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Explore Foundation Schools

Rank Foundation jobs

Saved rankings

Choose a school to rank its programmes.

Compare Foundation Schools

Compare schools or build a starting order for your school ranking.

Large figure: job-weighted centre · smaller range: middle 50%.

Estimated job-weighted one-bedroom rent
RankFoundation SchoolResultCoverage

How it works

Choose your next step

Use this site to explore your options. Submit your final preferences in Oriel.

Choose a Foundation School

  1. Explore hospitals on the Map, or open Compare schools to compare all schools or two side by side.
  2. Use Auto-build my Foundation School ranking to weigh rent, training, geography and travel.
  3. Apply the suggested order, then adjust My custom ranking on the Map. Download your list, or sign in to save it.

Rank jobs after your school allocation

  1. Open Explore schools to search rotations, sites and locations.
  2. Choose Rank jobs, your school and, where verified assignments are available, your allocated group.
  3. Move specialties and locations between Hate, Dislike, Neutral, Like and Love. Set their importance, then review the suggested job order.
  4. Move jobs yourself to enter manual mode. Save or export your ranking when ready.

School preferences: Put the school you most want first, then order the rest by your preferences. Use Calculate allocation chances in My custom ranking for an optional model estimate. It does not promise a place.

What you can do here

Map

  • Find a place: “Search for place” is selected when you open the map. Type a town, postcode or address and press Search map. The map moves there. Hospital pins now show driving and train times to that place when you open their details. London is the starting destination; reload the page to use London again.
  • Find a hospital: press Search for hospital, choose a name from the suggestions, then press Search map. The map opens that hospital’s normal pin. This search does not change the travel destination.
  • Read a pin: click or tap a coloured hospital pin. First you see its name, Foundation School and location. Press Show details for the number of published programmes that include it, travel times and source links. Use Live drive or Live train to check a trip. Click or tap elsewhere on the map to close the pin. A programme that uses the same hospital more than once counts once.
  • Shaded areas: choose Shaded areas, then select a school and an area within it. Other areas stay visible but lighter. Click another shaded area to move directly there; click the sea or unshaded background to restore the overview. Selected-area hospitals appear as white pins with coloured outlines.
  • Area boundaries: shapes follow council boundaries and the coastline. They are indicative display footprints, not official allocation boundaries or job assignments. Hover an area for its source period and status. London, Peninsula and Severn use 2026 guidance; Yorkshire uses retained 2024 group geography, including former 2022 Harrogate/Craven districts. East of England uses retained training quadrants; Colchester is in the published EAFS East quadrant. Northern provider areas and North West trust footprints are browsing aids with unverified current allocation membership.
  • Shared or non-geographic groups: Bath/Bristol/Weston appear as a shared Severn area because North and South both use them. East and Mid Cheshire share a council footprint. Scotland’s four regions contain overlapping coded programme groups. Wessex FP/FPP/SFP and Midlands programme-type groups have no separate geographic boundary; Northern Ireland has no group-allocation stage. These schools keep their school shading. SFP, FPP and placeholder groups are not given artificial borders.
  • Move around: drag the map to another area. Use the + and − map buttons, a mouse wheel or a two-finger pinch to zoom.
  • Choose which pins appear: open My custom ranking and tick a school to show its hospitals on the map, or untick it to hide them. Show all pins and Hide all pins change every tick at once. They do not erase your ranking.

Compare schools

  • Press Compare schools at the top. Choose a measure above the table. The table changes to show schools in order for that measure; it does not change your custom ranking. Read the smaller text in each row for the range or list of places, and the last column for how much data is available.
  • Quality of life: choose One-bed rent for typical monthly rent, Local quality of life for a local resident score, or Training experience scores. Choose one- or two-bedroom rent. Inside training scores, choose overall satisfaction, workload, clinical supervision (help from senior doctors), local teaching or high burnout risk (feeling exhausted by work).
  • School geography: choose Placement towns to see each school’s number and list of towns. Choose F1→F2 site move to compare how far programme sites are apart between the first and second Foundation years. Choose Programmes & sites to see the number of published two-year programmes and the number of hospital sites on the map.
  • Travel time to a location: choose Driving or Train, then choose Average journey time or Jobs within limit. For the second option, pick a travel limit. Type a town, postcode or address in Destination and press Calculate travel. The table then compares schools for that journey.

