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APPLICATION
Access to Medicine Courses
Foundation and Access to HE diplomas designed to prepare non-traditional applicants for entry to UK medical schools.
Access to Medicine programmes are one-year, full-time courses, usually delivered at further education colleges, designed to prepare applicants without traditional science A-levels for entry into specific UK medical schools. Each Access course is linked to one or more partner medical schools that have agreed to consider its graduates on defined terms, typically alongside an UCAT requirement and a successful interview.
The longest-established and best-known providers include the College of West Anglia (linked historically to UEA), Manchester College (linked to a consortium of northern schools), and Sussex Downs College (linked to Brighton and Sussex Medical School). The courses are demanding — typically covering A-level equivalent biology, chemistry, mathematics, and study skills in a single intensive year — and are designed for adult learners not currently in education.
Access to Medicine differs from a general Access to HE (Science) diploma in that places at the partner medical schools are reserved for graduates of the linked Access course. Applicants should verify the current partner-school arrangements directly with the course provider, since these agreements occasionally change.
Current authoritative resources
About this page
This page is one of a set of medical school and medical careers resources on chrispaton.org, replacing the category landings of New Media Medicine (newmediamedicine.com), an early digital health blog and UK medical school applications community I ran between 2004 and 2014. The original New Media Medicine forum threads — user-generated content from that community — are not republished here; this is original framing written to help current applicants find authoritative information. Always confirm details with the official sources linked above before acting on them.