Students with degrees may apply for the standard course. There are no places specifically reserved for graduates, and there is no separate application process. Graduates are in open competition with school-leavers, and need to fulfil the same entrance requirements.
A*AA in three A-levels (excluding Critical Thinking and Thinking Skills) taken in the same academic year. Candidates are required to achieve at least a grade A in both Chemistry and at least one of Biology, Physics, Mathematics or Further Mathematics. We expect you to have taken and passed any practical component in your chosen science subjects.
AA (taken in the same academic year, in Chemistry, and one from Biology, Physics or Mathematics) plus Highers: AAAAA (taken in the same academic year).
39 (including core points) with 766 at HL. Candidates are required to take Chemistry and at least one of Biology, Physics or Mathematics to Higher Level.
There are no formal GCSE requirements for Medicine. However, in order to be adequately equipped for the application process and for the academic demands of the course, applicants will need to have received a basic education in Biology, Physics and Mathematics. For example, students should have received at least a grade C/4 at GCSE, Intermediate 2 or Standard grade (Credit) or equivalent. The GCSE Dual Award Combined Sciences is also appropriate.
Visit the Medical Sciences Shortlisting page for further details on how we assess GCSEs.
Please visit the Medical Sciences website for further guidance. Any candidate in doubt as to their academic eligibility for this course is strongly encouraged to seek advice by emailing [email protected].
We welcome applicants with these qualifications but please note that applicants would need to demonstrate that:
Please check with the provider of your particular course if you are unsure about any of the above. We ask applicants to submit a letter from the provider to confirm that the course is equivalent to the A-levels concerned (usually Chemistry and a second core science).
As with other qualifications, we would expect applicants with Access to HE/Foundation qualifications to have excelled in order for them to be able to make a competitive application.
This course uses multiple teaching methods.
Students begin their training with three years of ‘pre-clinical’ work, involving study of the basic medical sciences. In Year 3 you will be able to specialise in one of a wide range of other subjects. You might see this referred to as intercalation.
This is followed by the ‘clinical’ course, lasting three years, during which you will work in hospital wards under the supervision of consultants.
The main emphasis of problem-based learning (PBL) is on small group working, centred around a ‘problem’ or scenario. These scenarios are hypothetical patient cases.
This integrated approach, centred on PBL, and grounded in a robust scientific understanding, strong clinical knowledge and highly developed communication and clinical reasoning skills, allows you to develop life-long skills that will be crucial to your success as a doctor.
Case-Based Learning (CBL) is a tutorial-based, group learning approach where students work through real-world clinical scenarios across subjects such as cardiology, respiratory, and gastroenterology.
During each session, you’ll identify key learning outcomes and use them to guide your study, following a patient case from initial presentation through to diagnosis and management.
The goal of CBL is to help students apply theoretical knowledge to practical situations. This better prepares you for reviewing real cases during clinical placements.
Applicants can apply with predicted grades. It is acceptable to apply with a result pending as long as a final grade will be awarded within the standard A-level results window in mid-August.
On the whole, candidates who need to retake exams in order to achieve the required grades have a lower chance of being offered a place. Nevertheless, we recognise that students sometimes fail to achieve their potential on their first attempt at school or college because of circumstances beyond their control, and would always take such circumstances into account if they are brought to our attention. Please tell us about them in your personal statement or academic reference; see our information on special circumstances for full details.
Please note that applicants for Medicine need to achieve all the requirements of their conditional offer in a single examinations sitting, so you would need to retake all your qualifications and not just the one(s) in which you have missed your grade. Further information can be found on the Medicine admissions pages.
All applicants are free to make reference to skills or experience acquired in any context to date when trying to address our selection criteria: sometimes applicants refer to voluntary work and other extra-curricular activity, but many forms of evidence can help demonstrate to tutors that an applicant has tried to make an informed decision regarding his/her own suitability to study Medicine.
While some work experience in hospitals is theoretically desirable, we do appreciate that it can be very difficult to arrange and we therefore have no requirement for it. Any form of voluntary work would be beneficial in the context of applying for Medicine (such as helping out in a hospital, at an old people’s home, St John’s Ambulance, or work with a charity or overseas agency).
Used as one component in selection for interview, may be used at interview or checked after interview before offers are made.
UCAT.
