Gateway and Graduate Entry Routes

For Young Learners

What This Is

The standard route into medicine is a school leaver applying to a five or six year degree. It is the most common route and it is not the only one.

Several alternatives exist, each designed for a different situation. Knowing they exist at fifteen is more useful than discovering them at twenty five.

People reach medicine from very different starting points. Some miss the grades. Some decide at twenty two. Some did not take the right subjects. Some had a school that never mentioned the option.

None of those is the end of it, which is the point of this page. The routes below all lead to the same registrable qualification.

How It Works

Gateway or foundation year courses. A six year medical degree with an extra preparatory year at the start. Usually restricted to applicants who meet widening participation criteria, and usually with lower entry requirements than the standard course at the same university.

Graduate entry medicine. A shortened course, often four years, for applicants who already hold a degree. Some courses accept any degree subject and some require a science one. Competition is high because the places are few.

Standard entry as a graduate. Applying to the normal five year course with a degree already held. More places than graduate entry, and many applicants overlook it.

Access to Higher Education diplomas. A one year qualification for adults without the usual school qualifications, accepted by some medical schools.

Transfer and intercalation routes exist at a small number of universities and are specific enough that only the university's own pages are worth reading.

How to Prepare

Decide which description fits your situation before reading any requirements, because the routes have very different criteria and mixing them up wastes time.

For gateway courses, check the widening participation criteria first. Eligibility is the gate, and grades come second.

For graduate entry, check whether the degree subject matters at each school and whether the admissions test differs, because for some graduate courses it does.

Apply across more than one route where you are eligible for more than one.

Common Mistakes

Believing a foundation year is a lesser degree. The qualification at the end is the same one.

Applying to graduate entry and ignoring standard entry, where there are far more places.

Assuming a non science degree rules out graduate entry. At several schools it does not.

Reading about these routes for the first time in the autumn of the application year.

Where to Find Out More

The Medical Schools Council lists which schools offer gateway courses, graduate entry and Access course acceptance.

UCAS lists the courses and the requirements each university has supplied.

Each university publishes the eligibility criteria for its own gateway course, and those criteria are the ones that decide it.