A-Level Resits for Medicine: Which UK Medical Schools Accept Them in 2026-27

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A-level resits for medicine are accepted by some UK medical schools and refused outright by others, and the difference between the two lists changes almost every admissions cycle. For 2026-27 entry, schools including Bristol, Exeter, King's College London, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield will consider resat A-level grades under stated conditions, while Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, UCL, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, Cardiff and Birmingham do not normally accept resits outside exceptional or extenuating circumstances. This guide sets out the current, individually verified policy for each major UK medical school, explains how a resit year interacts with UCAT and your wider application, and covers what international students on a Student or Child Student visa need to know before committing to a resit year in the UK.

Which UK Medical Schools Accept A-Level Resits for Medicine in 2026-27?

There is no single UK-wide resit rule for medicine applicants — each medical school sets its own policy, and several have changed their stance for the 2026-27 cycle compared with previous years. The most significant change we found while researching this guide is at the University of Leeds, which has updated its policy so that, from 2026 entry onwards, its School of Medicine accepts one resit attempt per Level 3 (A2) subject and per GCSE subject without requiring mitigating circumstances — a materially more open position than the "exceptional circumstances only" policy Leeds held for earlier cycles. A third attempt at any qualification still requires documented mitigating circumstances (Leeds School of Medicine, verified against the university's own 2026-27 course page).

The table below summarises the stated resit policy for the medical schools most frequently searched by applicants, cross-checked against each institution's own admissions pages and, where the school's own wording was ambiguous, against multiple independent advisory sources. Policies are correct as of our August 2026 research date but can and do change — always confirm directly with the medical school's admissions office before finalising your UCAS choices.

Read the exact wording carefully rather than relying on a summary table alone — "does not accept" almost always carries an exceptional-circumstances exception, and "accepts" almost always comes with a minimum first-sitting grade or a cap on the number of subjects resat. For the full list of every UK medical school's entry requirements and UCAT thresholds, see our Leeds Medical School guide and Cambridge Medical School guide, and the Medical Schools Council's course finder for the school-published admissions statement of any institution not listed here.

How Does a Resit Year Affect International Student Applications?

International students weighing up a resit year face two questions that UK-domiciled students do not: how to remain lawfully in the UK to study the extra year, and whether that year changes their fee status for medical school. Both matter as much as the academic resit policy itself, and both are frequently left out of general resit-policy guides.

Visa route. Most international students resitting A-levels are aged 16-17 when they begin the resit year, and study at an independent sixth-form college on a Child Student visa. For this age group the visa is granted for the length of the course (up to 3 years) plus a 4-month wrap-up period, and the visa fee is £558 plus the healthcare surcharge (UK Government, Child Student visa guidance, 2026). Students who turn 18 during their resit year, or who begin a resit programme at 18 or over, generally need a standard Student visa instead, sponsored by the college through a fresh Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS). Because a dedicated one-year A-level retake course is a genuine new course of study with full timetabled attendance, colleges can issue a new CAS for it in the normal way — the well-known restriction that a university "cannot issue a CAS to extend a Student visa for resits alone" (a rule confirmed on several UK universities' visa-guidance pages, including Oxford Brookes) applies to students repeating an exam without re-enrolling on a taught course, not to students enrolling in a full one-year sixth-form resit programme.

Fee status. A resit year studied in the UK does not, on its own, change an international student's fee status to "home" for medical school. UK home fee status generally requires a student to have been ordinarily resident in the UK for the three years immediately before the first day of their course, and — critically — that residence must not have been mainly for the purpose of full-time education (House of Commons Library briefing on home fee status, 2026 update). Since an international student's A-level resit year is, by definition, full-time education, it does not usually count toward satisfying that three-year residency test, even if the student later spends additional years at a UK sixth-form or university. Families should not assume that "two or three years in the UK" automatically unlocks home fees; the residency basis matters as much as the duration, and each university's own fee-status team makes the final assessment on a case-by-case basis.

Qualification equivalence. Medical schools generally apply the same first-sitting logic to A-levels regardless of where a student studied them, so an international student who sat A-levels at a UK independent school and is now resitting faces exactly the same school-by-school policy as a UK-domiciled applicant. Where a school also accepts the International Baccalaureate or another curriculum, its published resit rules for that qualification are usually separate from its A-level resit policy and should be checked independently — a school that accepts one A-level resit does not necessarily apply the same allowance to an IB retake.