A contextualised measure of GCSE attainment is combined (50:50) with a UCAT score normalised to the scores of all Oxford applicants (for applicants without GCSEs the UCAT is given double weight). This score is used to generate a preliminary shortlist.
The applications of all those not shortlisted in this way are then scrutinised in detail to identify a further ~80 applicants who may have been disadvantaged in the first stage for a variety of reasons; these are then added to the shortlist.
Online traditional panel interviews.
Our tutors are looking for academically gifted students who are committed to a career in Medicine. Your school and general background are of no importance: if you hold, or are on track to achieve, A*AA at A-level (or equivalent), and have an excellent set of GCSE grades, there is every reason to apply.
The University provides particular support to students in the UK from lower income households with the Oxford Opportunity Bursaries and Crankstart Scholarships which benefit a large number of students each year.
This summer school is intended for Year 12 students who are attending state schools in the UK; there are currently two Medicine-oriented courses each year. You can find selection criteria for admission to the course and other information on the UNIQ website.
Wherever possible, your grades are considered in the context in which they have been achieved. This information helps us to understand more about your particular circumstances and to compare you fairly with other applicants. Applicants from the most disadvantaged backgrounds will be strongly recommended to be shortlisted for interview, provided that evidence suggests you are likely to achieve the standard conditional offer for the course, and that you perform to a suitable standard in the UCAT. In this way, we aim to give students from the most challenging backgrounds the opportunity to showcase your potential through the interview and admissions testing.
For all students who are living in the UK when they apply to Oxford and who have been educated in the UK secondary school system, we consider:
This helps us to understand the whole school context in which you have achieved your grades. To do this, we access the following information from the Department for Education in England or, where available, equivalent data from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales:
We use your home postcode to consider the environment in which you were raised and educated in order to understand any factors which may have influenced your upbringing and opportunities. To do this, we use two data sets which are publicly available and widely used:
IMD combines information from the seven domains to produce an overall relative measure of deprivation. The domains are combined using the following weights: Income Deprivation (22.5%), Employment Deprivation (22.5%), Education, Skills and Training Deprivation (13.5%), Health Deprivation and Disability (13.5%), Crime (9.3%), Barriers to Housing and Services (9.3%), Living Environment Deprivation (9.3%). The weights have been derived from consideration of the academic literature on poverty and deprivation, as well as consideration of the levels of robustness of the indicators. Further information can be found on the UK Government website.
If you have been in the care system, we realise that you will have faced high levels of disruption to your education. Therefore, you will automatically be identified as being within the most disadvantaged group of applicants. This means that you will be strongly recommended to be shortlisted for interview, provided that evidence suggests you are likely to achieve the standard conditional offer for the course, and that you perform to a suitable standard in any required admissions test. Throughout the application process, our tutors will keep in mind influencing factors which may have negatively impacted on your accomplishments.
We obtain care status information from the UCAS application in the first instance, and will later verify this.
Time spent in care may involve some amount of time:
If you are flagged as FSM eligible, you will automatically be identified as being within the most disadvantaged group of applicants. This means that you will be strongly recommended to be shortlisted for interview, provided that evidence suggests you are likely to achieve the conditional offer for your course, and that you perform to a suitable standard in any required admissions test.
FSM eligibility data for English, Northern Irish and Welsh applicants is provided by the relevant educational authorities via UCAS. More information about the data provided can be found on UCAS’s website. For Scotland the equivalent FSM eligibility data will be sought and verified by the University, until we receive it directly.
As for UCAS’s other contextual information questions, Widening Participation (WP) questions are for applicants living in the UK. The questions are optional for applicants but are designed to help universities better understand applicants’ background and provide support when considering applications.
The University will take this additional information into consideration when reviewing your individual circumstances and our tutors will keep in mind influencing factors which may have negatively impacted on your accomplishments.
Oxford is an independent and self-governing institution consisting of the University, its divisions, departments and faculties, and the colleges.
The Medical Sciences Division is the largest of the four academic divisions within the University and is internationally recognised as a centre of excellence for biomedical and clinical research and teaching. In the Times Higher Education subject rankings for 2025, Oxford was, for the 14th year running, ranked first in the world for medical and health subjects.
Our course has a strong emphasis on the academic basis of medicine taught within a clinical context. We aim to produce doctors who are broadly educated in science and clinical practice, and whose clinical practice is informed by their scientific approach to medicine.
