How do interviews differ between King's College London (KCL) and Oxford?

King's College London (KCL) uses Multiple Mini Interviews: Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI). Oxford uses Traditional interview: Traditional or Panel Interviews. The two formats reward different skill sets. Plan separate prep streams for each, with at least 3 full mock interviews per format before sitting either. Interview windows: November - May (King's College London (KCL)); December (Oxford).

What A-Level grades do King's College London (KCL) and Oxford require?

King's College London (KCL) requires A*AA including Chemistry and Biology. Oxford requires A*AA including Chemistry and Biology/Physics/Mathematics. Most successful applicants achieve these grades on first sitting with strong predicted grades from their school.

Where are King's College London (KCL) and Oxford located, and how does that affect cost?

King's College London (KCL) is in London, UK. Oxford is in Oxford, UK. Tuition is £9,250/year at both for UK home applicants; the main cost difference is accommodation (London accommodation typically runs 30-50% above the national average).

When does each school release decisions?

King's College London (KCL) typically releases medicine decisions By the end of May. Oxford releases medicine decisions January. If one is earlier than the other, you may need to hold a decision while waiting for the second school — be ready to compare in real time.

Medical school comparison

King's College London (KCL) vs Oxford

King's College London (KCL) and Oxford are both UK medical schools, but the path to an offer at each is meaningfully different. King's College London (KCL) is based in London (London) while Oxford sits in Oxford (England), and the regional context shapes everything from fee status to NHS-deanery destination.

The interview formats diverge — MMI vs Panel — and the prep approaches for the two are fundamentally different. Oxford is the older institution (founded 1096); the other (founded 1829) has shaped its medical school around modern integrated-curriculum thinking.

Side-by-side comparison

Show only differences

Side-by-side comparison: King's College London (KCL) and Oxford.
Comparison field	King's College London (KCL)London	OxfordOxford
Quick comparison
Location	London, UK	Oxford, UK
A-Level offer	A*AA including grade A in Biology and Chemistry. General Studies, Critical Thinking, Thinking Skills and Global Perspectives are not accepted, and a pass in the science practical endorsement is required. The EPQ is not considered at any point in the assessment process.	AAA at A-level (and AAA predictions) including Chemistry plus one of Biology, Mathematics, Further Mathematics or Physics
TrueScore	King's College London (KCL) TrueScore 2150	Oxford TrueScore 2230
UCAT home cut-off	No cut-off published. King's states that the minimum scores of interviewees and offer-holders "are not cut-off scores".	No published cut-off. For 2026 entry the mean UCAT was 2,217.5 across all applicants, 2,377.5 among those shortlisted and 2,407.1 among offer-holders.
Interview format	Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI)	Traditional or Panel Interviews
Post-interview chance	Strong. In the 2024 cycle King's interviewed 982 applicants and made 762 offers (78%) - 609 offers from 796 UK interviews (77%) and 153 from 186 non-UK interviews (82%). The 2023 cycle was tighter at 645 offers from 1,116 interviews (58%).	Strong. Of ~425 shortlisted for 2026 entry, 175 received offers - roughly 42% of home-fee interviewees (about 167 offers from ~393 interviews) and 8 of the 32 international interviewees (25%).
Decision date	By the end of May	January

