UK Vet School Interview Questions 2027, School by School

A UK vet school interview is the final selection stage for a veterinary degree, and it is not one process but eleven: the Veterinary Schools Council's 11 member schools each set their own. The University of Bristol does not routinely interview at all for 2027 entry. Edinburgh runs seven 10-minute stations. Liverpool and Surrey ask for recorded answers, four minutes a question.

Because UCAS allows only four veterinary choices out of five, most applicants end up holding three or four invitations to three or four completely different assessments. This page goes school by school, and every format, length, window and criterion below is taken from that school's own admissions page or admissions statement, with the source linked. Where a school publishes nothing, it says so rather than filling the gap.

Which UK Vet Schools Interview, and the One That Usually Does Not

The Veterinary Schools Council, whose members are the heads of the UK's veterinary schools, states plainly that "the interview method used varies between schools" and that selection "may also include assessed individual or group tasks, tests and additional questionnaires". That last clause matters more than it looks, because at one school the questionnaire has replaced the interview entirely. Ten of the Council’s member schools publish a 2027-entry undergraduate admissions process on their own pages; those ten are the ones set out below, each linked to its source.

Bristol's own 2027 undergraduate admissions statement for D100 Veterinary Science says: "For these courses, applicants are not routinely interviewed. In the majority of cases, admissions decisions will be made on the basis of the application information alone." In place of an interview, applicants receive a Veterinary Supplementary Assessment Questionnaire after their UCAS form arrives, scored against three published areas: awareness of the attributes needed to succeed on the course, understanding of the veterinary surgeon's job roles and the challenges they face, and understanding of the factors that affect how people work together in groups. Bristol also sets no work experience requirement, asking instead that applicants draw on their experiences inside the questionnaire.

This is the single most consequential fact on the page, and it is the one most commonly got wrong elsewhere. A widely ranking competitor guide describes a Bristol interview process in general terms. Bristol's own statement, version 1.0 dated 4 June 2026, says the opposite. Preparation time spent rehearsing Bristol stations is preparation time taken from the questionnaire that actually decides the outcome.

One further route drops the interview too. The University of Lancashire confirms that its BVMS with Foundation Year "doesn't have an interview, so admission is based only on your application" — while the direct-entry BVMS at the same university cannot be entered without one.

Source: each school's own admissions page or admissions statement, linked in the sections below. Retrieved 18 August 2026.

Live or Pre-Recorded: The Split That Decides How You Practise

The familiar division is MMI against panel. For 2027 entry it is no longer the useful one. Two schools have removed the interviewer from the room altogether.

Liverpool's School of Veterinary Science states: "They are conducted as six pre-recorded questions which you will record your answers to, as if in a face-to-face interview. Each question lasts four minutes." Applicants get a window of seven days to sit it and, once started, must finish in one sitting. Surrey does the same thing with one more question and a tighter window: its BVMSci page describes "seven pre-recorded questions" of four minutes each, with four days in which to record them.

Consider what that removes. There is no interviewer to read, no follow-up question, no prompt when an answer stalls, and no way to recover a weak opening by warming up over the next station. Four minutes is a long time to talk unprompted to a camera and an easy length to underfill. It is also fixed: finishing in ninety seconds does not move you on, it leaves you two and a half minutes of silence on the recording.

The preparation that follows is different in kind. Practising conversation with a friend rehearses the wrong skill. What both schools reward is a delivered answer of roughly the right length, structured out loud, with the specific example already chosen before the timer starts. Recording yourself and watching it back is the only rehearsal that resembles the real thing.

Everyone else still puts a person in front of you. Edinburgh confirms that interviews for 2027 entry "will take place in person"; the Royal Veterinary College says all its 2027-entry interviews "will be conducted in person"; Harper and Keele holds its selection events on campus; Lancashire holds its MMI at its Preston campus; and Glasgow interviews UK applicants in person while conducting international interviews by video.

The Schools That Publish a Station List

Three schools tell you, before you arrive, roughly what you will be asked to do. Edinburgh is the most specific admissions page of any UK vet school on this point.

The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies publishes its full circuit: "The MMI will consist of seven 10-minute stations. Five of these stations will have an interviewer." It then names all five. The remaining two are unstaffed: a Practical Task and a Numeracy Task, and Edinburgh adds in brackets that "use of calculators is not permitted".

Source: The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, BVM&S interview information for 2027 entry. Station names are Edinburgh's own; the right-hand column is our reading of what each name commits the school to, not a claim about station content.

