FOI_26-122 Medicine A104 admissions criteria

Date of response: 09 July 2026

We have now considered your request of 17 June 2026 for the following information:

I am writing to make a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for admissions data relating to the MBBS Extended Medical Degree Programme (A104) at Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia.

This is a separate request from my concurrent submission for the standard MBBS Medicine (A100) at UEA. The A104 Extended Medical Degree Programme is a six-year widening participation route with adjusted academic entry requirements; UCAT is not required for this route.

I would be grateful if you could provide the following data for the 2025/2026 admissions cycle (entry September 2026), or the 2024/2025 cycle if not yet recorded. If both are readily available, I would welcome both.

Question 1. Total number of applications received.

Our response:

For the 2024-25 cycle, this was 375.

Question 2. Total number of interview invitations issued.

Our response:

For the 20240-25 cycle, this was 161.

Question 3. Total number of offers made.

Our response:

For the 2024-25 cycle, this was 138.

Question 4. Minimum GCSE requirements applied during shortlisting.

Our response:

Applicants must hold or be working towards GCSEs in a minimum of six subjects at grade 5 or B including English Language, Mathematics and either a single science subject (Biology, Chemistry or Physics) or Double Science. Triple Science, Science, Additional Science and Further Science GCSEs are accepted.

If GCSE Double Science or Triple Science is presented at the required grade or above, we will not consider any additional single science subjects to meet the minimum GCSE requirements.

If Methods of Mathematics & Application of Mathematics are taken, we require both. They will be considered as a single grade for screening purposes as together they are equivalent to the full Mathematics GCSE.

We will only accept one of the following GCSEs: Learning for Life & Work, Expressive Arts, Catering, Child Development, Business & Communication Systems (ICAA), Health & Social Care and Leisure & Tourism.

GCSE short courses, BTEC Level 2, OCR Level 2, AQA Level 2 and Functional Skills are not accepted.

GCSE resits considered. Applicants who do not meet the GCSE requirement MUST be resitting GCSEs and predicted to achieve the required grade. This should be evident from their UCAS application.

Question 5. Predicted A-level (or equivalent) grade requirements applied at the point of shortlisting.

Our response:

BBB or ABC.

Question 6. Whether any admissions test is used and, if so, the test name, threshold, and mean score data.

Our response:

UCAT. Please see our website MBBS Medicine with a Gateway Year 2025/26 | UEA

Question 7. The contextual eligibility criteria applied for the A104 route, and the number of applicants, interviewees, and offer holders in the requested cycle(s).

Our response:

Please see our website MBBS Medicine with a Gateway Year 2025/26 | UEA

2025-26 admissions data:

Unfortunately, on this occasion, it is not possible to provide all the requested information. The Act contains a number of exemptions that allow public authorities to withhold certain information from release. We have applied the following exemption for the requested information relating to MBBS Medicine with a Gateway Year (A104 course) 2025-2026 entry.

We have applied this exemption for the requested information relating to the medicine (A104) applicant cycle 2026 entry. The University is currently in a live recruitment cycle for this course, and it is our belief that release of this information would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the University of East Anglia.

Student recruitment is undoubtedly a commercial activity for all universities. The University’s success in recruiting students to the medicine course directly affects both our reputation and financial position.

To compete in the Higher Education market, with leading UK and international universities, the University must ensure that information that would be strategically useful to its competitors is not placed in the public domain. Release of such information would potentially compromise the University’s ability to attract and retain the high-quality students that allow it to be a progressive and sustainable institution.

The UK Higher Education sector is a highly competitive environment. All universities seek to recruit the best students from a limited pool of prospective UK and international applicants, as well as competing to attract high quality staff, research funding and accreditation. This competition is both on a national and international scale, with UK-based institutions in direct competition with institutions around the world for funding, students and staff.

The Medicine with a Gateway Year course is expected to be an extremely popular course, and it is clear that real-time information on the requested information relating to the information requested within this live recruitment cycle would be of interest to our competitors. It therefore follows that information during a live recruitment cycle for the medicine course can readily be seen as commercially sensitive. We do not share information pertaining to live recruitment cycles with any of our competitors; this information would provide them with the insight to match and potentially exceed our recruitment activities. The University believes that its position would be severely compromised if it were to release information that would benefit its competitors.

We consider it would be likely for such prejudice to our interests to occur, given the sensitivity of the requested information, the consistent treatment of it as commercially sensitive by both this University and other Higher Education institutions, and the degree to which the number and value of applicants and subsequent registrants is now critical to any university’s success.

The application of this exemption requires an examination of the public interest in disclosure as opposed to that in non-disclosure.

The factors in favour of disclosure would include:

• There is a legitimate public interest in the information you have requested relating to the medicine course, both to further the transparency and accountability of public authority activities.

Factors in favour of withholding the information are largely laid out in the explanation for the use of the exemption above but would include:

• A public interest in protecting the ability of institutions to compete on a level playing field and to ensure that there is fair competition between universities for prospective students. By protecting the University’s real time recruitment information from public disclosure, we are acting in line with established practices across the sector within the UK and internationally in maintaining this fair competition.

• To disclose the requested information, at this stage in the process, would be likely to prejudice this institution’s competitive and commercial position, and it is difficult to see how this could be in the public interest.

After consideration of the above factors, we believe, on balance, that the public interest lies in withholding the requested information.

We expect that the admissions data for the Medicine with a Gateway Year (A104) will be available for disclosure from 01 October 2026.