Chester Medical School Entry Requirements 2027

Chester Medical School is the University of Chester’s medical school, and the one MBChB on its course list is a four-year Graduate Entry Medicine degree (UCAS code A101) for applicants who already hold a degree. For September 2027 entry it asks for at least a 2:1 in any subject, a UCAT, GAMSAT or MCAT score above its minimum threshold, and 70 hours of relevant work experience. Everyone meeting the academic and test standards attends six Multiple Mini Interviews.

Do you need a degree to apply to Chester Medical School?

Yes. Chester’s international application page for Graduate Entry Medicine says it plainly: “If you do not have a degree, you are not currently eligible to apply.” Chester Medical School’s course list, read on 17 October 2026, carries one MBChB, Graduate Entry Medicine with the code A101, and the UCAT Consortium’s table of member universities shows the same single code against the University of Chester, institution code C55. The course page calls the degree “an accelerated four-year, graduate entry MBChB programme, open to applicants with a previous degree in any discipline”, and gives a first degree in the arts, humanities or languages as an example of one that qualifies.

The degree class is the academic gate. The table below sets out what the Home Students tab of the course page says for each position an applicant might be in.

Chester’s pages do not word the 2:2 route identically. Both entry-requirement tabs on the course page, and the international application page, accept a Master’s or a Doctoral qualification alongside a 2:2. The Graduate Entry Medicine landing page says a 2:2 candidate “should hold a Master’s degree”, and the University’s Admissions Policy, which covers all its taught degrees (effective June 2024, next review June 2027), says a 2:2 “will only be considered if applicants hold a Master’s degree”. An applicant whose route is a 2:2 plus a doctorate should ask Chester Medical School to confirm, in writing, that it will be considered before spending a UCAS choice on it.

The same policy says the University “makes use of contextual data” and “may make conditional offers that differ from the typical entry requirement” where, in its judgement, the typical requirement would not be appropriate because of an applicant’s circumstances. That paragraph is written for the University’s admissions in general and names no programme, so anyone hoping it applies to A101 should raise it with the medical school directly.

What UCAT, GAMSAT or MCAT score does Chester accept?

Chester accepts any one of three admissions tests. Its course page asks for “the minimum threshold mark in either UCAT, GAMSAT or MCAT” and adds: “The minimum threshold scores fluctuate annually and will be set above the national mean.” Those are Chester’s own words about its threshold. Because the threshold moves from year to year, the useful question for an applicant is what the national mean was in the year they sat their test.

For the UCAT, that figure comes from the UCAT Consortium rather than from Chester. The Consortium’s 2026 test statistics, based on 42,359 tests taken up to 24 September 2026, give a final mean total cognitive scaled score of 1918. The total runs from 900 to 2,700 across three cognitive subtests, and the 2026 subtest means were 602 in Verbal Reasoning, 640 in Decision Making and 675 in Quantitative Reasoning; the 5th decile sat at 1920. The 1918 is the Consortium’s national figure for UCAT 2026. It is not Chester’s threshold, which Chester sets each year and describes only as above the national mean.

GAMSAT applicants had one more administrative step. ACER’s UK university admission page says that, to apply in 2026 for a programme starting in 2027, only results from the March 2025, September 2025, March 2026 and September 2026 sittings can be used. For 2027 entry, ACER’s deadline for candidates to tick ‘UK’ on their registration and give their UCAS Personal ID, so that their results are forwarded, was midnight GMT on 31 October 2026. ACER lists Chester’s A101, institution code C55, among the UK programmes applied for through UCAS. Looking further ahead, ACER’s registration page shows the next sitting as March 2027, with registrations opening in November 2026, and a UK registration fee of £296.

Which test suits an applicant is a separate question from which test Chester will accept. Our guide to the GAMSAT in the UK covers the paper itself, and medical schools that accept a test other than the UCAT sets Chester beside the other courses that do. If you are still deciding which test to sit for a 2028 start, book a free consultation with our UCAT and GAMSAT tutors before you register.

