Access Validating Agencies (Cambridge, OCN, etc.)

The best thing to do would be to research each access course and ask the universities that you want to apply for if they accept the courses you are considering and if they have previously taken students from those courses. This worked for me, just before I was about to enrol on an access course I emailed a couple of universities who told me that they would not consider me with that course so I found a different course which they would accept.

I've just been going by the entry requirements on the UCAS site, or on university sites. When you e-mailed them, and they replied saying that the course was unacceptable, were they contradicting their own entry requirements?

Also, when you say that "they would not consider me with that course so I found a different course which they would accept", are you saying that they wouldn't accept the course taken at one college, but would accept the same course taken at a different college? Or are you just saying that they weren't interested in e.g. Social Science, but wanted actual Science?

Thanks for the information.

I was told by Portsmouth University that the access course I referred to (Access to Biomedical Science) probably wouldn't contain enough credits in chemistry. At the time I didn't really understand what credits etc were as I was new to the whole access course thing so I contacted the college who confirmed that it didn't and found one (Access to Pharmacy) that did. Other universities replied saying that my access course would be considered as long as it contained at least X number of chemistry credits. Most of my offers were made in the style of: 'Pass the access course with X number of credits in chemistry at distinction level'. Access courses do all vary even if they have a similar name (eg Access to Science) in the amount of credits of different subjects they offer, some might have lots of Biology and Psychology and others might have more Physics and Chemistry. I am sure for some university degrees it wouldn't matter as much whether most of your credits came from eg History or English but other degrees are more particular about how much of a certain subject they want you to have covered. All I am saying is that it is best to double check because you don't want to spend a year doing an access course only to get rejected from every university because your course didn't contain enough credits in a particular subject (like I nearly did).