Entry requirements explained

Five 2027 course pages, read on 2 October

The grades at the top of a course page are the offer most applicants will get. Whether they're the offer you'd get depends on four things further down the page. There's the contextual offer, the GCSE line, the list of required subjects, and the paragraph saying which qualifications count.

So on the morning of 2 October 2026 I read five 2027-entry course pages, at four universities, top to bottom. Three are psychology degrees, at three very different universities, so one subject could be compared side by side. The two Exeter business degrees are there because of a Student Room thread, quoted below, where an applicant asked about exactly those courses.

The contextual offer is worth up to two grades at all four (16 points at Hallam, which is the same thing in tariff terms), and three at Exeter for some applicants. How you get it varies a lot, and the GCSE maths line moves from a 5 at Leeds to a 6 at Bristol, two psychology degrees whose headline offers are only a grade apart. Sheffield Hallam's summary box reads "104-120 UCAS points", which blends the contextual and standard figures into one range (you'd only spot that by scrolling to the full requirements).

Leeds' 2027 psychology page still says applications "received by 14th January 2026 will receive equal consideration". That's last year's date carried over. UCAS's key dates page, which I checked the same morning, gives the real 2027 deadline as 6pm on Wednesday 13 January 2027.

Contextual offers aren't one scheme

An older version of this page (I'm not proud of it) said you don't need to apply for a contextual offer because the uni picks it up from the postcode and school on your UCAS form and flags you without you doing anything at all. That's true at Bristol and wrong at Leeds.

Bristol's 2027 rules say you're "automatically considered" if your UCAS form shows you meet a criterion: a home postcode in the 40% most deprived areas, three months or more in local authority care, eligibility for free school meals during secondary school, an "aspiring" state school, or one of Bristol's own outreach programmes. The drop is up to two grades. The same page says contextual offers "are only provided to applicants with home fee status, who are studying A-Levels and/or the International Baccalaureate". The BTEC route into Bristol psychology is D*DD in Applied Science, and there's no reduced version listed.

Leeds works the other way round. Access to Leeds is its own application, with its own form, and your referee has to fill in a separate online form saying which criteria you meet, on top of the UCAS reference they're already writing. Get it in and you'd normally hold two offers. One is the standard offer, the other an alternative "up to two grades lower", and the lower one is the one you'd be working towards from January to results day. Miss the deadline and you're applying on AAA like everyone else. Those deadlines are midday on Wednesday 21 October 2026 for medicine and dentistry, and midday on Thursday 21 January 2027 for everything else.

Exeter's contextual offers page for 2027 sets out its criteria, and the size of the drop depends on which one you meet. A low-participation postcode plus a state school, free school meals plus a state school, or being a carer or an estranged student each gets a two-grade adjustment. Care leavers and care-experienced applicants get three. Exeter defines a care leaver tightly, as anyone looked after by a local authority for more than 13 weeks since the age of 14, including some time at 16 or 17. Exeter also prints a BTEC contextual offer on the course page, where DDD drops to DDM, and Access to Leeds says its reduction covers BTECs too.

Grades don't add up the way points do

An applicant posted this on The Student Room on 30 September or 1 October (the forum only says "1 day ago" when I read it on the morning of the 2nd), after an Exeter open day:

"Marketing and business has an entry requirement of AAB, media ABB. My predicted grades are A*BC. Do you think they will accept me for the marketing or business courses?"

Nobody from Exeter had answered. The official rep for the University of Bath, which runs a help account on the forum, replied on 1 October, pretty sensibly, that it depends what the C is in, and finished: "if your grades fall slightly below, then I'd still say if you like the uni and course, then give it a go!"

Line the grades up, best against best. The A* covers the first A, the B is a grade under the second A, and the C is a grade under the B. That's two grades short of AAB, which isn't "slightly". The A* doesn't cancel the C, because Exeter asks for grades and doesn't add them up. Against Exeter's contextual BBB, though, A*BC is only one grade short, and against the media degree's ABB it's one short too. So whether this is a sensible aspirational choice or a wasted one depends almost entirely on something the thread never mentions, which is whether that student lives in the right postcode, went to a qualifying school or was on free school meals, and so qualifies for the contextual offer. I'd find that out before spending one of their five UCAS choices on it. And if they've been in care, Exeter's three-grade adjustment would take AAB down to BBC, which A*BC already meets.

Points-based offers are where the A* would help. UCAS tariff points turn grades into a number, and here's the A-level scale from UCAS's tariff tables (the set in use since 2017 entry, still current):

A*BC is 128 points. That clears Sheffield Hallam's standard 120 with room to spare, even though it misses Exeter's AAB (136 points, if you were counting). Plenty of combinations land exactly on 120, including BBB, ABC and A*CC, and the last of those is the odd one, because a student with an A* and two Cs and a student with three Bs look nothing alike on a results slip and are identical to a points-based admissions tutor. Hallam also says at least 64 of the 120 must come from two A-levels or the BTEC equivalent, so you can't build the whole total out of small qualifications.

No double-counting, either. AS History followed by A-level History usually earns you the A-level points only.

