Have the A levels but not the GCSEs please read within!

[PaulBradford]

Hey All,

Some of you may have read my previous post about wanting to start training to be a doctor, now I've done some research with my local medical school (Leeds) and I have decided the most stable route I could take is doing A-levels first.
Mainly for 2 reasons one they seem to carry more weight and the 2 years it is going to take to complete them I can do lots of voluntary work (struck gold as a friend of a friend is a GP and said I could shadow him). The A-levels I have decided to take are Chemistry, Biology and Maths, I will require AAB respectively and I feel I am at a good point in my life to dedicate myself to doing this and thus feel confident I can achieve it.
However back in my younger days...I am 25 now I was not a great student and only racked up C and D grades at GSCE, now the site says that I will need qualifications in the region of 6 B's at GCSE. I am hoping if I do achieve the A-level grades required and with me being a mature student they might let me off, kinda praying they will see that I am a lot more focused than I once was and I can handle the workload.
If anyone has had any similar experiences please let me know, Thanks for taking the time to read and I will try to be more concise next time!

[Nicks81]

Hi Paul,

I am in a similar situation to yours. I am taking the access to medicine route but I only have English GCSE, I’ve just written a thread on the mature student’s site asking for help as I have read on here that only English and Maths are needed if you have science based A levels. How true this is I don’t know which is why I am planning to contact all of the university’s that I am going to apply to and ask for their advice.

[laurajb]

hey, same sort of situation myself.

Been looking at the options and the universitys all say different things.

Went to York they said they were just looking for English and Maths A* with Mature student. As well as relavant A levels obviously.

Leeds said email them my c.v and they would look at my application at let me know what they would require.

Sheffield told me to retake them as they wanted 6A* no less.

This all from admissions team advisors. Just wish what they had written in their prospectus was what they meant. Why do they have to all be so different. It makes choosing where to apply difficult in terms of what you have. ggrrr.

[PaulBradford]

Hi, I just heard back from leeds med and they said this "Your GCSE will suffice due to the gap, and you will need AAB at A2, to include Chemistry, you cannot not take two biology subjects. You may also consider the clinical science year at Bradford or an Aces to Medicine course." My GCSEs were Maths C, Geo C, Eng Lit C, Eng Lang C, SCI D D (double award) hope that gives you some comfort god knows i needed it sick of hearing no on the phone

[brandy]

My situation is a bit similar to yours.
I have 7 GCSE's, an Access to health/science and a diploma of higher education in Biomedical Sciences. I also have 6 years experience in a health care setting.
I contacted a couple of universities and they wanted English and maths at grade B in GCSE and an Access to medicine course.

[elz]

if you do the access course as a mature student, you only need maths and english gcse. i think if u go the a level route you do need all the gcse's, esp as you'll be competing with all the other a level students who have AAA and 10 A*s lol.