Glasgow vet med without maths or physics?

Hi everyone,

I'm an aspiring mature student looking to take A Levels to hopefully enable me to apply to study veterinary medicine. I have a question about A Level subjects and would be really grateful to hear others' experiences.

My intention is to take biology and chemistry but I'm not sure what to take as my third subject. Maths or physics would be best but I'm worried that I won't do as well in those subjects, so I'm also considering another subject that I may perform better in (eg history, politics, English etc).

I'm Scottish and as a mature student, relocating again would be tricky (but not impossible!) so ideally I'd love to study at Glasgow or Edinburgh. I don't plan to narrow my options down to just two unis as I know how competitive it is to get into vet school, but I'd like to steer my application to meet their requirements as much as possible to improve my chances.

Anyway, my question is whether anyone has any experience of successfully applying to Glasgow without maths or physics A Levels please? I know from their website, that they 'prefer' one of these subjects but I don't know if it's ever possible to succeed without them.

Thanks very much

I have an offer to study vet med at Glasgow for September and where I will hopefully will be going. I was supposed to sit a levels in bio chemistry and geography . I too was worried they might prefer someone with maths as Glasgow but was reassured at the open day this wasn’t the case. If ur a mature student have u already sat any equivalent to a levels like advanced highers etc as Glasgow have a very flat out no resist policy and not sure how they would view equivalent qualifications. I’m happy to help if u have any more questions 🤗

Thank you for taking the time to reply and congratulations on your offer - how exciting!

It's so reassuring to hear that it's possible without maths/physics, as it's really been worrying me!

I haven't previously sat A levels/highers/Advanced highers in any of these subjects. I'm definitely feeling the pressure already though, since they don't accept resits so this will be my one shot at it... eek.

I looked into the SWAP access course too, but Edinburgh doesn't accept that, so I thought A Levels would give me more options (and it's proven difficult to find a way for me to study highers/advanced highers).

If you don't mind me asking, how many weeks and what sort of variety of work experience did you have when you applied? I've only completed seven days in a small animal vet practice so far but really enjoyed it. My other booked placements have been cancelled/postponed due to COVID-19, but I'll still hopefully have plenty of time to squeeze them in and hoping to get lots of variety if I can.