The two unstaffed stations deserve attention because they are unusual and because they are the ones nobody rehearses. A numeracy task with no calculator, run against a 10-minute clock, is closer to a drug-dose calculation than to a conversation, and it is worth one seventh of the circuit. Edinburgh also opens the day with a welcome talk before the MMI begins, and adds a campus tour where the session is hosted at Easter Bush.

Harper and Keele publishes the shape rather than the list: "a series of activities, each lasting around 10 minutes... Activities include discussions, practical tasks and scenario-based simulation." Scenario-based simulation is the phrase to notice. It is not a euphemism for a question; it indicates a station in which something is acted out. Harper and Keele explains the design in its own words too, saying the structure "allows you to be interviewed by a variety of different people, giving us good all round insights".

The University of Lancashire gives the number and not the content: "There are usually between six to ten. Our MMI consists of eight stations." It is also unusually direct about what happens afterwards. Candidates are "ranked according to score", and "offers are made to the top-ranking applicants until the required number of places has been filled". Its window is the longest of any UK vet school, running from December through to April.

RVC, Glasgow and Nottingham: Shape Without a Station List

Three more describe the machinery precisely and then stop. Reading their pages carefully still tells you a great deal.

The Royal Veterinary College's 2027-entry selection guide describes "a structured multi-mini-interview format" in which "each station assesses one or more specific non-academic attributes", without saying how many stations there are. It then adds a detail no other UK vet school mentions: "Applicants also take part in an observed group activity." A group task is a different skill from a station, and it is assessed while you are working with the other candidates rather than against them.

The RVC is also the clearest school in the UK about how much the interview counts. Its guide states: "Offers are made solely on the basis of interview performance. This ensures all applicants who reach interview are considered equally using directly observed performance rather than earlier application materials." Grades and work experience get you into the room; from that point they are set aside. Initial offer decisions are normally made during January and February, and an applicant who has applied to several RVC veterinary programmes is interviewed once, with that one outcome considered across all of them.

Glasgow adds a stage before the interview that few applicants expect. Its veterinary medicine page explains that promising applicants are sent "details to complete an on-line ethical reasoning test", and that the test "should take about 45 minutes to complete". Only if those scores are acceptable does an interview invitation follow. Glasgow is candid that it is not a test you can revise for: the scenarios "are based on situations you are likely to come across, either in practice or your daily life, and you are asked to state what you would need to consider".

The Glasgow interview itself is a panel, not a circuit: "There will be two Admissions Panel members present at all interviews which will last approximately 20/25 minutes." The school names its own subject matter — work experience whether in person or virtual, hobbies and interests, and how you plan and cope with schoolwork — and says candidates should know the profession and keep up with topical veterinary issues.

Nottingham is the shortest entry of all and still more useful than a recalled question list: "You will need to attend an interview, lasting approximately 30 minutes." It then names what is assessed — motivation, insight into a veterinary career and interest in veterinary topics, academic ability, communication skills, animal orientation, personal attitudes, and fitness to practise. Nottingham does not describe this as an MMI, and its published work experience requirement is a minimum of five weeks, of which at least three weeks must be animal handling.

Notice the phrase "animal orientation" in Nottingham's list. It is not a synonym for enthusiasm about animals. Read alongside the five-week requirement and its animal-handling minimum, it points at whether a candidate is comfortable and competent around livestock and companion animals, which is a claim your placements either support or do not.

Cambridge Is Assessing Something Else Entirely

Applying MMI preparation to Cambridge is a category error. The Department of Veterinary Medicine's how to apply page is unusually candid: "It is generally accepted that the admissions process at Cambridge is more science-oriented than that for other veterinary courses." It then goes further, saying applicants strong at science and maths "will find Cambridge the easiest veterinary course on which to secure a place".

The interview rate follows from that. Cambridge writes: "Interviews are an important part of the applications process, so we call more than 70% of our applicants for interview." Where Glasgow and Edinburgh use the interview to cut a large field down, Cambridge uses it to examine almost everyone who applies, having already filtered on academic signal.

Its published criteria are worth reading in full, because four of the six are about discussion rather than motivation: commitment to a veterinary career, problem solving, "an aptitude for discussing scientific and mathematical concepts", enthusiasm for discussing cases seen on placement, keenness to discuss veterinary and scientific issues from wider reading, and evidence of balancing work and leisure. There is one further hard requirement: applicants for October 2027 or 2028 entry must register for the Engineering and Science Admissions Test by a deadline in September, ahead of the UCAS deadline.