The Extended Project is worth 28 points at A*, 24 at A and 20 at B. Whether it helps depends on the uni, and sometimes on the department within it, which is the kind of thing you only find by reading each course page to the bottom. Leeds psychology says the EPQ "is welcomed but is not included as part of our offer". Hallam says its 120 can come from "a combination of qualifications, which may include AS levels and EPQs".

For grade-based courses, UCAS course pages also show the range of grades accepted students actually held and the offer rate, in a historical entry grades panel under the requirements. UCAS's own guidance says contextual offers aren't reflected in that data, so if you're eligible for one, the panel can make a course look further out of reach than it is.

Required subjects

Both psychology degrees in the table name subjects. Bristol wants an A in something it calls "science-related", a list running from biology and chemistry to geography and statistics. Leeds wants one subject from a list of its own. Economics, geology and environmental science are on the Leeds list and not Bristol's. Further maths is on Bristol's. Three A*s in history, English and French don't meet either.

Psychology is a mild case. Medicine, engineering and the sciences name subjects far more tightly, and a missing one rules you out regardless of grades. If you find you're missing a required subject, a foundation year adds a year at the start to bring you up to speed. Bristol's contextual offers page says its CertHE Foundation and Gateway courses don't carry contextual offers at all.

Routes in without A-levels

A BTEC National Extended Diploma is the same size as three A-levels. D*D*D* is worth 168 points, the same as three A*s. DDM is 128. DMM is 112, the same as BBC. How those grades get read in August is its own subject, and the BTEC results day and Clearing piece goes through it.

T Levels sit on the same scale. A Distinction* is 168 points, a Distinction 144, a Merit 120, and a Pass is 96 or 72 depending on your core grade. Sheffield Hallam's psychology page names a T Level Merit as one way to reach its 120. Not every uni or course takes T Levels yet, and the ones that do sometimes accept them for one degree and not the one next to it in the prospectus, so check the course page itself. The uni's general admissions page won't always say.

The Access to HE Diploma is the usual route for mature students, and offers are written in credits. Bristol psychology wants 30 of the 45 graded Level 3 credits at Distinction and the other 15 at Merit or above, with at least 12 Distinction credits from science units on the science diploma (from psychology units on the humanities and social science one).

GCSEs and admissions tests

Most degrees want at least a grade 4 in GCSE English Language and maths. The table shows how fast that rises. Leeds psychology asks for English at 4 and maths at 5. Bristol psychology wants a 6 in maths. Exeter's business degrees ask for maths at 5 too, though they'll consider a 4, possibly with a conditional offer tied to finishing their Maths Transition Course. Short on either? Resitting GCSE maths or English is the usual fix, and some unis accept Functional Skills Level 2 instead (ask before you assume).

Admissions tests run on their own calendar, and some of it's already shut. UCAT registration for 2027 entry shut at 3pm on 16 September 2026, and the last test day was Thursday 24 September, according to the UCAT Consortium's dates page. If you meant to apply for medicine or dentistry at a UCAT university this year and didn't sit it, there isn't a way round that for 2027. For most people the realistic options are a gap year and a 2028 application, or a related degree now.

The LNAT runs later, and its dates depend entirely on which law schools you're applying to, which is why the same student can face three different deadlines across five choices if they mix Oxbridge, a London college and somewhere else. On the LNAT's own dates page, Oxford and Cambridge applicants had to register by 15 September and must sit it by 15 October 2026. King's, LSE and UCL allow until 31 December. For most other law schools you register by 20 January 2027 and sit by 25 January, though Bristol and Durham want everything done by 13 January 2027. Some courses add interviews or selection days on top of the test.

If you miss the grades next August

This year's results day gives a sense of the odds. On 13 August 2026, UCAS data showed 79% of 18-year-olds with a decision had got their first choice, down from 82% in 2025, and 31,770 had been placed at their insurance choice, 21% more than a year earlier (Times Higher Education reported the figures that day). So about one in five of those with a decision didn't get their firm on the day.

You can miss your firm by a grade and still get in. On results day the uni decides, based on how many places it has left and how everyone else did, which you won't know until the morning itself. If your firm says no and you meet your insurance offer's conditions, the place there is yours.

Miss both and you're in Clearing, where some courses drop their asking grades to fill places, though you're then choosing from whatever's left on the day. That happens most in subjects taught at lots of universities, and least in capped ones like medicine.

The 2027 calendar, counted from 2 October

Thursday 15 October 2026, 6pm, 13 days away, is the UCAS deadline for Oxford, Cambridge and most medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses, and if you're applying to one of those, your school's own internal deadline for the reference may well be sooner, since the reference has to be added before the application goes to UCAS.

At midday on Wednesday 21 October, Access to Leeds closes for medicine and dentistry, and then there's a gap until Thursday 31 December, the last day to sit the LNAT for King's, LSE and UCL.

Wednesday 13 January 2027, 6pm, is the equal-consideration deadline for almost everything else (the UCAS form step by step is a separate job). Thursday 21 January 2027, midday, is when Access to Leeds closes for every other course, eight days after the UCAS equal-consideration deadline.

After that, applications that reach UCAS by 6pm on 30 June 2027 still go to universities. Anything later goes straight into Clearing, which opens on 2 July 2027. The last date to add a Clearing choice for 2027 entry is 18 October 2027.