The Oxford Medicine courseWhat you actually study, and where you will be
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The Oxford medicine course at a glance
Oxford is one of the last genuinely traditional courses in the UK. You spend three years on science before you are let near a ward, take a BA in Medical Sciences at the end of year 3, then three clinical years based at the John Radcliffe. If you want patient contact in first term, this is the wrong course; if you want to understand the science properly first, there is nothing else quite like it.
How Oxford teaches medicine
A distinct pre-clinical stage (years 1–3) covering anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, biochemistry and pathology, taught through lectures, labs and the college tutorial system, followed by a separate three-year clinical stage.
What that means day to day
Anatomy at Oxford
Prosection. Taught through demonstration-room sessions where students study prosections of specimens, rather than dissecting a cadaver themselves.
Year by year at Oxford
Where you will actually be at Oxford
Placement geography is the part of a medicine course that changes your life most and appears in prospectuses least. Here is what Oxford publishes.
Pre-clinical students continue into the Oxford clinical school provided they have completed the pre-clinical course; the Medical School Office sits in the Academic Centre at the John Radcliffe.
- John Radcliffe Hospital
Intercalation at Oxford
Built in — the BA in Medical Sciences is taken as year 3 by every student on the standard course.
Applying to Oxford?
How to get into Oxford
Entry requirements, UCAT, personal statement and interview, step by step.
Open the guide →Oxford UCAT cut-offs and offers
UCAT cut-offs, A-level offers, interview format and decision dates.
See the requirements →Compare Oxford with other schools
Put the teaching style, anatomy teaching and placements next to another school.
Open the comparison →Prepare for the Oxford interview
Format breakdown, school-specific sample questions and prep tips from tutors who interviewed here.
Read the guide →Where this Oxford course profile came from
University of Oxford's course page could not be read directly by our tooling — it either sits behind a bot wall or renders in the browser — so this page was built from the university's own published course and school pages, checked on 2026-09-11. Confirm the detail against the official page before you rely on it.
Primary source: University of Oxford — official course information.
Courses are restructured between cycles. Anything here that decides your application — an anatomy offer, a placement city, a compulsory intercalated year — should be confirmed against the official page for your entry year.
Applying to Oxford?
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