Which Medical Schools Reduce Their Offer for an EPQ

Five schools have a published route where the EPQ can lower a grade or stand in for another qualification. At every other medical school the EPQ has no effect on your offer, whatever grade you get.

• Sheffield: AAA becomes AAB + EPQ grade A. The A must be in Chemistry or Biology, and Sheffield must be your firm choice.
• HYMS: AAA becomes AAB + EPQ grade A, with AA in Biology and Chemistry. HYMS must be your firm choice.
• Keele: A*AA becomes AAA + EPQ grade A.
• Leicester: A*AA becomes AAA + EPQ grade B. An EPQ at B or above also earns bonus points in Leicester's academic score.
• QUB: An A in the EPQ replaces the A in a fourth AS-Level on the AAA route. Your three A-Level grades don't change.

To see what that means on results day: say you're predicted A*AA and end up with AAA plus an A in your EPQ. At Keele or Leicester, that's your offer met. At a school without an EPQ route, it's a missed offer.

The reductions come with small print, and the details differ by school:

• Firm choice only. Sheffield and HYMS only make the reduced offer if they're your firm choice. Put either as your insurance and the standard AAA applies.
• No resits. Sheffield and HYMS don't reduce the offer if you're resitting any A-Level, whatever your EPQ grade.
• Timing. Sheffield wants the EPQ and A-Levels taken in the same sitting. HYMS accepts an EPQ completed in Year 12 or Year 13.
• Topic. None of the five require a medical topic, and Sheffield says outright that the EPQ can be in any subject.
• General policies don't apply to medicine. Some universities lower offers for an EPQ across many courses but specifically exclude medicine. Birmingham is the clearest example. Always check the medicine page, not the university's general entry requirements.

At four of the five schools, no. A reduced offer changes the grades attached to your offer once you have one. It doesn't change whether you're shortlisted for interview or made an offer in the first place. You go through the same UCAT screen, interview and ranking as everyone else. Leicester is the one exception, where an EPQ at grade B or above adds a point to your academic score.

Where the EPQ does help is as material. It gives you a concrete example of independent research, time management and evaluating evidence to talk about in your personal statement and at interview.

Only if it won't cost you in your main subjects. An EPQ is a real amount of work on top of three A-Levels, and the grade drop only helps if you'd otherwise have missed the standard offer. Missing AAA because you spent the time on your project is the worst of both.

If you're already doing one, or your school runs it as standard, then it's a good reason to look closely at the five schools above, provided they fit the rest of your profile.

Lancaster is missing from the list above deliberately. For 2026 entry it did operate an EPQ concession: its AAA offer could drop to AAB for applicants offering either a fourth subject or an EPQ, which is why Lancaster still appears on many lists of schools that reduce the offer for an EPQ.

That policy does not carry over to 2027 entry. Lancaster's current entry requirements set out no EPQ route to a reduced offer, so an EPQ does nothing to the grades you'll be asked for.