Auto-build my Foundation School ranking

  • Press Auto-build my Foundation School ranking above the comparison measures. Move each slider from 0 (ignore this measure) to 5 (make it matter most). The suggested order changes as you move the sliders.
  • To include travel, choose driving or train and average time or jobs within a travel limit. Type a destination and press Calculate travel. Set the travel slider above 0 to include that result in the suggested order.
  • When you like the suggested order, press Apply this order to my custom ranking. This copies the order to your list. You can still move schools afterwards.

My custom ranking

  • Press the My custom ranking arrow at the left of Map to open your list; press it again to close. On a phone, the map opens first and the list opens when you press the arrow. On a computer, drag the divider beside the list to change its width.
  • Put schools in your own order by dragging the ⋮⋮ handle. Or choose a School and Rank, then press Move. Reset ranking returns to the starting order. Download rank list saves a text copy to your device.
  • Choose 2026 ratios, 2024–26 average or 2027 forecast to change the numbers beside schools. A ratio compares first-choice applicants with places. The red, yellow and green labels show how competitive each school looks under the selected numbers.
  • Use Calculate allocation chances to show the rough chance for each school in your order. The bracketed numbers show a range. Scotland says Unknown when its chance cannot be estimated.
  • Tick Linked application mode if two people are applying together. Tick Scotland First only if you will graduate from a Scottish medical school and plan to opt in after your Oriel application. In linked mode, both people must qualify. This puts Scotland first and greys out the other schools. Untick it to restore your earlier order.

Account and help

  • Press Sign in with Google to save your school order and selected settings to your account. If the saved order differs from this device, choose Load saved ranking or Replace saved ranking with current list.
  • When signed in, press Account for Download data, Delete data and account or Sign out. You can use the map and make a ranking without signing in.
  • Use the footer links for privacy, cookies and terms, or press Report a bug to send a problem report. Scroll further down this page for explanations of the numbers and their sources.
Ratios and estimated chances

Ratio means first-preference applicants divided by available Foundation School places. 2026 ratios use UKFPO figures for primary-allocation applicants only. “Borderline” means a selected ratio from 0.85 to 1.20 inclusive, not a forecast. The optional 2024–26 average uses official ratios from those years, but a separate priority-group split was not published for 2024 or 2025.

2027 forecast is illustrative, not a UKFPO figure. It estimates first-preference demand from the 2024–26 ratio history, then divides by the 2027 vacancies currently listed in Oriel for each school. These 10,453 listed vacancies are indicative and can change before allocation. The 2026 mode uses only published 2026 places. A school-held-out check for 2026 modestly beat carrying 2025 forward, but there is only one year to test. Historical ratios mix 2026 primary-only data with older years without a separate priority split; Scotland First changes Scottish allocation. These limits make forecast chances less reliable than the published 2026 mode. Turn chance estimates off to view ratios alone.

Chance is a school-level model estimate for your list, not an official probability or a hospital-specific result. The bold percentage is colour-coded from red (low) to green (high); the bracketed figures, such as 78% [66–92%], are a plausible model range rather than a confidence interval. A dash means another school is inactive under Scotland First; “Unknown” means a non-opt-in Scotland chance cannot be justified.