Chester’s 70-hour work experience rule for 2027 entry

Work experience is where Chester is most specific, and where its own pages differ. The Home Students tab of the course page, written for “the 2026-27 admissions cycle (2027 entry)”, asks for “at least 70 hours of work experience relevant to medicine”. It must fall in the three years before the application: for 2027 entry, between 15 October 2023 and 15 October 2026. Chester defines relevant as roles that give “an insight into the work of the NHS or other healthcare system, the role of a doctor or other health professional, and the perspective of patients or carers”.

The Home tab then sets two routes to the 70 hours:

• If you are training or working as a health professional with direct patient or service-user contact, Chester wants evidence of that training or work plus an online or virtual work-experience course.
• If you are not, you must show at least two relevant work experiences. One must be in a role with direct hands-on care of people or patients with healthcare needs, paid or voluntary. The other can be shadowing a health professional or an online virtual work-experience course.
• Online courses are capped: “an online course can only count for a maximum of 10 hours towards the total 70 hours minimum work experience.”

Chester’s other wording differs. The International Students tab of the same course page, and the separate international application page, say that shadowing a doctor or healthcare professional “can only count for a maximum of 20 hours against the minimum requirement of 70 hours”, and that references will be asked for to evidence work experience if an applicant is invited to a selection centre. The International tab also says “Applicants for 2024 entry may apply without the required 70 hours”, and the landing page makes the same allowance for 2025 entry. Those allowances are written for 2024 and 2025 entry, not for 2027. An international applicant, whose criteria sit on the International tab, should ask Chester which version governs their application before counting hours.

For a career-changer, the hands-on requirement is the one to plan around. Paid or voluntary care work with people who have healthcare needs counts; an online course alone cannot carry more than 10 of the 70 hours. Chester also asks for one reference from someone in a position of responsibility, not a relative or friend, who can comment on suitability for medicine, and an academic reference from anyone who has been in higher education in the two years before applying.

How does Chester’s six-station MMI work, and how are offers made?

Chester interviews everyone who clears its academic and test standards. The course page says: “All applicants who successfully meet the academic criteria and entry test standards will be required to attend for interview.” The interview “lasts approximately one and a half hours and takes the form of six Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs)”. The stations change each year, but Chester says all of them are designed to assess against the GMC’s guidance on Good Medical Practice. Each station is observed and scored by two trained assessors, drawn from medical professionals, academics, current students and lay people with an interest in medical education.

The offer decision follows the interview: “On completion of the MMI process, each candidate’s score profile is carefully reviewed to determine which candidates will be made an offer.” The international application page puts the same point the other way round: “No place will be offered without an interview.” Chester also says it is “not able to give individual feedback” from its selection process, so an applicant who is turned down should not plan a second attempt around feedback from Chester.

Three things follow for preparation.

• Everyone at the MMI has already cleared the same bar. Chester says that once the MMIs are complete it reviews each candidate’s score profile to decide who receives an offer, so performance across the six stations matters directly.
• Good Medical Practice is the marking frame. Chester names it as the guidance every station assesses against, so a candidate should know the GMC’s standards well enough to recognise which one a station is testing.
• Notice can be short. The University’s admissions policy says it “aims to inform applicants of an interview/audition no later than two weeks before the interview date”, and that in Confirmation and Clearing there may be only 24 hours’ notice. Two weeks is an aim, not a guarantee, so preparation that waits for the invitation may have two weeks or less.

Our guide to medical school interviews covers station types in general; the Chester-specific material a candidate can use in a “why Chester” station is in the course and placement section further down this page.

When is the deadline, and can you defer a Chester offer?

Applications go through UCAS. Chester’s undergraduate how-to-apply page says that for 2027 entry “The application deadline for MBChB Graduate Entry Medicine is in line with the UCAS Medicine and Dentistry deadline of 15th October”, which for a September 2027 start fell on 15 October 2026. The University’s institution code is CHSTR C55 and the course code is A101. The same page gives the UCAS application fee for 2027 entry as £34.50.