Do Oxford and Cambridge Accept A-Level Resits for Medicine?

No — not as a matter of routine policy. Cambridge does not publish an explicit resit ban, but its admissions guidance is built entirely around first-sitting performance: the standard offer is A*A*A (or 41-42 IB points with 776 at Higher Level), and for the 2025 cycle Cambridge received roughly 6 applications per place and made around 270 offers, including 22 to overseas-fee-status applicants (University of Cambridge, undergraduate admissions data, 2026). Cambridge requires the UCAT from every applicant but sets no minimum UCAT threshold, using scores holistically alongside academic record and interview performance. A resit candidate can still apply, but Cambridge will only look past resat grades where a college accepts that documented exceptional circumstances — illness, bereavement, or a similar disruption — affected the original attempt.

Oxford takes a comparably strict line: its standard offer is A*AA, and resit grades are considered only in extreme or exceptional circumstances rather than as a routine alternative pathway. Imperial College London is explicit that Medicine is excluded from its general policy of considering retaken exams — Imperial's own admissions guidance states that "with the exception of our MBBS Medicine programme, candidates who have retaken exams may still be considered for entry," meaning Medicine applicants who have resat A-levels are assessed under Imperial's extenuating-circumstances process rather than its standard retake allowance (Imperial College London, official undergraduate admissions guidance, 2026). UCL is similarly direct in its own course page: "we do not accept qualification resits, including re-starting Year 12," except for graduates who resat their A-levels before completing a degree (UCL, Medicine MBBS BSc course page, 2026 entry).

The practical implication is that a resit-year student aiming for Oxbridge, Imperial or UCL medicine needs a genuinely exceptional, well-evidenced circumstance behind the original attempt — not simply a disappointing set of grades — or should focus UCAS choices on medical schools with an explicit conditional-acceptance resit policy instead. For applicants who remain eligible for interview at these institutions, our medical school interview preparation service covers the additional scrutiny resit applicants often face at panel and MMI stage.

What Grades Do You Need After Resitting A-Levels for Medicine?

Nearly every medical school that accepts resits raises the bar rather than simply matching its standard offer. The pattern is consistent across the schools we reviewed: a defined minimum grade profile at first sitting, followed by a higher — often A*-inclusive — offer on the resit itself. Manchester, for example, requires ABB at first sitting and then expects A*A*A on the resat subject; Nottingham requires ABB or higher at first sitting with AAA required across up to two resat subjects; Liverpool sets ABB at first sitting with A*AA typically expected on resit. This "prove it twice, prove it harder the second time" structure is designed to filter for genuine academic recovery rather than simply extending the number of attempts available.

Several schools also cap how long ago the first sitting can have taken place — commonly two to three years — and cap the number of subjects that can be resat, most often to one or two. Southampton permits up to three resat subjects (one resit per subject); Lincoln caps resits at two subjects with an A required in Biology; Manchester and Newcastle allow only one subject to be resat at all. Before committing to a resit year, map your target medical schools against both the subject cap and the time-since-first-sitting rule, not just the headline grade requirement, since a strong resit grade profile can still fall outside an eligibility window on a technicality.

How Many A-Levels Can You Resit for a Medical School Application?

There is no single UK-wide cap — each medical school sets its own limit, and the range runs from a single subject to as many as three. Manchester and Newcastle allow only one resat subject; Nottingham and Lincoln allow up to two; Southampton allows up to three, with a maximum of one resit attempt per individual subject. Sheffield restricts resits to the same sitting and within a two-year window, effectively meaning you cannot resit only your weakest subject a year later and expect it to count under its standard policy. Because these caps are set independently, a student who has resat three subjects across two different exam sittings may be eligible at Southampton but ineligible at Nottingham, even though both schools broadly "accept resits."

The safest approach is to treat each medical school's subject cap, time window and required grade profile as three separate filters, and only shortlist schools where a resit application clears all three. This is particularly important for students who resat more than one subject or who sat resits across more than one exam series, since these are exactly the cases where "accepts resits" schools most often still reject an application under their small print.

