SJ tasks and formats
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Almost all questions involve four degrees of appropriateness or importance.
In a few questions, you must select the most and least appropriate responses.
In 2026, the official UCAT practice tests include 21 to 23 Situational sets. The test-maker stopped providing a precise number of sets, so we can only offer an estimate based on the official practice test.
The typical breakdown of set types in a Situational section is:
- 6-8 Importance sets
- 3-4 Appropriateness with quotes sets
- 7-10 regular Appropriateness sets
- 3-4 Most/Least Appropriate sets
As indicated, these numbers are approximate and will differ slightly between exams. However, they do give you an indication of the relative frequency of each set type.
The question counts for each type in a Situational section are prone to vary.
Out of the total 69 questions you need to answer, you can expect:
- 22-28 Importance questions
- 7-16 Appropriateness with quotes questions
- 25-32 regular Appropriateness questions
- 3-4 Most/Least Appropriate questions
You can see that:
- Importance questions make up roughly one-third of Situational questions.
- Multiple choice Appropriateness questions account for over half of Situational questions, possibly as much as 60% of the section.
- Most/Least Appropriate questions are a small, consistent proportion of Situational questions.
Use these ranges to inform your preparation. Also, be prepared for slight variations on Test Day.
You must always answer from the decider’s perspective.
You’ll find the decider’s identity in the decider question underneath the scenario.
The decider question normally features the decider’s name underlined and in boldface.
Learn the format of decider questions so you don’t have to fully read them on Test Day. You just need to find the decider’s name.
It’s important that you check the decider’s name in the question immediately under the scenario, as some scenarios have multiple named characters.
If you weigh a response from the perspective of a character who isn’t the decider, you could mistakenly justify an incorrect answer.
Deciders are mostly medical and dental students, or junior doctors.
They are usually named, e.g. Deepak or Dr Ritchie.
Sometimes the decider in a scenario will not be a student or junior doctor; instead the decider will have more senior status in a clinical or educational setting.
In these sets, the decider is most often a senior clinician such as a dentist, consultant or GP. Less commonly, the decider could be a university educator such as a tutor, lecturer or tutorial group leader.
You must evaluate responses or factors independently of each other.
Each question is a response (in Appropriateness) or a factor (in Importance), yet more than one question in a set can have the same correct answer.
This means, for example, you should avoid comparing one response to another in a regular Appropriateness set or an Appropriateness with quotes set.
There are often two ‘ideal’ responses – meaning that answer A is correct – in an Appropriateness set with four questions. Likewise, there are often two factors in an Importance set which are both ‘Very important’. Thus, you must not assume there is ‘only one A’ or only one of any answer in a Situational Judgement set.
Weighing responses or factors against each other can lead you to conclude that a pair of questions have different answers, when in fact their correct answers are the same.
Some letters might not be used as correct answers in a Situational set – for example, there could be no response in an Appropriateness set with six responses which is ‘Inappropriate, but not awful’ (correct answer C).
Bear this in mind and be careful not to justify something that isn’t present.
You could talk yourself into a wrong answer by assuming that it must be present in the set, when in fact a correct answer letter that has already been used is repeated instead.
In Situational Judgement, you must apply professional and ethical principles as you read each scenario.
Although it can feel as if some answers are ‘subjective’, in reality there is always a clear reason why a particular answer is correct, and you can learn to identify this answer through practice.
The underlying ethical framework in SJ – and by extension, the answer logic that governs it – draws heavily on the General Medical Council’s Good Medical Practice booklet.
You should familiarise yourself with this booklet, or with the version written specifically for medical students – Achieving Good Medical Practice – which you may find more relevant and accessible, as part of your UCAT preparation.
The first step when approaching any Situational Judgement set is to read the scenario in full, quickly but carefully.
Don’t just skim the scenario, as you might do with Verbal Reasoning passages. If you make the mistake of skimming the scenario instead of properly reading, you may fail to register the key issue or conflict that you must understand to unlock the reasoning in the possible responses or factors.
You should always take 20–30 seconds to read the scenario in full. With practice you will be able to assess most responses or factors in 10–15 seconds each.
Sometimes there will be a detail included in the scenario that is vital to evaluating a response or factor correctly. If you use a VR strategy of skimming or not reading the scenario – treating it instead like a VR passage – you are highly likely to miss out a key detail and select wrong answers as a result.
Walkthrough question
The decider's perspective
Let's look at an Appropriateness set, focusing on the decider's perspective