Chester does not take deferred entry for this course. Its applicant FAQ welcomes applications for deferred entry “on all our courses apart from Children’s Nursing, Midwifery, and Graduate Entry Medicine”, and the University’s admissions policy lists the MBChB among the exceptions to its deferral rule. In practice the cycle an applicant applies in decides the year they start, so anyone planning a year of work or travel first should apply in the cycle that ends with the start date they want.

Chester’s course page adds timing detail that should be read with its date attached:

• The course page, read on 31 October 2026, lists a September 2027 start and says “We are now closed for Home and International applications for September 2027 entry.”

What does the Chester MBChB cost, and how is Year 1 funded?

The course page headline gives Home fees of £10,050 a year for a full-time course in 2027/28, the year of a September 2027 start. Its funding section gives £9,790 a year for 2026/27 (“subject to Parliamentary approval”) and says fees for subsequent years “may be subject to increase in line with the Government fee cap”. Chester says Graduate Entry Medicine students apply for undergraduate student finance, but the first-year loan does not cover the whole fee, and the course page spells out the gap.

The Year 1 gap is the fee less the loan: £9,790 − £6,125 = £3,665 for a student from England, and £9,790 − £6,325 = £3,465 for a student from Wales, on the 2026/27 figures. Chester’s general undergraduate fees page, under a heading reading “2025/26 onwards”, gives different first-year numbers: a loan of up to £5,964 and £3,571 to fund personally. The course page is the one that states its figures for 2026/27.

The international fee for 2026/27 is £46,000 a year. Irish nationals living in the UK or the Republic of Ireland are treated as Home students for tuition-fee purposes. Chester also lists costs the fee does not cover, including books, specialist clothing and travel to placements, which matters on a course whose placements reach into North Wales and Shropshire.

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Is Chester GMC-approved, and whose degree will you graduate with?

Chester Medical School is new, and its course page is direct about what that means. “As a new medical school, we are required to undergo quality assurance by the General Medical Council”, it says, and Chester Medical School “is progressing through the stages of the GMC approval process and have agreed the 2024 commencement date with the GMC.” The first cohort began in September 2024. Chester’s news release of 17 September 2024 reported funding for 50 home and 25 international places for 2024, and said the school would welcome 55 home and up to 25 international students for the 2025 intake.

On full approval, Chester’s course page says: “Sponsorship for the World Directory for the US and Canada will follow once we receive full approval with the GMC for the University of Chester to award a primary medical qualification in the final year of the programme in 2028.” It adds that until then “currently CMS students cannot take the USMLE”, which matters to anyone planning to practise in the United States.

New medical schools work with a contingency partner, and Chester’s is Warwick Medical School. The landing page answers the degree question in these words: “Under the current arrangements, the first graduating cohort is expected to receive a Warwick Medical School degree. Arrangements for subsequent cohorts will be confirmed as the School continues through the approval process.” Teaching, examinations and student support are provided through Chester Medical School, and Chester says students are not required to travel to Warwick for any part of the course. The course page also says that a graduate of the Chester MBChB will be eligible to register provisionally with the GMC, subject to its fitness to practise requirements, and to apply for Year 1 of the UK Foundation Programme.

Chester’s newness does not change what an applicant controls: the test score, the 70 hours and the six stations. If you want help with any of the three, book a free consultation with our expert medicine admissions tutors.

What does the Chester MBChB involve from Year 1 to Year 4?

A “why Chester” answer at interview needs detail that is true of Chester and nowhere else, and the course page supplies it. Case-based learning is “central to the MBChB curriculum”: small groups work through clinical cases with a tutor across all four years. Each year is one 120-credit module, from Foundations of Science and Medicine in Year 1 to Speciality Training Preparation for Practice 2 in Year 4.

