and ACER states that missing it, or giving incorrect information, may affect the delivery of your GAMSAT results.

31 October is a Saturday. Treat Friday 30 October as your own deadline, so that no reading of "midnight" can catch you out. Better still, do it the evening you submit to UCAS, while your UCAS Personal ID and your list of courses are in front of you, because the step nobody chases is the one that gets forgotten.

Which results count for 2027 entry

ACER's UK page is explicit: to apply in 2026 for a program starting in 2027, only results from the March and September 2025 sittings and the March and September 2026 sittings can be used. If one of the earlier three is already in your hand, you are not choosing blind. If you have sat more than once, check each school's own page for which result it reads before you rely on any one of them.

Then nothing, until mid-November

ACER publishes the month for September results, mid-November, and not the day. Between 31 October and then, there is nothing left to submit. The useful work in that gap is the stage after the score: at UK schools that is usually an interview, often a Multiple Mini Interview, and interview preparation does not depend on knowing your number. Our MMI preparation guide is the place to start. Every date in this post, with a one-click calendar download, is on the free GAMSAT dates page.

The week, in order

Monday: confirm the reference is in, or chase it. Tuesday and Wednesday: the three-question statement, cut to fit, and your four medicine choices, each checked against the school's own page. Thursday, hours before 18:00 UK time: pay, send and keep the confirmation. Then ACER's UK tick, with your UCAS Personal ID and courses, before the weekend of 31 October.

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