Oxford ran the Mathematics Admissions Test from 2007 to 2025. From the 2026 sitting, every Maths, Computer Science and joint-honours applicant takes the TMUA instead. Here is exactly what changed — and what your MAT preparation is still worth.
Check where you stand, freeUpdated August 2026 · covers the 2027 entry cycle
The short answer. The MAT will not take place again. Oxford used it from 2007 to 2025; from the October 2026 sitting, all applicants for Maths, Computer Science and their joint honours courses sit the TMUA. Booking closes 28 September 2026 at 6pm UK time, and the test window is 12–16 October 2026. Oxford accepts the October sitting only.
If you spent the summer working through MAT past papers, none of that time was wasted — but the test you were preparing for no longer exists, and the one that replaced it is not simply the MAT under a new name. It is shorter per paper, entirely multiple-choice, scored on a different scale, shared with six other universities, and it contains a whole paper's worth of material the MAT never assessed.
This page sets out the differences precisely, using Oxford's and UAT-UK's own published statements, and says which parts of your existing preparation transfer and which parts you now need to start from scratch.
Oxford has moved from a test it wrote and ran itself to a shared national test. The Mathematical Institute's statement is unambiguous: “From 2026, Oxford will use the TMUA. The MAT will not take place, and all applicants for Mathematics or Computer Science (including joint honours courses) will take the TMUA instead.”
The two tests are the same total length — two and a half hours — and both are sat on screen at Pearson VUE test centres. Almost everything else differs.
| MAT (2007–2025) | TMUA (from 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who set it | Oxford, for Oxford applicants only | UAT-UK, a Cambridge and Imperial joint venture; used by seven universities |
| Structure | One paper, 2½ hours | Two papers, 75 minutes each |
| Questions | 27 in total: 25 multiple-choice, worth 2, 3 or 4 marks each, plus 2 long written questions worth 15 marks each | 40 in total: 20 multiple-choice per paper. No written questions at all |
| Result | Marked out of 100 | Reported on a scale from 1 (low) to 9 (high), to one decimal place. There is no pass mark |
| Content | The first year of A-level Maths, plus a few topics from the fourth term | Paper 1: applying mathematical knowledge in unfamiliar situations, at a comparable level. Paper 2: mathematical reasoning — logic, proof and error-spotting |
| Aids | No calculator or dictionary | No calculator or dictionary |
| Delivery | On screen at Pearson VUE test centres from 2024; on paper before that | On screen at Pearson VUE test centres |
| Sittings | October only | October and January — but Oxford requires October |
Two practical consequences follow immediately. First, the long written questions are gone. The MAT asked you to construct and type out a full multi-part solution; the TMUA never does. Second, the TMUA does not deduct marks for wrong answers, so there is no situation in which leaving a question blank is correct. Both change how you should spend the last ten minutes of a paper.
Most of it, for Paper 1. Oxford's own advice to switching candidates is that “the mathematical topics covered on the TMUA are very similar to those covered on the MAT, and the spirit of problem-solving is common to both tests.” If you have been drilling MAT multiple-choice questions, you have been preparing for TMUA Paper 1.
That claim holds up against the papers. The published MAT syllabus covered polynomials, algebra, differentiation, integration, graphs, logarithms and powers, transformations, geometry, trigonometry, and sequences and series. When we classified every question in the published TMUA papers, the four topics carrying the most Paper 1 questions were algebra and functions, sequences and series, integration, and trigonometry — together 64.4% of the paper, and every one of them on the old MAT syllabus.
So keep the MAT papers. Oxford still publishes them, free, with solutions, and they run back to 2007 — nearly two decades of Paper-1-appropriate practice, a far larger bank than the TMUA's own archive offers. Work the multiple-choice sections under time. The long questions are less directly useful now, but working them still builds the fluency that makes Paper 1 fast.
Paper 2 is the part your MAT preparation did not touch, because the MAT never assessed it. It tests formal mathematical reasoning: necessary and sufficient conditions, the quantifiers “for all” and “for some” and how to negate them, proof by direct argument, contradiction, exhaustion of cases and counterexample — and identifying the exact error in a proof that is presented as valid but is not.
None of that is on the MAT syllabus, and almost none of it is assessed anywhere in a standard A-Level Maths course. It is also not a minor corner of the test. We classified every question in the published TMUA papers from 2016 to 2023 — 320 questions across 16 papers — and the three reasoning topics take up 43.8% of Paper 2. Reasoning terms alone, meaning necessary and sufficient conditions, implication and equivalence, is 17.5% of the paper: the single largest subtopic in either paper.
