Graduate-entry medicine: application procedure FAQs
Can I apply for a place on the conventional (five-year) course as well as on the accelerated course?
No. Application is restricted to one course only. If you qualify for the graduate-entry course, you should normally apply for that: if not, you should apply for the preclinical course. The two admissions processes are separate, and candidates who are unsuccessful in applying to either one will not be passed to the other course for consideration.
No. Applications to the two courses are completely separate.
Yes. There are no restrictions on applications from graduates: the UCAS regulation limiting applications to Oxford or Cambridge applies only to school-leavers. Please contact UCAS directly if you are unable to select both Universities.
No, you will not be able to apply for deferred entry through UCAS.
Students who are holding an offer may still apply to defer their offer to the following year, on grounds of unforeseen mitigating circumstances (e.g. illness).
If you have exceptional personal circumstances for which you would seek deferred entry, please provide a letter directly to geadmissions@medsci.ox.ac.uk for the attention of the Admissions Panel. If you are shortlisted for interview and to be made an offer, these circumstances will be considered at the offer-making stage.
Examples of some exceptional personal circumstances which are likely to be considered include a planned course of medical treatment or participation in an international sports event which would preclude you being able to participate in the admissions process in the autumn/winter before you wish to the start the course – other exceptional circumstances will be considered. Please note that completion of a current or subsequent programme of study would not be considered reasonable grounds for deferral.
Yes. The application process is the same for overseas students as for home students and you can usually take the entrance test in your home country. Interviews will be held online. The fees for overseas students are higher than for home students: this is a situation over which the Medical School has no control. Please note that there is no specific financial support available for overseas students.
There is in principle a quota, set by the UK Government, which governs the maximum number of overseas students that may be admitted to the medical school as a whole. In practice this quota has not yet been a limiting factor in admissions to the graduate-entry course. We do not have places reserved explicitly for overseas students, so in practice students from overseas are considered alongside UK students, and selection is made according to the same criteria for everyone.
The Admissions Panel can consider relevant and specific Extenuating Circumstances that may have impacted upon previous academic performance; applicants can outline specific and relevant extenuating circumstances within the Supplementary Application Form. Supporting evidence is not required at the point of application, but applicants should be ready to provide evidence on request following the application deadline. Please note that we are unable to consider any circumstances relating to the UCAT.
The policy of the General Medical Council is to encourage the entry of disabled people to medical school, provided that they can meet the “fitness to practise” criteria. We welcome applications from disabled graduates, and we will work closely with the University's Disability Advisory Service to try to make whatever changes you need to help you through the course. For selection, we work in two stages: first, an academic selection process in which you will be compared on the same standards as everyone else. We try as hard as possible to make this process blind to your disability, though obviously we will be happy to help ease your physical access to your interview if need be. If you are accepted on academic grounds, we will then separately assess your ability to cope with the course (assuming that we can make any changes you need) and to practise as a doctor.
In academic terms, the colleges are similar (though different tutors may have different specialist interests) and much of the course is in any case taught by the medical Faculty in the hospital. Colleges do, however, differ in tradition, size, location and population (some colleges admit only graduate students; others take a mixture of graduates and undergraduates), and these are factors that you might wish to take into account in choosing your college. You may, however, genuinely have no preference, in which case you might prefer not to express a choice. Students who submit such “open” applications are randomly distributed between colleges in order to balance the number of applications as evenly as possible between the participating colleges.
When particular colleges are heavily oversubscribed, we may redistribute some applications to other colleges, to even out the numbers; so even if you express a preference for a particular college, it is possible that your application may be sent to another college. Again, the intention is to give everyone an equal chance as far as possible.
Yes. All shortlisted candidates will be interviewed by two colleges and either college may wish to make an offer. Following interviews, other colleges are also able to consider an applicant if they are seen to be strong but would otherwise not be offered a place. This system operates whether you express a college preference or not.
No, you need to find two supplementary referees in addition to the person who writes your UCAS reference.
Yes. The form requires applicants to provide the details of two supplementary referees and to request references from them, which triggers an automated email. Applicants are strongly advised to ensure that they enter referees' details carefully.
We hope that applicants will discuss their applications with their two supplementary referees and that nominated referees will be able to provide a reference. In the event that a nominated referee is unable to provide a reference, applicants should send an email to geadmissions@medsci.ox.ac.uk to state clearly the referee who should be removed from the application and full contact details of the replacement referee. It will not be possible for the deadline to be extended, however, and so applicants should ensure that a replacement referee is aware of our timelines.
No, we don’t offer prescriptive guidance, but the reference form specifically asks referees to consider an applicant against the published selection criteria and with the particular demands of the course in mind. Applicants might therefore wish to ask referees to consult our webpages prior to writing.
Applicants will receive an automatic email when each of their referees completes the reference form.
No. Our reference form specifically asks referees to consider applicants against our particular selection criteria and the demands of our course and so it is very unlikely that a reference written to support an application elsewhere would be helpful.
No. It is important that all applicants have the same number of references and so it is only possible to nominate two referees.
Yes. The Supplementary Application Form includes some questions with maximum word limits; details are clearly stated within the form. Applicants should be advised that assessors will not take account of material that is beyond the word limit. Referees are asked to use a maximum of 750 words in their submissions. We are confident that the word limits will not compromise the quality of response to either form.
Yes. All candidates have to take the entrance test (the UCAT): it serves as a single point of comparison with which we can fairly compare candidates from a wide range of academic and professional backgrounds.
Yes, for the reasons outlined above. We use a single standard against which to compare all candidates in each year. We will not consider results from other Medical aptitude tests nor from UCAT sittings prior to the year of application.
Yes. The test is our common point of academic comparison: it would not be fair to use a result from last year’s test to compare you against people who took this year’s test.
The UCAT score is one of several factors that we take into account when selecting candidates for interview, and there is no score that will guarantee you an interview. However, we would normally expect to interview candidates who perform particularly well in the test, and we would normally expect not to interview those whose scores fall below the top 40 per cent of the range of our candidates.
The UCAT is mainly a test of reasoning, for which no preparation is needed. The test includes questions based on standard school science, which will be familiar to most science graduates; but those candidates who have not studied school science for some time might benefit from some revision of these topics. There are sample papers and past papers available on the UCAT website and you are strongly encouraged to try them.
Your UCAT score will be sent directly to Oxford. You don’t need to send it to us yourself.
Dates will be published, as soon as they are available, on the application procedure page.
Shortlisting will usually take place towards the end of November in each admissions round. Following shortlisting, applicants will be informed about the progress of their application.
Unfortunately we are unable to provide detailed feedback on individual application because of the large number of applications we receive each year.
Admission to the course is extremely competitive, and we select candidates for interview by applying our published academic and non-academic criteria as consistently and fairly as possible. Many strong applicants are not shortlisted simply because we do not have the capacity to interview everyone who meets the minimum requirements.
We understand that this may be disappointing, but hope that our published criteria helps applicants understand how decisions are made.
Please note that we follow the University's published procedures regarding feedback.