ESAT Past Papers by Module: Maths 1, Maths 2, Physics, Chemistry, Biology

There are no past ESAT papers to sort by module: UAT-UK’s pages list none. What exists for each of the five modules is a section of the specification, a guide, one specimen test and one practice test, all written for the ESAT. On top of that, UAT-UK publishes sixteen older papers (ENGAA and NSAA Section 1, 2016 to 2023) that it says “contain questions of the type found in the ESAT”. Those papers are divided into parts with subject titles, and that is how most candidates use them. But neither UAT-UK nor Cambridge, Imperial, Oxford or UCL says which part belongs to which ESAT module. This guide gives the official material for each module first, then our own matching of the old parts, marked as ours every time.

UAT-UK ESAT Content Specification and Pearson VUE’s UAT-UK page; covers of the 16 archive papers. The 152 and the 125 are our own counts from those papers.

The Content Specification does set out, module by module, which topics a question may draw on: “All modules will assume knowledge of the content of Mathematics 1.” This table is the specification’s own.

Every candidate sits Mathematics 1, and every other module assumes it. The official material is the specification sections M1 to M7, the 381-page ESAT Guide for Mathematics 1 (cover date June 2026), and one specimen and one practice test in the Pearson player. For more questions, the closest old-paper part by title is NSAA Part A, “Mathematics”, which every NSAA candidate had to take: 18 questions a year from 2016 to 2019 and 20 a year from 2020 to 2023, which is 152 questions over the eight papers (our sum). None of them is crossed. ENGAA Part A, “Mathematics and Physics”, mixes maths with physics, and we found that it shares many of its questions with the NSAA paper of the same year, so do one or the other for a given year, not both. The matching of Part A to Mathematics 1 is ours.

Mathematics 2 has the least material written under its own name. There is no “ESAT Guide: Mathematics 2”; the link on UAT-UK’s page opens the 159-page Notes on Mathematics for TMUA Paper 1 and ESAT Mathematics 2 (June 2026). In the archive, the nearest part by title is “Advanced Mathematics and Advanced Physics”: Part B of every ENGAA paper and Part E of the NSAA papers from 2016 to 2019. That is the part carrying UAT-UK’s cross. In every one of those twelve papers the cross sits on every second question, and in the papers we read the crossed ones are the physics questions, which leaves the maths questions uncrossed: 13 a year in ENGAA 2016 to 2018, 10 a year in ENGAA 2019 to 2023, 9 a year in NSAA 2016 to 2019. Because the two tests share this part’s questions in the same year, count on roughly the ENGAA figure, about 89 uncrossed questions over eight years (our count), not the two added together. From 2020 the NSAA has no such part at all.

A second source, also our reading: the TMUA. UAT-UK wrote one set of notes for “TMUA Paper 1 and ESAT Mathematics 2”, and the two specifications list the same eight MM headings, MM1 to MM8. UAT-UK’s TMUA archive has Paper 1 for 2016 to 2023 with “worked answers”, which the ESAT archive lacks. UAT-UK does not say TMUA papers are ESAT practice, and the pace is very different (a TMUA paper is 20 questions in 75 minutes), so use them for method, not for timing.

Official: specification sections P1 to P7, the 312-page ESAT Guide for Physics (June 2026), one specimen and one practice test. In the archive, NSAA Part B, “Physics”, is the part with the matching title: 152 questions across the eight papers (our sum), none crossed. ENGAA Part A also contains physics questions, many of them shared with the NSAA of that year. The trap is the “Advanced Physics” half of ENGAA Part B and NSAA Part E: those are the crossed questions, the ones UAT-UK marks as “not covered by the ESAT content specification”. A candidate who works through a whole ENGAA paper for Physics practice is spending a quarter of the paper on questions the ESAT will not ask.

Official: specification sections C1 to C17, the 240-page ESAT Guide for Chemistry (June 2025), one specimen and one practice test. The only old-paper source is NSAA Part C, “Chemistry”: 152 questions across 2016 to 2023 (our sum), none crossed. The ENGAA has no chemistry part, so ENGAA papers are of no use for this module. The Chemistry and Biology guides carry a June 2025 cover, a year older than the other three; the specification on the site is the current one, so use its topic list as the reference.

Official: specification sections B1 to B11, the 215-page ESAT Guide for Biology (June 2025), one specimen and one practice test. The only old-paper source is NSAA Part D, “Biology”: 152 questions across 2016 to 2023 (our sum), none crossed. Again the ENGAA has nothing. Biology is the module with the fewest candidates (1,547 in 2025-26, against 14,193 for Mathematics 1, in UAT-UK’s technical report), and it has exactly as much official practice material as the others.

Same year, same questions. We compared the text of the ENGAA and NSAA papers year by year. In every year from 2016 to 2023, ENGAA Part A shares many of its questions with NSAA Part A and Part B of the same year, and from 2016 to 2019 ENGAA Part B and NSAA Part E are largely the same questions. Nothing on UAT-UK’s page says so; it is our comparison. The practical point: for one year, pick the NSAA paper if you sit Chemistry or Biology (the ENGAA has neither) and either paper otherwise. Doing both for the same year mostly repeats questions you have already seen.

UAT-UK’s technical report for 2025-26 counts, for each module, the candidates who ran out of time before reaching every question. It is the best official guide to which modules need the most timed practice.