Should You Resit A-Levels or Consider an Alternative Route Into Medicine?

Resitting is not the only route back into a medicine application after disappointing grades, and for some students it is not the most efficient one. The main alternatives are: applying to a medical school with a foundation year (a widening-participation route that some schools, including UCLan, offer as an explicit alternative to resits); applying to a graduate-entry programme after completing a first degree in a related subject (an option at schools such as Warwick, Swansea, Surrey and Chester, which do not run standard undergraduate resit admissions at all); or pursuing a related biomedical or healthcare science degree with a view to transferring or reapplying later with a stronger academic and work-experience profile. Each of these paths trades time for a different kind of risk — a foundation year usually adds one year to the overall course length in the same way a resit year does, while a graduate-entry route adds three or more years but removes the resit-policy problem entirely, since graduate applicants are assessed on degree performance rather than resat A-levels.

For most 18- and 19-year-old applicants with otherwise strong applications — solid work experience, a competitive UCAT score, and only a narrow grade shortfall — a single, well-targeted resit year at a school with a genuinely open resit policy remains the fastest route back into medicine. Where the grade shortfall is large, or where a student's target schools all fall into the "does not accept" column, a foundation year or graduate-entry route may be the more realistic strategy. Our guide to the best A-levels for medicine applications and A-level subject choices for medicine cover how to structure a resit-year subject combination that keeps as many medical schools open as possible.

How Does UCAT Fit Into a Resit-Year Application?

Every UK medical school requires the UCAT (University Clinical Aptitude Test) regardless of whether an applicant is applying with first-sitting grades or resat grades — there is no separate or reduced UCAT pathway for resit applicants. As of the 2026-27 cycle, the UCAT is a four-section test (Verbal Reasoning, Decision Making, Quantitative Reasoning and Situational Judgement — Abstract Reasoning was removed from the test), scored up to a maximum of 2,700, and sat at more than 130 test centres worldwide, including numerous international centres for overseas resit-year students. Because UCAT scores are valid for one application cycle only and are not carried over, a resit-year applicant must sit the UCAT again in the same cycle as their UCAS application, even if they sat it previously.

This is one of the genuine advantages of a resit year: it gives a candidate a full extra UCAT preparation cycle, which matters because several medical schools that accept resits — including Bristol, which sets a UCAT threshold of 2240 for Home applicants and 2270 for Overseas applicants for 2026 entry — use UCAT score bands as an initial filter before academic grades or the personal statement are considered in detail. A resit-year student who improves their UCAT score meaningfully alongside their A-level retakes is often in a stronger overall position than one who simply repeats the same UCAT performance a year later. Our UCAT tutoring programme is built specifically around this scenario, integrating UCAT preparation with the A-level subject content students are resitting.

What Does a Strong Resit-Year Medicine Application Look Like?

Admissions tutors reviewing a resit application are typically looking for evidence that the underperformance was understood and addressed, not simply repeated. In practice, a competitive resit-year application usually combines four elements: a documented, credible reason for the original underperformance where one exists (even where it does not meet the bar for "exceptional circumstances," it can still be referenced constructively in a personal statement or reference); a resit grade profile that clears the specific medical school's stated first-sitting and resit thresholds, not just its headline offer; an improved or maintained UCAT score, since a resit year with a flat or declining UCAT performance can raise more questions than it answers; and continued, ideally deepened, work experience or reflective practice undertaken during the resit year itself, which schools use as evidence that the gap year was used purposefully rather than simply to retake exams.

Because so many "accepts resits" policies still carry meaningful small print — a subject cap, a time-since-first-sitting limit, or a required grade on the resat subject specifically — the single most common mistake resit applicants make is choosing a UCAS shortlist based on a school's reputation for being "resit-friendly" without checking whether their specific grade profile actually clears that school's published conditions. Cross-check your resit grades, UCAT score and subject combination against each shortlisted school's current admissions statement before submitting your UCAS application, ideally with input from a tutor or adviser who reviews UK medical admissions policy regularly, since these policies are updated most years and a shortlist built on last year's information can rule out schools that are now open to you, or leave in schools that have since tightened their policy.

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