The model runs both Preference Informed Allocation (PIA) passes in 3,000 Monte Carlo simulations. Each run samples year-to-year ratio variation and models other applicants as a mix of regional, balanced, popularity-led and flexible behaviours. Later choices use assumed popularity, distance and regional affinity because UKFPO does not publish full preference lists. London applicants' later options preferentially include KSS, East of England, Thames Valley and Wessex; West Midlands Central applicants favour nearby West Midlands schools. These are model assumptions, not observed applicant preferences. The displayed chance averages over possible computer-generated PIA ranks; it is not one chosen percentile. The range contrasts lower- and higher-competition runs (for a top choice, the 10th–90th percentile of ratio-driven chance). These assumptions can be wrong in a new cycle.

PIA first tries everyone’s first choice in computer-generated rank order, then allocates unplaced applicants to their highest remaining choice. Linked mode uses the lower-ranked applicant’s position and looks for two places. The model checks its inputs against the official 82.3% national 2026 first-choice result, but does not force school estimates to match it.

Scotland First

Applicants who will receive a Primary Medical Qualification from a Scottish medical school may opt into Scotland First after completing their Oriel application. An eligible opt-in is guaranteed the Scottish Foundation School, not a particular region, group, programme or hospital. Merely studying in Scotland does not activate the guarantee. If linked mode is on, the switch assumes both applicants are eligible and opt in.

Turning on Scotland First puts Scotland at rank 1 and shows a 100% school-level outcome; the other schools in your ranking become inactive. People who do not opt in can still rank Scotland, but the number of opt-ins is unpublished, so their individual Scotland chance cannot be estimated reliably. For downstream school estimates, the simulation stress-tests opt-ins taking 74–100% of the indicative 1,173 Scottish F1 posts. The 74% figure is the 2025 share filled by Scottish graduates, not a measured opt-in rate or guaranteed minimum. Historical ratios predate Scotland First.

School comparisons

Published programmes at a hospital counts distinct two-year programme IDs that include the site at least once, across F1 and F2. A programme with several rotations at the same site counts once. The popup names the source cycle and links to it. This measures options that include a site, not the chance of being placed there: programmes may have several posts, may change, and do not guarantee a particular rotation. Where no extracted programme list names a site, no count is shown.

Comparisons and pin sizes use these programme-derived counts or labelled proxies to weight larger placement sites more heavily. The main figure is the central estimate; the smaller range is the weighted middle 50% of the underlying sites or programmes where that measure supports a range. Coverage shows how much of the estimated job distribution has usable data.

Rent uses local rental geographies; GMC training measures use the most granular defensible Foundation data, with explicit site/trust/school fallback. Teaching and burnout use broader trainee groups where Foundation-only results are unavailable. Local quality of life is a general resident-life-satisfaction proxy, not doctor-specific. F1→F2 spread uses published two-year programmes where extracted, otherwise an all-site proxy that is less comparable. Road times exclude traffic; train times run between nearest usable National Rail stations and exclude station access time.

“Auto-build my Foundation School ranking” converts included measures to relative 0–100 ranks across schools, then combines them using your 0–5 weights. A zero weight ignores a measure; missing data receive a neutral score. It is a preference aid, not an allocation forecast.

Selected comparison’s data note

Map travel estimates

London is the default destination in hospital popups. Search for a place on the map to make that place the destination for every hospital popup. Open a popup and press Show details to calculate its driving and train estimates. Hospital searches do not change the destination. Reload the page to return to London.

Driving: estimated road time and distance from the hospital to Charing Cross in central London by default, or to the searched place. These estimates do not include live traffic, stops or parking.

Train time: the mean of the weekday estimate and the weekend estimate. The weekend estimate averages available Saturday and Sunday samples. Missing samples are excluded; if only one period is available, its time is shown. Station access and onward travel are excluded. London uses retained samples from Tuesday 29 September 2026 and Saturday 3 October 2026 and Sunday 4 October 2026. Searched destinations use reference weekday and weekend journeys. These are dated estimates; check the National Rail Journey Planner for your date.

Sources

UKFPO competition ratios · UKFPO PIA guidance · Scotland First guidance · Indicative Scottish posts · GMC National Training Survey.