If you haven't already, your first stop should be to speak to admissions people about what they want, they may have other little requirements such as a GSCE in a foreign language or something. Which access course are you doing? Some universities are more science based so depending on your access course you might not fulfil this requirement. Read the threads on speech and language therapy entry, nobody I remember had done an access but it does give you an idea of what experience people had both academically and volunteering wise (the earlier pages are more useful for this than the end ones) Have you considered open university - either to bolster your access or as stand alone? 41 isn't too old, by the time you graduate you'll be 45/6 and will still have 20 years of work left.