We cover the Cambridge format in depth, with worked scientific and ethical examples, in our Cambridge veterinary medicine interview guide. For the wider application — grades, work experience, the ESAT and the UCAS timeline — start with our guide to studying veterinary medicine in the UK, and compare offers against our vet schools ranked by entry requirements for 2027.

What the Odds Look Like Once You Reach Interview

Three schools publish enough to tell you how much is still at stake at the interview stage. The rest publish nothing, and their silence should not be read as reassurance.

Edinburgh publishes a three-year table covering 2023 to 2025 entry for the five-year BVM&S. Across those cycles it received between 1,092 and 1,135 applications a year, invited between 583 and 594 candidates to interview, made between 206 and 239 offers, and placed between 111 and 116 students. Roughly half of all applicants are interviewed; roughly two in five of those interviewed receive an offer.

The rest-of-UK figures are sharper. Against 30 funded places, Edinburgh received between 570 and 593 applications a cycle, interviewed between 238 and 267 of them, and made between 62 and 67 offers. Its own summary column puts the application-to-offer rate at 11 per cent for that group in all three cycles. Its admissions policy adds the operational figure behind the table: "We place applications in rank order and call approximately 400 S/RUK/ROI and approximately 400 overseas/graduate candidates for interview each year."

Source: Edinburgh BVM&S three-year admissions statistics 2023-2025; University of Glasgow veterinary medicine degree page; University of Liverpool School of Veterinary Science how to apply; RVC BVetMed 2027 selection guide. Retrieved 18 August 2026.

Glasgow's numbers describe an even tighter funnel for UK applicants: "We receive approximately 800 applications each year... we are only able to offer 72 places to UK applicants. We interview around 250 applicants for the 72 places and offers will be made to less than half of those called for interview." For overseas and graduate applicants it reports around 800 applications and aims to interview around 300, against a total yearly intake of approximately 135.

Liverpool states its conversion outright — "We typically give offers to 40% of those we interview" — and, in the same passage, that neither academic performance nor prior work experience is reconsidered afterwards. Between the RVC, Liverpool and Lancashire, three schools have now said in their own words that once you are through the door, the interview is the decision.

What No UK Vet School Publishes

No UK vet school publishes its interview questions. Not one. Every list of vet interview questions in circulation is either invented, generic, or recalled by candidates afterwards and passed on without a date. The highest-ranking Cambridge-specific list is a Google Sites page of seven remembered questions, each credited to a commercial admissions company rather than to the university, and framed as Oxford and Cambridge although Oxford runs no veterinary degree at all.

Two further absences are worth naming. First, no school publishes an interview cut-off. The RVC explains why in terms that almost certainly apply to the others: "The interview threshold varies each year depending on the number of interview places available and the overall strength of the applicant pool. For this reason, we do not publish a fixed interview cut off score." Second, station content stays sealed. Edinburgh names its seven stations and still tells you nothing about what happens inside them.

Feedback is limited too, and the two Scottish schools take opposite positions. Edinburgh offers interview feedback but only "after decisions have been communicated", and warns that a candidate will have "no insight into the performance of the others against whom they are competing". Glasgow declines entirely, saying it is "unable to provide detailed feedback to any individual applicant".

What each school does publish is the thing worth working from, and it is more actionable than any recalled question. Nottingham's seven assessment criteria are a checklist. Cambridge's six criteria are a checklist. Bristol's three questionnaire aims are a checklist. Edinburgh's station names tell you to bring a chart you can talk through and arithmetic you can do on paper. Liverpool's guidance says the personal statement is not used to select for interview at all — "Information about your work experience is obtained from the Work Experience Questionnaire" — while Lancashire scores the personal statement and the academic reference to decide who gets an interview in the first place, which is a genuine reason to write that document carefully. Our UCAS personal statement guide for 2027 entry covers the three-question format those schools are reading.

One last practical point. Liverpool will only shortlist applicants who "correctly evidence at least 15 days of work experience", and its evidence portal closes at 23.59 on 29 October 2026 for 2027 entry — two weeks after the UCAS deadline and entirely separate from it. Surrey's questionnaire goes out on 20 October 2026 and must be back by midday on 27 October 2026. Miss either window and the interview never happens, whatever your grades. If you are also holding medical or dental offers, the station mechanics carry across: see our guides to preparing for a medical school MMI and to dental school MMI stations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Reviewed 18 August 2026. Every format, length, date, station name and figure on this page was taken from the named school's own admissions page, admissions statement or published statistics, each linked above. Where a school publishes nothing on a point, this page says so rather than substituting a recalled or third-party account. Admissions processes are reviewed annually, so check the school's own page before acting on any date.