A-Level offer	A*AA including grade A in Biology and Chemistry. General Studies, Critical Thinking, Thinking Skills and Global Perspectives are not accepted, and a pass in the science practical endorsement is required. The EPQ is not considered at any point in the assessment process.	AAA at A-level (and AAA predictions) including Chemistry plus one of Biology, Mathematics, Further Mathematics or Physics
Contextual A-Level offer	-	-
Required A-Level subjects	Biology and Chemistry both required	Chemistry plus one of Biology / Mathematics / Further Mathematics / Physics. Combinations like Chemistry + Biology + Psychology are acceptable - Maths/Physics is not a barrier. Students can in theory be selected without Biology (interview prep would be more challenging).
A-Level resit policy	Resits accepted - KCL has clarified via FOI that "a first resit is considered equally to applicants taking their first sittings" (19 resit applicants received an interview in 2024, 16 received offers)	Resits accepted with extenuating circumstances - must resit all 3 subjects in the same sitting
GCSE requirements	Minimum grade 6/B in GCSE English Language and Mathematics	No minimum is published. 2026 entry means: 10.1 grade A*/9/8 (96% of grades) for shortlisted applicants and 10.3 (97%) for offer-holders, against 8.9 (86%) across all applicants. Contextualised to school performance.
GCSE scoring methodology	GCSEs are one of the four factors King's names in shortlisting, alongside A-level grades, UCAT and the personal statement, and performance is read in the context of your educational background. King's…	Oxford scores the number of A/9/8 grades and the mean proportion of grades at A/9/8, contextualised against school-level performance data; grades 8 and 9 are treated alike. The relative weighting of…
Scottish Highers	-	-
Scottish Advanced Highers	-	-
International Baccalaureate	38 points overall (including TOK/EE), or an aggregate of 19 from three Higher Levels, and must include grade 6 in Higher Level Biology and Higher Level Chemistry	39 points overall, 7,6,6 at Higher Level including HL Chemistry plus one of Biology / Mathematics / Physics
Graduate-entry degree requirement	Graduate applicants typically hold 2:1 or above in any honours degree, plus required A-level Chemistry and Biology grades. KCL accepts graduates onto the standard 6-year MBBS A100.	Two routes. Graduates may apply to the standard six-year A100, and Oxford also runs A101, a four-year accelerated Graduate-Entry course of roughly 30 places, open to applicants with a 2:1 or above (or GPA above 3.5) in an applied or experimental science. A101 needs A-levels of at least AAB with an A/A* in Chemistry - waived for Chemistry or Biochemistry graduates - plus one of Biology, Physics or Mathematics; the A-level grade rule relaxes if exams were sat more than five years ago. IB route: 36 points with 6s at Higher Level.
Alternative qualifications	-	4 A-levels and/or EPQ are not beneficial in the shortlisting algorithm. Three A-levels is sufficient.

Contextual cut-off	-	-
Scottish (where applicable)	-	-
Rest of UK (where applicable)	-	-
International cut-off	No separate cut-off published.	Mean 2,537.2 among the 32 international-fee applicants shortlisted for 2026 entry, of whom 8 received offers.
Graduate cut-off	-	-
SJT band	Band 4 automatically rejected. Band 3 riskier - only 37/360 band 3 applicants received interview in 2024.	Not used for shortlisting. Theoretically post-interview alongside other factors. Bands 1, 2, 3 no cause for concern; band 4 also selected last year.
UCAT notes	King's shortlists on A-level grades, UCAT, personal statement and GCSE grades together, and says exam results and UCAT are "perhaps the most important factors". Its published UCAT statistics stop at t…	Shortlisting combines UCAT with a contextualised GCSE score. Around 425 applicants are interviewed each year (~2.5 per place): the bulk are ranked in automatically, and the Shortlisting Committee adde…

Degree awarded	MBBS	BM BCh
Course length	5 years (6 with intercalation)	6 years (3 pre-clinical + 3 clinical)
Teaching style	Integrated	Traditional / lecture-led
Anatomy teaching	-	Prosection
First patient contact	-	-
Placement geography	London and the south east of England	Oxford
Named placement sites	Guy's Hospital, King's College Hospital, St Thomas' Hospital	John Radcliffe Hospital
Intercalation	Optional one-year BSc between Stages 2 and 3, spanning clinical and biomedical sciences and the humanities.	Built in — the BA in Medical Sciences is taken as year 3 by every student on the standard course.
Course highlight	Twinned with medical schools around the world, offering clinical exchanges.	-

Interview window	November - May	December
Interview details	MMI format with stations covering ethical scenarios, communication and clinical problem-solving. No offer is made without an interview, and King's runs them across an unusually long window - November…	Two college-based panel interviews held in December, each typically 20-30 minutes. Tutors push you on scientific reasoning rather than rehearsed answers - expect questions that build on what you say a…

