King’s College London GKT School of Medical Education takes its name from the three London teaching hospitals it works with – Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ – and offers a fully integrated London medical degree with placements stretching out into Kent and Sussex. King’s is ranked 17th in the UK for Medicine in the Complete University Guide 2027 (up from 18th in 2026), and 25th out of 40 in the Guardian University Guide 2027, where it scores a maximum 100 for career prospects.
King’s College London School of Medical Education adopts a fully integrated curriculum, which supports learning through the following teaching methods:
The five-year MBBS (A100) is divided into three ‘Stages’, with an optional intercalation year between Stages 2 and 3. Stage 1 gives you a foundation in biomedical sciences and population sciences, along with the skills to begin integrating them with clinical practice. Stage 2 brings science and clinical practice together in blocks organised around the human life-cycle and common pathological processes, and you’ll also follow patients for prolonged periods of time to learn how to deliver whole-person care. Stage 3 is oriented towards future practice, and includes quality improvement projects, inter-professional training, increasingly realistic simulation and the opportunity to undertake elective study abroad.
Within the programme, you’ll undertake clinical placements in a range of hospital and community care settings. King’s notes that students undertake placements at “general practices and district general hospitals located in south London and southern England, currently they are mostly in Kent and Sussex”, adding that placements outside London “offer a different and rich perspective on clinical learning”. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, all students will experience both London and peripheral sites during the programme.
Anatomy is taught through human cadaveric dissection – King’s has two dissection labs at Guy’s Campus, the largest of which can accommodate 160 students and 80 cadavers at a time. You’ll also have the Gordon Museum of Pathology on your doorstep, which King’s describes as the UK’s largest teaching medical museum, with a collection of approximately 8,000 specimens.
Assessment is a mix of formative and summative work: a portfolio that starts in Stage 1 and runs throughout the course, written examinations at the end of Stage 1 that become progress tests in Stages 2 and 3, OSCEs in Stages 2 and 3, and project assessment. You’ll also need to pass both parts of the national Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA) before you can join the medical register.
More information about the programme can be found here.
King’s College London’s partner hospitals include “three of the most renowned and busiest teaching hospitals in London”; these are as follows:
Throughout your studies, you’ll also experience clinical placements within “district general hospitals located across the south east of England and over 350 general practices”. King’s lists its NHS partners as Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s Health Partners, and its placement map shows sites including:
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During ‘Stage 3’, you’ll have the opportunity to undertake elective study abroad – typically eight weeks on a placement of your choice, usually overseas, working alongside local healthcare staff, with past destinations ranging from Tanzania to Singapore. King’s is also twinned with leading medical schools around the world, which creates opportunities for clinical exchanges during your elective module.
Running through the programme is a series of project modules, some of which can be adapted for student choice, and in Stage 3 you’ll carry out quality improvement projects aimed at transforming patient and population health.
King’s College London also offers the opportunity to undertake an optional intercalated degree; this allows you to complete an additional BSc degree between Year 3 and 4 of your MBBS degree. As a multi-faculty institution, King’s offers a wide range of intercalated options, from clinical and biomedical sciences to humanities subjects, and being part of a multi-faculty university also gives you access to non-core subjects including humanities and social sciences.
You can find more information about the elective programme and intercalated degree here.
Away from the curriculum, the GKT Medical Students’ Association (MSA) runs medical school-specific events, sub-societies and sport, and you’ll also have the rest of KCLSU to explore, with over 400 societies, sports and student activity groups and around 70 student-run sports clubs.
You’ll receive a diverse clinical experience, with placements within London and the surrounding areas, including Kent and Sussex.
Other selling points you could mention at interview include:
The typical entry requirements for 2027 entry are:
You must be old enough to turn 18 before you start the second year of the degree, and all offers are subject to satisfactory occupational health clearance and an enhanced DBS check. The Access to HE Diploma in Medicine or Dentistry is the alternative qualification listed for A100 (45 Level 3 credits with 39 at Distinction, including 15 Biology and 15 Chemistry credits at Distinction). International applicants can apply for A100, and you can use a maximum of four medicine choices on your UCAS application. Check the entry requirements page for the full details, and see how King’s compares in our guide to medicine entry requirements.
