Graduate Entry Medicine is for degree-holders who want to pursue a career in medicine. You may be considering Postgraduate Medicine if you lost your place at med school during the A-Level results fiasco and you want to study a related degree – or perhaps you’ve been working in a different field and would like to change careers.
This guide to Graduate Entry Medicine explains what this pathway is, how it’s different from undergraduate medicine courses, and where you’ll find some GEM courses.
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Graduate Entry Medicine is a pathway for existing graduates and degree-holders who want to study Medicine. Postgraduate Medicine programmes are accelerated, so they usually take four years to complete instead of the five or six years on standard entry courses.
Graduate Entry Medicine began 20 years ago, with the first courses offered by St Georges in London and the newly created Leicester-Warwick Medical School. It’s such a popular route that it now accounts for 10% of all admissions to Medical School, according to BMC Medical Education.
Graduate Entry Medicine is different from a standard medicine course in a few key ways:
The latest data from the MSC shows that some Graduate Entry Medicine courses get 34 applicants for every place – but not every Medical School declares this, so the reality is likely to be much more competitive.
There are 14 Medical Schools in the UK that offer Graduate Entry Medicine courses – and nine of these will accept graduates with non-science degrees.
The table below outlines which schools offer these courses, how many places they have available each year, whether you need to have a science degree, and which aptitude test they require.
| University | Number of Places | What Aptitude Test is Required? | Do They Accept Non-Science Degrees? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barts (QMUL) | 40 | UCAT | Yes |
| Birmingham | 60 | UCAT | No |
| Cambridge | 43 | BMAT - if applying to standard course as well. Otherwise, none. | Yes |
| Cardiff | N/A - Places are only available for those currently on a Feeder Stream course. | GAMSAT | No |
| Dundee / St Andrews | 55 | GAMSAT | Yes |
| Imperial (temporarily suspended for 2021 entry) | 45 | BMAT | No |
| King's College London | 28 | UCAT | No |
| Liverpool | 29 | GAMSAT | No |
| Newcastle | 25 | UCAT | Yes |
| Nottingham | 93 | GAMSAT | Yes |
| Oxford | 30 | BMAT | No |
| Sheffield | 15 | UCAT | No |
| Southampton | 48 | UCAT | Yes |
| St George's | 50 - 70 | GAMSAT | Yes |
| Swansea | 90 | GAMSAT (all); MCAT (international) | Yes |
| Warwick | 193 | UCAT | Yes |
The entry requirements for Graduate Entry Medicine vary depending on which course you’re applying to, so you need to check with each Medical School first. In general, you need:
Some Graduate Entry Medicine courses will require that you pass the GAMSAT. Others will want you to ace the UCAT or BMAT exams.
We have everything you need to know about GAMSAT and the universities that require this on our GAMSAT guide.
You have to apply to Postgraduate Medicine through UCAS, just like you would have done for your undergraduate degree. When you apply, you’ll need to submit a Personal Statement for Medicine and sit the aptitude test required by the Uni.
We offer bespoke private Interview Tutoring sessions to provide expert help with your Graduate Entry Medicine interview. Find out more on our Interview Tutoring page!
“Thank you for all the help with the Graduate Entry Medicine interviews. As well as Cambridge I got two more offers from Southampton and St. George’s.” – Sophie, Graduate Entry Medicine Tutoring Attendee
If you don’t get a place to study Graduate Entry Medicine, you may want to consider studying Medicine abroad. A number of EU medical schools now teach their medical degrees in English – and these are open to UK graduates.
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