Foundation Programme in Life Sciences – Pathway to Medicine

Entry Requirements

To apply for the Undergraduate Foundation Programme, you’ll need to meet the following entry requirements:

Academic: Good high school graduate grades or equivalent. For our Life Sciences pathway, you will also need to have studied Chemistry and one other science or Maths subject. For the Physical Sciences and Engineering pathway, Maths and/or Physics may also be required.

English language: Academic IELTS for UKVI 4.5 (4.5 in writing, 4.0 in all other skills)

Term 1
Lab Skills and Scientific Communication

This module covers:

• Health and safety in the lab
• Computing for science
• Experimental procedure tutorial
• Statistics and data handling workshop
• Literature review tutorial
• Laboratory

Chemistry for the Life Sciences 1

This module covers:

• An introduction to the Terminology and technical language of chemistry
• Basic principles of organic chemistry
• Solving chemical problems
• Manipulating and using the ideal gas equation to solve gas-law problems
• The “rules” of chemistry including kinetics, thermodynamics and hess' law
• Quantitative calculations involving masses, moles, volumes, stoichiometry, balancing equations and ph calculations

Term 2
Chemistry for the Life Sciences 2

This module covers:

• Chemistry in the laboratory
• The principles of chemical equilibrium and the second law of thermodynamics
• Analytical techniques used to identify molecules and quantify samples
• Solving complex chemical problems

Quantitative Skills
This module covers:

• Descriptive statistics
• Probability and probability distributions
• Significance testing within an spc context of control charts
• Building regression models
• Designing and analysing experiments

Organismal Biology
This module covers:

• The patterns and processes of evolution
• The evolution of diversity
• Flowering plants: form and function

Psychology 1
This module covers:

• Learning theory
• Personality
• Biological psychology
• Psychological research methods: experimental methods (laboratory, field and natural experiments)
• Non-experimental methods (interviews, observations and correlations)
• Advantages and disadvantages of these methods

Term 3
Environmental Science
This module covers:

• How the world works
• Data analysis
• Causes & consequences of biodiversity
• Scientific writing
• The global waste problem
• Sustainable food production
• Bioethics
• Ecosystem services
• Estimating population size
• Ecological footprints

Sociology: Crime & Deviance
This module covers:

• Introduction to sociology
• Theories of crime and deviance
• The organisation of social life
• Crime and deviance in contemporary society
• Crime control, prevention and punishment
• Crime, deviance and ethnicit
• Crime, deviance and gender
• Criminal justice and the victims of crime
• Social policy

Human Biology (The Cell)
This module covers:

• The beginnings of life and the cell as a functional unit
• Diversity of cells
• Prokaryotes v eukaryotes
• Gene expression
• Cytoskeletons
• The cell as a factory
• Macromolecules in cells
• Brain and nervous system

Psychology 2
This module covers:

• Social psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Psychology
• General research methods (with application to psychology)