It has also been growing. Across the 2016–2019 papers, reasoning questions were 38.8% of Paper 2. Across 2020–2023 they were 48.8%. UAT-UK states that the move to on-screen delivery left the content specification and question style unchanged, so there is no reason to expect that trend to reverse.
The full picture: our TMUA Paper 1 vs Paper 2 topic breakdown gives every topic and subtopic in both papers as a share of questions, with the method shown in full — including which topics are thin enough to deprioritise. And once you know reasoning is the gap, how to answer TMUA Paper 2 teaches the five skills directly — necessary vs sufficient, implication vs the converse, negating quantifiers, choosing a proof method, and finding the flawed step — each with a full worked example.
The practical point for a MAT switcher is this: a candidate who moves their existing preparation across unchanged is preparing thoroughly for Paper 1 and for a little over half of Paper 2. Reasoning is trainable, and quickly — but only if you know to train it.
The MAT was Oxford's alone. The TMUA is used by Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, UCL, LSE, Warwick and Durham. If you were planning to sit the MAT for Oxford and something else elsewhere, one sitting may now cover several of your choices at once.
Requirements differ by course, and some universities require the TMUA while others only recommend or reward it, so check each course page rather than assuming. But it is worth checking before you book: for many maths and economics applicants, this change removes a test rather than adding one.
These are UAT-UK's published deadlines for the 2027 entry cycle. Oxford candidates need the October sitting, so the 28 September booking deadline is the one that ends your options — there is no late entry.
| October 2026 sitting | January 2027 sitting | |
|---|---|---|
| Booking opens | 20 July 2026 | 26 October 2026 |
| Access arrangements deadline | 14 September 2026, 6pm | 7 December 2026, 6pm |
| Bursary deadline | 21 September 2026, 6pm | 14 December 2026, 6pm |
| Booking closes | 28 September 2026, 6pm | 21 December 2026, 6pm |
| Test window | 12–16 October 2026 | 4–8 January 2027 |
| Results released | 16 November 2026 | 8 February 2027 |
| Accepted by Oxford | Yes | No |
Booking is a two-step process: create a UAT-UK account, then use the test card it generates to reserve a slot at a Pearson VUE test centre inside the window. Centres fill up, so the useful deadline is earlier than the official one. Dates for later cycles are published by UAT-UK and will differ from these.
Oxford's Physics Aptitude Test has been retired in the same overhaul. Applicants for physics, physics and philosophy, and engineering science now sit the ESAT instead, and Oxford asks them to select the Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2 and Physics modules when registering. Materials Science does not require an admissions test for 2027 entry. The ESAT also replaced Cambridge's old ENGAA and NSAA, so it is now the shared science and engineering test across Cambridge, Imperial, Oxford and UCL.
The registration route and deadlines are the same UAT-UK ones in the table above. More detail on all three current tests is on our entrance exam tutoring page, and our full ESAT guide covers the five modules, which universities need which combination, and what the Maths and Physics modules actually test.
Not sure which half you are weak on? Our free TMUA readiness check is a short adaptive set of TMUA-style questions. It gives you a readiness band and a topic-by-topic map across both papers — so if your reasoning is the gap, you find out now rather than in October.
No. Oxford's Mathematical Institute states that from 2026 Oxford will use the TMUA and the MAT will not take place. It was used from 2007 to 2025. There is no MAT sitting in this cycle and none is planned.
There is no current MAT score to accept — the last sitting was in 2025, for 2026 entry. Applicants for 2027 entry are assessed on the TMUA.
Yes, for Paper 1. Oxford says the mathematical topics are very similar and the problem-solving spirit is common to both. They will not prepare you for Paper 2's reasoning content, because the MAT never assessed it.
October. The TMUA also runs in January, but Oxford shortlists before December interviews, so October is the only sitting that works for an Oxford application.
It is different rather than easier. There is no long written work and no penalty for guessing, which helps. Against that, it is entirely multiple-choice under tighter time pressure, and half of it tests reasoning that most A-Level candidates have never formally studied.
Retired in the same overhaul. Oxford physics, physics and philosophy, and engineering science applicants now sit the ESAT, selecting the Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2 and Physics modules. Materials Science does not require an admissions test for 2027 entry.
The free check tells you where you stand on both papers. A tutor who has prepared candidates for the MAT and the TMUA turns that into a route with an order and a deadline — starting from the reasoning half, if that is where the gap is.
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