Occupational therapist pre-registration master’s courses

What the pre-registration master’s route means here

A pre-registration master’s is a career-changer route. It assumes you already hold a degree — sometimes in any subject, more often in a related science or social science — and it covers the same regulatory standards in a compressed, year-round timetable. Applications usually go direct to the university rather than through UCAS, and competition tends to be sharper because the cohorts are small.

48 of the 129 approved occupational therapist courses follow this route. The rest are undergraduate degree (48), degree apprenticeship (29) and integrated master’s (4) , and all of them lead to the same HCPC registration and the same starting job. Choose the route that matches where you are now — school leaver, graduate, or already working for an employer who might sponsor you — rather than the one that sounds most senior.

1 of these 48 courses carry a UCAS code, so you apply through UCAS; the remainder take applications direct. No provider on this list publishes a typical offer in a form this site can cite, so the entry-requirements column is empty throughout — check each university’s own page. Whatever the route, the programme has to include 1,000 hours of assessed practice placement, and that is where most of the travel and most of the unpaid time goes.