Specialities	Medicine, Dentistry, Biomedical Sciences	Clinical Medicine, Biomedical Sciences, Medical Research
Established	1829	1096
Course type	Undergraduate	Undergraduate
What makes it different	Strong clinical focus with emphasis on London healthcare system.	Pooling system means each applicant is assessed at two colleges, with a centralised shortlist - applying to a "less competitive" college gives no real advantage. GCSE performance is contextualised to…
Official course page	https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/medicine-mbbs	https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/course-listing/medicine

King's College London (KCL)

London

Quick comparison

Location: London, UK
A-Level offer: A*AA including grade A in Biology and Chemistry. General Studies, Critical Thinking, Thinking Skills and Global Perspectives are not accepted, and a pass in the science practical endorsement is required. The EPQ is not considered at any point in the assessment process.
TrueScore: King's College London (KCL) TrueScore 2150
UCAT home cut-off: No cut-off published. King's states that the minimum scores of interviewees and offer-holders "are not cut-off scores".
Interview format: Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI)
Post-interview chance: Strong. In the 2024 cycle King's interviewed 982 applicants and made 762 offers (78%) - 609 offers from 796 UK interviews (77%) and 153 from 186 non-UK interviews (82%). The 2023 cycle was tighter at 645 offers from 1,116 interviews (58%).
Decision date: By the end of May

Oxford

Quick comparison

Location: Oxford, UK
A-Level offer: A*AA at A-level (and A*AA predictions) including Chemistry plus one of Biology, Mathematics, Further Mathematics or Physics
TrueScore: Oxford TrueScore 2230
UCAT home cut-off: No published cut-off. For 2026 entry the mean UCAT was 2,217.5 across all applicants, 2,377.5 among those shortlisted and 2,407.1 among offer-holders.
Interview format: Traditional or Panel Interviews
Post-interview chance: Strong. Of ~425 shortlisted for 2026 entry, 175 received offers - roughly 42% of home-fee interviewees (about 167 offers from ~393 interviews) and 8 of the 32 international interviewees (25%).
Decision date: January

King's College London (KCL) vs Oxford - in detail

A-Level and academic profile

King's College London (KCL) requires A*AA including grade A in Biology and Chemistry. General Studies, Critical Thinking, Thinking Skills and Global Perspectives are not accepted, and a pass in the science practical endorsement is required. The EPQ is not considered at any point in the assessment process.

Oxford requires A*AA at A-level (and A*AA predictions) including Chemistry plus one of Biology, Mathematics, Further Mathematics or Physics.

Both demand the same A-Level grade band, so academic prediction is unlikely to differentiate your application between them — provided you meet the required subject combination at each.

GCSE profile matters at both schools — King's College London (KCL): Minimum grade 6/B in GCSE English Language and Mathematics. GCSEs are one of the four factors King's names in shortlisting, alongside A-level grades, UCAT and the personal statement, and performance… Oxford: No minimum is published.

2026 entry means: 10.1 grade A*/9/8 (96% of grades) for shortlisted applicants and 10.3 (97%) for offer-holders, against 8.9 (86%) across all applicants. Contextualised to…

Interview formats

King's College London (KCL) uses MMI (Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI)); Oxford uses Panel (Traditional or Panel Interviews). These two formats reward different skills — MMI emphasises breadth, station-recovery and structured answers under time pressure, while Panel rewards depth and consistency.

If your strengths lie in conversational depth, Oxford may suit you more. If you prefer discrete capsule answers under time pressure, King's College London (KCL) is the better fit.

Interview windows: King's College London (KCL) interviews in November - May; Oxford in December.

Curriculum and teaching style

Intake size: King's College London (KCL) — Around 300 places on A100, within roughly 410 across all of King's medicine programmes.; Oxford — Around 175 offers are made for roughly 165 A100 places; the realised intake averages about 155 students.

A government quota caps international-fee students at a maximum of fourteen per year across A100 and A101 combined - there is no separate 24-place overseas allocation.. A larger cohort means more peer breadth; a smaller cohort means more tutor contact.

Post-interview offer rate

Of ~425 shortlisted for 2026 entry, 175 received offers - roughly 42% of home-fee interviewees (about 167 offers from ~393 interviews) and 8 of the 32 international interviewees (25%).