Widening access: King’s takes contextual information into account when assessing applications, but it doesn’t make contextual offers on A100 – instead, it asks eligible applicants to consider the six-year Extended Medical Degree Programme (EMDP, A101), which asks for ABB (grade A in Biology or Chemistry and B in the other) or 33 IB points. To apply you must have Home fee status, have attended only non-selective state education since the age of 11, not have started a degree, and meet at least one further criterion – free school meals, a home postcode in an area of high deprivation (ACORN 5/6 or IMD deciles 1 and 2), completion of King’s K+ programme, or being care-experienced or estranged. Priority is also given to applicants from schools with low attainment as measured by Progress 8.
No offers are made without an interview, and interviews are held between November and May, so you’ll need to be available across that window to be considered. King’s describes its interviews as an online panel interview held on Microsoft Teams, in which two interviewers ask a series of questions covering your experiences and skills, as well as scenario-based questions testing skills such as communication and leadership. The Medical Schools Council entry for A100 describes the format as an online multiple mini interview, so read the details sent to you through King’s Apply carefully once you’re invited.
The interview information provided on King’s College London’s website confirms that applicants will be assessed on the following:
King’s operates a “fit-to-sit” policy, which means mitigating circumstances can’t be taken into account for your interview performance – raise any problems with the Admissions team at the time. Because of the volume of applications, you shouldn’t expect a post-interview decision until the cycle completes, with all applicants notified by the end of May. More information about how the interview is assessed and details of the selection process can be found here.
Most UK medical schools require you to pass an admissions exam before you’ll be invited for interview.
Admissions exam for King’s College: University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT)
The UCAT aims to assess the skills, characteristics and professional behaviours required for medical school. The exam is divided into 4 sections: Decision Making, Quantitative Reasoning, Situational Judgement (SJT) and Verbal Reasoning. Abstract Reasoning has been removed from the test.
For 2027 entry, the UCAT is being held between 13 July and 24 September 2026.
King’s College uses your UCAT score, alongside your GCSE and A Level grades, personal statement and reference, for the purpose of interview selection, assessing applications holistically – although it notes that examination results and the UCAT score are “perhaps the most important factors”. There’s no published threshold score in any given year. Your overall UCAT score, averaged across the four subtests, is given more consideration than your individual subtest scores, and your SJT band is also taken into account when shortlisting. King’s guidance for applicants notes that those with the greatest chance of an interview generally have scores in the top 30% of all applicants to King’s – which isn’t the same as the top 30% nationally, as King’s applicants are on average stronger than the overall field. Therefore, it’s essential that you perform well across all areas of the UCAT to give yourself the best possible chance of securing an interview.
King’s publishes the following figures for its medicine programmes:
| Measure | Figure published by King’s |
|---|---|
| Applications a year across all King’s medicine programmes | around 5,500 |
| Applications to A100 | around 4,000 |
| Applicants interviewed across all medicine programmes | 1,200–1,400 |
| Places on A100 | around 300 |
| Places across all medicine programmes | around 410 |
Source: Medicine MBBS – Entry Requirements, King’s College London.
The Medical Schools Council lists competition ratios for A100 of 6.7 home applicants per place (2 per interview) and 27.6 international applicants per place (10.2 per interview), and confirms that predicted grades are weighted equally with achieved grades.
Source: MBBS Medicine (A100), Medical Schools Council.
Our adaptive UCAT question bank will help you to prepare effectively. Using artificial intelligence, our algorithm assesses your individual learning needs and provides questions based on the areas of the syllabus which you need to develop. This means you’ll be focusing on the areas which will improve your UCAT score and not wasting time answering questions which will not have a positive impact on your UCAT performance.
Using the question bank dashboard (below), you can also easily identify areas which you’ve “mastered” and those which you need to dedicate more time to.
Remember, it’s your average score across all sections which will be used by King’s College, so it’s important that you perform well in each subtest. The dashboard makes it simple for you to see if one area is negatively affecting your overall performance and gives you the tools to address this.
For more advice on preparing well for the UCAT, check out our step-by-step guide and quick tips, on our UCAT page.
You can also see how other medical schools use the test in our guide to UCAT universities.
King’s has confirmed that home fees for new undergraduates starting in September 2026 are £9,790 per year, and fees may rise in subsequent years of study in line with King’s terms and conditions. Fees for 2027/28 haven’t been confirmed yet, and the overseas fee for Medicine is set separately each year, so check the Medicine MBBS fees page and the undergraduate tuition fees page for the current figures before you apply.
Good luck with your application to King’s College London! For more help, take a look at our guides to applying to medical school and the best medical schools in the UK.
