Got a relevant Masters degree - but cant get onto an undergraduate course - Help?

Hi Guys

I'll try and be brief with my issue but got needs a fair but of detail to explain.

Graduated from university in 2010 with a Masters degree (2/1) in the biological sciences. Worked for a while in an unrelated job then went on got a voluntary position in a science lab at Bristol uni 2013-14 was planning to move on into a PHD. Sadly I got seriously physically ill during this time. I managed to stay working however it put a halt to my career for a number of years.

Eventually recovered. I had been working in care a lot and had plenty of experience with physiotherapists and so decided that I would do a two year conversion masters in physio. These courses are extremely competitive and have very few places so I studied hard and got loads of experience. I was doing well getting interviews and got on some reserve places however the gov cut the bursaries and I couldn't get a loan.

At this point I decided that the only option was to cut my losses and start again. I applied to do an undergraduate degree in this cycle of the UCAS applications. To my horror I was instantly rejected from all my choices without even an interview.

I've tried to get some advice on how to move forward with this. The universities are not really telling me anything apart from 'I didn't meet the criteria' when pressed they say my masters is simply too old and that my work experience in academia doesn't count as its not academic study.

Really hit rock bottom with this, I'm mid-thirties and my only option seems to be to completely start again as though I were 16. I feel like years of my life have just been suddenly written off.

Is my only option to go back to college and pay 5 grand to do an access course. This just seems ridiculous I've already got two degrees in a relevant subject and I have been studying myself for the last year an a half to compete at a level with other graduates for the Physio Msc.

Has anyone got any advice on what I should do I would be really grateful?

Thanks for the reply.

I've checked the funding and its fine. Basically certain undergraduates degrees (think mainly healthcare related) are counted as exempt, what this basically means is anyone can get a loan to study for them. This is not the case with the postgraduate degree.

I been trying to get in touch with people from the university but this hasn't been easy.
I emailed my first choice asking for feedback and they sent me a standardized letter just saying 'Sorry you did not meet our criteria' and further said that they would not give any further feedback. I have tried again to contact but they are careful not to provide contact details for any of the admission tutors.

As for my second choice they sent me a rejection letter which has on it that they would not provide feedback. The best I could do here was contact a receptionist in the department who was pretty clueless, after explaining my predicament repeatedly I managed to get him to speak to his superior (he refused to put me in touch with an admissions tutor). He passed on a message from his superior which was basically 'do an access course'.

Think my only option at the moment is to go up to the universities in person and just hope they don't boot me out.

I would suggest that instead of asking for feedback you contact them as a new applicant asking for advice for someone who has no recent studies on what they recommend. While an access course feels like a step backwards these courses are enormously competitive and they can afford to insist that everyone they interview has a year of full time study in the last year or so if that’s something that they think is required to succeed on the course.

Are you 100% set on physio? There’s a lot of other health professions courses that are less oversubscribed.

If you do take an access diploma then an Advanced Learner Loan would pay the fees and would be written off once you have a degree. It’s still not great (no funding for living costs) but might work out financially better than the alternatives (and would give you the widest range of options).

Yeah - physio gets so many applications it's ridiculous. I've known courses get nearly 1,000 applicants for 20 places - that means 800-900 getting rejected without any interview which is the sort of scale that means no feedback and that the people making those initial decisions aren't academic staff - they'll be admissions staff who are working through a set of fixed criteria set by the academic staff to score each application.

There's physio courses that are less selective - looking at Which? East London and Wolverhampton both make offers to over half their applicants - that implies that they're either less swamped with applications or they know that even if they make a lot of offers they're less likely to be picked as firm (compared to Liverpool which only offers to 4% of applicants).

It's also worth waiting to see whether there's any vacancies in Extra - there's always the chance that a university will realise that they've been too picky or similar and will need to find a few extra students.

And in terms of other health professional courses:

dietetics, occupational therapy, orthoptics, orthotics and prosthetics, physiotherapy, podiatry/chiropody, diagnostic radiography, therapeutic radiography, speech and language therapy and operating department practice

Someone with an interest in physio may well be able to pursue that through OT or orthotics (and podiatry can include specific physio specialties)