Most of the students we teach want to do something with science. Medicine, dentistry, veterinary work, pharmacy, engineering. They know those courses are competitive, and they respond in a way that looks sensible. They put their hours into maths, biology and chemistry, and they treat English as the subject to get out of the way.
We understand the logic. If the degree is a science degree, science looks like the thing being judged.
It is worth checking that assumption against what the universities actually publish, because on the courses these students are aiming at, the English grade is doing more work than they think.
What the courses actually ask for
Start with Medicine at the University of Manchester. Its published entry requirements ask for at least seven GCSEs at grade 7 or above. Then they name the subjects that must reach a minimum of grade 6: English Language, Mathematics, and at least two sciences.[1]
Dentistry is stricter in places. The Dental Schools Council publishes a table of every UK dental school’s requirements. In it, the University of Birmingham asks for grade 7 or above in English Language, alongside grade 7 or above in Mathematics. The University of Sheffield asks for six GCSEs at grade 7 including English. Manchester’s dental school asks for seven GCSEs at grade 7 or above, with English Language named. King’s College London asks for grade 6 in both English Language and Mathematics.[2]
Now the honest part, because the opposite claim is easy to make and wrong. These requirements vary a great deal. In that same official table, several dental schools ask only for grade 4 in English, and one asks for three GCSEs at grade 4 including English.[2] So it is simply not true that every competitive university wants a 7. Any parent should look up the specific course, in the year their child will apply, rather than trust a rule of thumb.
But the requirement is only half of the picture, and it is the less important half.
The English grade is scored, not just checked
Here is the detail that changes how the whole thing looks.
Queen’s University Belfast’s dental school does not simply check whether an applicant clears a minimum. It converts the whole GCSE record into a number. In its own published words: “GCSE performance in the best 9 subjects will be scored with 4 points awarded for an A (grade 9), 3 points for an A (grades 7 and 8), 2 points for a B (grade 6) and 1 point for a C/C (grades 4 and 5).”[2]
Read that again with one student in mind. A student who wants to be a dentist, who worked relentlessly at chemistry and biology, and who decided English was the one to leave alone. He clears the minimum. He gets a 6.
In that scoring system a grade 6 is worth 2 points. A grade 9 is worth 4. English is counted exactly the same way chemistry is counted. So the decision to stop working on English does not simply cost him a subject he did not care about. It costs him two points in a ranked competition, before a single person has read his personal statement.
He will never be told this happened. Applicants are not sent the arithmetic.
The stated minimum and the real bar are different questions
This gap between what a university will accept and what it actually admits is not a rumour that insiders whisper about. At least one of the most competitive universities in the country publishes the mechanism openly.
The University of Cambridge produces what it calls an “adjusted GCSE score” for every applicant. Its own description: “this is most often a simple count of their A/8/9 grades at GCSE, but for pupils from schools where the mean ‘sum of best 8 GCSE score’ is below 40, 7/A grades are also taken into account.”[3]
Look at what that count includes. Grade 8 and grade 9 are counted. A grade 7 is counted only if the student’s school is a lower-performing one. For most applicants, a 7 contributes nothing to that particular number, and a 6 contributes nothing at all.
Cambridge’s Faculty of Economics is more direct still. In its guide for applicants it states that there are around eight to ten applicants for every place, and that *”the typical successful UK applicant has at least 6 grades 8 or 9 at GCSE, and often a lot more.”[4]
Cambridge sets no formal GCSE requirement at all. A family reading only the entry requirements would conclude that GCSEs did not matter there. The published policy says something quite different.
Why they name English Language, and where Literature stands
Parents often ask whether English Literature will do instead. The answer depends on the school, and both answers are published.
The University of Liverpool’s medical school addresses it directly in its admissions questions: “English Language GCSE is a requirement and one of the core subjects; it therefore must be offered at a minimum of Grade 6 or B. We cannot consider an English Literature GCSE grade in place of this.”[5] Manchester says the same thing about its medicine course: English Literature will not be accepted in place of English Language.[1]
Brighton and Sussex Medical School takes the opposite view, and asks for “English (Language or Literature) and Maths GCSEs at grades 5/C or above.”[6]
So it is not a verdict on the subject. Our reading of why the rule is shaped this way is straightforward. A medical school is setting a minimum standard of everyday communication for a clinical job: writing a patient record, taking a history, being understood under pressure. English Language is the qualification that certifies that, and it is the one every applicant in the country sits. English Literature is not universally taken, so it cannot serve as that shared minimum, even where it teaches more demanding thinking.
And it is worth saying what the evidence does not show. Cambridge’s adjusted score counts grade 8s and 9s in any subject at all. A grade 9 in English Literature is worth precisely what a grade 9 in Chemistry is worth. Literature is not being discounted. It is simply not the subject that certifies that minimum standard.
The useful way to hold the two apart: English Language is the gate. English Literature is a good part of the training that gets a student through it.
What this means for a student who wants medicine
The instinct behind the sacrifice is that hours are limited, so English must lose. We would put it the other way round.
A grade 9 in Chemistry cannot be exchanged for the English grade. On these courses the English grade is named separately, and at Queen’s Belfast it is scored separately too. There is no arrangement where the sciences cover for it.
English also happens to be the subject where a determined student moves fastest, because most of what separates a 6 from an 8 is method rather than more content. That is the argument we have made throughout this series: nearly every mark in GCSE English is awarded for how well the student writes, so improving the writing improves the whole subject at once.
Three things worth doing, and none of them take hours from science:
1. Look up the real requirement. Find the specific course, at the specific universities, for the year your child will apply. Then look at whether that university scores GCSEs or only checks them, because that changes what a grade 6 costs. 2. Check whether English Literature counts there. It counts at some and not at others, and this is published, not a matter of opinion. 3. Treat the English grade as part of the medicine plan, not separate from it. A student who arrives in Year 11 with English still at a 5 has usually decided, without meaning to, that the application will rest on everything except the one subject the university named.
The student in our example did nothing lazy. He worked extremely hard, on the subjects he believed were being judged, and he was partly wrong about which those were. That is a much easier mistake to correct in Year 9 than in the spring of Year 11.