• Year 1 is mainly university-based teaching in the Wheeler Building in Chester, organised into five blocks of five weeks each, with patient contact from early in the course.
• Year 2 is built around three ten-week Core Clinical Education placements in General Medicine, Surgery and other specialities, plus placements in General Practice and Community Psychiatry.
• Year 3 opens with an 8-week academic block that includes a research project. Specialist Clinical Placements follow: six-week placements across eight clinical specialties, six of them in Year 3 and the final two in Year 4.
• Year 4 prepares students for the national Medical Licensing Assessment, followed by an elective and an Assistantship alongside Foundation doctors.

Placements are “based in the community, general practices and NHS hospitals throughout Cheshire, Shropshire and North Wales”. The Graduate Entry Medicine landing page gives what it calls “A summary of some of these”:

Chester describes its ambition in one line that is worth knowing before an MMI: it “will be a medical school for and in the community”, with a focus “to learn, stay and contribute locally, developing a sense of place, sensitive to population healthcare needs.” A candidate who can connect their own work experience to a placement setting on this list, and to that stated aim, is answering the question Chester has set for itself.

What extra requirements apply to international applicants?

International applicants apply through UCAS against the same degree, test and work-experience criteria, with the International tab wording described above. The International Students tab of the course page says “This course only accepts the following English language qualifications”, and lists four:

• IELTS 7.0, with at most two component scores at 6.0 or 6.5 and the rest at 7.0 or above;
• PTE Academic UKVI 70, with no less than 59 in each band;
• a test at Band B on the list of accepted English language tests that the course page links to;
• a UK degree at 2:2, completed in the UK no more than 2 years and 4 months before the start of the course.

The international fee is £46,000 a year for 2026/27. Every successful applicant needs an Enhanced Disclosure from the Disclosure and Barring Service, and international applicants provide evidence from the country they live in, following the DBS guidance Chester links to. Chester advises anyone intending to work where the USMLE is required to check the World Directory and the relevant sponsoring organisations regularly.

What checks follow a Chester offer?

An offer from Chester Medical School comes with conditions that can still remove it. Every successful applicant must apply for an Enhanced DBS check, “payable by the applicant”, and must declare “any and all, past or current, health, welfare and conduct issues” that may affect fitness to study medicine. No student can work with NHS patients until cleared by Chester’s occupational health provider, Innovate Health Care, through an online health questionnaire and a health screening.

The screening checks immunisation. For measles, mumps and rubella, Chester accepts either a positive antibody test to measles and rubella or two doses of the MMR vaccine, and its table also covers tetanus, polio and diphtheria, BCG (recommended for close contact with infectious tuberculosis patients), hepatitis B and chickenpox. Chester says it does not mandate Covid-19 or influenza immunisation, though it advises booster vaccinations. It also says it cannot force anyone to be vaccinated, but that occupational health is unlikely to clear an unvaccinated student for clinical placements, and “your offer of a place on the programme may be withdrawn”.

How Leading Tuition helps Chester applicants

Chester’s process turns on three points: a test score above a threshold Chester describes as “above the national mean”, a personal statement and 70 hours of experience from someone who holds, or is finishing, a first degree, and six MMI stations, after which Chester reviews each candidate’s score profile to make offers. Our expert medicine admissions tutors help applicants at each of them.

• The admissions test. For applicants sitting the UCAT in 2027 for 2028 entry, our UCAT tutors build preparation around the subtests, which in 2026 made up a 900 to 2,700 total, aiming well clear of the national mean rather than at it. GAMSAT candidates get help with each section of the test.
• The application. A graduate-entry personal statement has to explain why medicine, why now, and what the first degree and the work experience have taught. We help applicants draw that out of the hands-on care hours Chester asks for. Our guide to graduate-entry medicine in the UK covers the wider choice of courses.
• The MMI. For 2027-entry applicants awaiting interview, our MMI coaching runs six-station circuits under timed conditions, with each station marked against Good Medical Practice in the way Chester describes its own assessors working.

Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades. The medicine preparation hub brings our test, statement and interview support together, and our guides to UK medical schools help applicants choose the rest of their UCAS medicine choices alongside Chester.

Frequently asked questions about Chester Medical School entry