Post-interview odds give you the clearest signal of how competitive each school is at the final stage — a school with a 60% post-interview success rate is structurally easier to convert than one at 25%, even if the interview thresholds look identical on paper.

What makes each distinctive

King's College London (KCL): Strong clinical focus with emphasis on London healthcare system.

Oxford: Pooling system means each applicant is assessed at two colleges, with a centralised shortlist - applying to a "less competitive" college gives no real advantage. GCSE performance is contextualised to your school. Tutors prize lateral reasoning and willingness to engage with the unfamiliar.

Which is right for you?

Regionally, the choice often comes down to cost of living and NHS-deanery preferences — King's College London (KCL) feeds into the London foundation programme network; Oxford into the England network.

Your firm/insurance choice should ultimately weight: where your UCAT and predicted grades sit relative to each school's threshold, which interview format you can prepare for most credibly, and where you'd actually want to live for five or six years.

Common questions

Neither school publishes a single fixed UCAT cut-off; both use UCAT as part of a composite shortlisting score alongside GCSE and personal-statement weighting. King's College London (KCL) guidance: No cut-off published. King's states that the minimum scores of interviewees and offer-holders "are not cut-off scores".. Oxford guidance: No published cut-off. For 2026 entry the mean UCAT was 2,217.5 across all applicants, 2,377.5 among those shortlisted and 2,407.1 among offer-holders..

King's College London (KCL) — Minimum grade 6/B in GCSE English Language and Mathematics. GCSEs are one of the four factors King's names in shortlisting, alongside A-level grades, UCAT and the personal statement, and performance is read in the context of your educational background. King's does not publish a points tariff for GCSEs. Oxford — No minimum is published. 2026 entry means: 10.1 grade A*/9/8 (96% of grades) for shortlisted applicants and 10.3 (97%) for offer-holders, against 8.9 (86%) across all applicants. Contextualised to school performance. Oxford scores the number of A*/9/8 grades and the mean proportion of grades at A*/9/8, contextualised against school-level performance data; grades 8 and 9 are treated alike. The relative weighting of GCSE against UCAT is not published. Applicants with five or fewer GCSEs, or who sat them in summer 2020-2021, are handled separately.

King's College London (KCL)'s selection methodology: shortlisting weight not fully disclosed; check the official admissions page. Oxford's selection methodology: Initial shortlisting is algorithmic, combining UCAT with a GCSE measure (number and proportion of A*/9/8) contextualised to the applicant's school. Tutors then review every non-shortlisted applicant and nominate any the algorithm may have underrated; those plus the 80 candidates just below the cut-off go to the A100 Shortlisting Committee, which added 80 applicants in the 2025 round. Roughly 425 are interviewed from ~1,026 eligible applicants. Understanding each school's exact algorithm is the single highest-leverage piece of pre-application research — it tells you whether your profile is competitive before you spend an application choice.

King's College London (KCL): Strong. In the 2024 cycle King's interviewed 982 applicants and made 762 offers (78%) - 609 offers from 796 UK interviews (77%) and 153 from 186 non-UK interviews (82%). The 2023 cycle was tighter at 645 offers from 1,116 interviews (58%).. Oxford: Strong. Of ~425 shortlisted for 2026 entry, 175 received offers - roughly 42% of home-fee interviewees (about 167 offers from ~393 interviews) and 8 of the 32 international interviewees (25%).. Post-interview odds tell you how competitive each school is at the final stage. Two schools with similar UCAT thresholds can have very different post-interview rates — a school with a 60% post-interview success rate is structurally easier to convert than one at 25%.

You can — UCAS allows 4 medicine/dentistry choices in total, so listing both is feasible if your profile fits each school's selection algorithm. Apply to both only if your UCAT, GCSE and predicted-grade profile is competitive against each school's published weighting. A common mistake is using two of your four slots on similar schools when a more spread-out portfolio (one safe + one stretch) would maximise overall offer probability.

Where to go next

King's College London (KCL)Entry requirements, interview format and key dates in full

OxfordEntry requirements, interview format and key dates in full

Other medical school comparisons

School data reviewed by the NextGen MedPrep editorial team — last reviewed 19 September 2026.