Eligibility

We have agreements in place with several overseas universities which allow you to study Biological Sciences both at your home institution and at The University of Edinburgh.

This allows you to study at your home institution for the first two years before transferring to the University of Edinburgh to complete a further two years of study. On successful completion of your degree, you will graduate with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) awarded by Edinburgh. You may also be eligible for the award of a Bachelor degree from your home university, allowing you to obtain two degrees at the same time.

Your International Office will advertise any opportunities available to you.

Before choosing one of our programmes of study, you should find out if the degree you are currently studying matches well with ours. This means that you should have covered our pre-requisite subjects in the first two years at your home institution. You can check what we cover in the first two years by looking at our Degree Programme Tables.

We do not have a list of specific courses and required scores from your 1st and 2nd year courses in China. We look at your overall performance and we are most interested in:

• what you have studied - we need to see that you have studied suitable biology, chemistry and maths or physics. Please get in touch if you'd like to discuss your transcript. You can also contact your International Office.
• how well your current programme matches to one of ours - have you studied similar things to the students you will be joining in year 3 at Edinburgh
• your English language ability, particularly scientific English - all of our teaching is in English so we need to make sure that you are prepared

Before we can accept your application, you need to pass an IELTS test with a total score of at least 6.5 with a minimum of 5.5 in each section or TOEFL iBT at 92 or above with 20 in each section. This needs to have been achieved after 31^st August 2023.

If we offer you a place to study with us, it is usually a requirement that you arrive in Edinburgh in August to attend a transitional english course provided by English Language Education (ELE) team and academics from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. This course, Transitions into CSE (College of Science and Engineering), focuses on Academic English skills that are essential for university study in the UK, it starts about 4 weeks before the start of Semester 1. In 2026 the cost is expected to be £1555.