Career Advice

Medical School A-Level Resit Policies

OOwais Ahmed

Medical & Dental School Advisory

Live resit data · checked June 2026 · 2027 entry

Edgbaston College is an independent sixth form in Birmingham specialising in medicine and dentistry A-level resits. We keep this table current because resit applicants are routinely turned away from schools that would, in fact, have considered them. Every UK medical school’s A-level resit policy below is verified against official university pages and Freedom of Information responses, and powered by EDGU, our free medical-school selector. Read it as a starting point, not a verdict.

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Not accepted

18 schools

First sitting only

Medical schools that do not accept A-level resits (first sitting only) — 18 schools
School	Policy
Aberdeen	First sitting only, completed within two years of study.
Bangor	A-level resits not accepted (GCSE resits fine within 12 months).
Birmingham	No GCSE or A-level resits for standard applicants.
Cambridge	Expects first-attempt grades; disruption/mitigation route only.
Cardiff	Not normally — narrow exception if you held a conditional offer last cycle, with evidence.
City St George’s	A-levels must be completed in one sitting across two years; extenuating circumstances only.
Dundee	Same-sitting required; extenuating circumstances only.
Edinburgh	All grades at first attempt — resit applicants are not entered into selection.
Glasgow	One attempt at A-level (resits at GCSE/Nat5 level are fine).
Imperial	Same sitting required; resits not normally accepted.
Kent & Medway	Resits not accepted except via extenuating circumstances; selects on achieved grades.
Leicester	Not accepted; substantial mitigation only.
Oxford	Extenuating circumstances only.
Queen Mary (Barts)	Equality Act 2010 grounds only.
Queen’s Belfast	Extenuating circumstances only.
St Andrews	Extenuating circumstances only.
UCL	Extenuating circumstances only (GCSE resits to meet the minimum are fine).
UCLan	A-level resits not accepted; case-by-case on circumstances.

With conditions

13 schools

Resits accepted IF your first sitting hit a bar

Medical schools that accept A-level resits if your first sitting hit a bar — 13 schools
School	Policy
Anglia Ruskin	AAB at first sitting (BBB on their WAMS contextual route); waived once the full offer is already achieved on resit.
Brighton & Sussex	One dropped grade in one subject only — and the resit subject must be predicted at the required grade.
East Anglia (UEA)	First-sit bar plus at least one A* in the subject(s) being resat; more than one resit not normally considered.
Hull York	BBB at first sitting, minimum B in each subject.
Keele	Resits accepted, but you cannot apply during the resit year — apply after results with achieved grades.
Lancaster	ABB at first attempt; maximum two attempts.
Lincoln	ABB at first sitting.
Liverpool	ABB at first sitting, then a higher offer applies on the resit.
Manchester	ABB at first sitting, AAA required on resit, and you may resit only one of Year 12/13.
Newcastle	Resits accepted — but the resat subject’s requirement rises a grade (A becomes A*). PARTNERS applicants keep the reduced offer.
Nottingham	ABB at first sitting.
Plymouth	ABB at first sitting (ABC on the widening-access route).
Sunderland	AAB at first sitting — effectively resitting one grade.

Resits accepted

9 schools

No first-sit condition

Medical schools that accept A-level resits with no first-sit condition — 9 schools
School	Policy
Aston	One resit year, within three academic years.
Bristol	Resits accepted; the three A-levels need not be from one sitting.
Brunel	Resits accepted; qualifications within five years.
Edge Hill	GCSE and A-level resits accepted.
Exeter	Resits accepted (part or all) — and achieved grades score higher in their selection formula.
King’s College London	A first resit is considered equal to a first sitting.
Leeds	One resit per A-level (and per GCSE) without needing mitigation — new from 2026 entry.
Sheffield	One resit per A-level, all resits in the same sitting.
Southampton	One retake per subject, up to three subjects; the standard AAA offer applies.

Standard (home) applicants, 2027 entry. Buckingham (private) excluded. Policies change every cycle — always confirm on the university’s own page before submitting UCAS. GCSE resits are a separate question: accepted at 29 of 41 schools, several counting first sittings only.

Why a “no” is rarely a “never”

Look closely at the eighteen schools in the “not accepted” group. For most of them the wording is not “never” but “extenuating circumstances only”, “substantial mitigation only”, or “Equality Act 2010 grounds”. That is a door, not a wall. What no university publishes is the part that actually decides your application: whether your circumstances qualify, what counts as credible evidence, and how the case should be written for an admissions panel. Edgbaston College, an independent sixth form specialising in medicine and dentistry resits, helps students work out whether they have a genuine extenuating-circumstances case, gather the right evidence, and present it to each school in the form admissions tutors expect.

Choosing the right four

A UCAS form gives you four medical choices. A resit applicant who spends them on schools with first-sitting bars they do not clear, or on schools that quietly down-rank resit applicants, can lose an entire year. The right four are not the four with the friendliest headline policy. They depend on your exact first-sit grades, your UCAT and SJT, and your contextual flags, measured against how each school actually scores its applicants. Our free EDGU tool scores your profile against every school’s selection system; Edgbaston College turns that into a four-school strategy built around your specific resit pattern.

Presenting a resit application

Two applicants with identical grades are not read identically. Whether a dip is read sympathetically or filtered out depends on how it is framed in the personal statement, what the academic reference says about it, and how the supporting evidence is assembled. This is advisory work, and it is what Edgbaston College does for medicine and dentistry resit applicants every cycle.

Resitting for medicine? Talk to the people who do this every cycle.

The policy table is the easy part. Whether your circumstances qualify, which four schools to target, and how to present the application is what changes the outcome. Edgbaston College runs one-year A-level retake programmes and advises medicine and dentistry resit applicants on exactly these decisions.

Speak to Edgbaston College One-year A-level retake programme Use our free tool, EDGU →

Birmingham campus and online. Call 0121 306 0182.