1.1 Part 1 Format, Delivery and Fees

Why the Format Shapes Your Revision

MRCP(UK) Part 1 is the first written component of the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom diploma, run by the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK (RCP London, RCP Edinburgh and RCPS Glasgow). It is not a pass/fail hurdle you can approach like a finals paper: it is a 200-item, six-hour assessment blueprinted to the UK Internal Medicine Training (IMT) curriculum, and almost every strategic decision you make — what to revise, how fast to answer, when to guess — follows from the mechanics set out below.

Paper Structure

Two consequences follow immediately. First, because there is no negative marking, leaving an item blank can only cost you marks — a blind guess on a five-option item still carries a 20% expected yield, and an educated elimination of two distractors raises that to 33%. Never submit a paper with unanswered items. Second, 100 questions in 180 minutes gives you 1.8 minutes per question, which is generous for a recall item and tight for a multi-step calculation such as an anion gap, a corrected calcium or a number needed to treat. Candidates who fail on timing almost always lose the marks at the end of the paper, not the beginning.

The Federation describes the distractors deliberately: the four wrong options are "closely related to the preferred option but less correct". This is why pure pattern-matching fails. A vignette describing a young woman with a photosensitive rash will offer several autoimmune diseases, not one plausible answer buried among four absurdities. You are being asked to rank plausible answers, not to spot the odd one out.

Delivery and Test Centres

Part 1 is a computer-based examination administered on the Surpass platform at a test centre. This is a change candidates must not get wrong: from the 2026/3 diet (23 September 2026) the Part 1 is delivered in-centre rather than by remote online proctoring. The only exception is candidates based in Myanmar and Sudan, where the remote online proctored (ROP) route continues. Applicants sitting in Hong Kong follow a separate application process and fee arrangement.

Diets, Application Windows and Fees

Part 1 runs three times a year, typically in January, May and September, and the application window opens roughly eleven weeks before the exam and stays open for only one week. Missing that seven-day window means waiting four months.

The fee rose from the 2026/3 diet onward: £520 for candidates sitting in the UK and £696 for those sitting internationally. Note also the results lag — approximately six weeks from the exam date. If you are timing Part 1 to feed an application for Part 2 Written or a training post, work backwards from the "results by" date, not the exam date.

Eligibility

The entry bar is low but specific: Part 1 is open to doctors with a minimum of 12 months' postgraduate experience in medical employment. There is no requirement to be in a UK training programme, and international candidates make up a large share of each cohort.

At first application you must submit evidence of your primary medical qualification (PMQ): a scanned copy of the diploma emailed to the Federation, with an English translation if the original is in another language. Candidates who already hold UK GMC provisional or full registration need only supply their GMC registration number. Processing can take up to 20 working days after the application period closes, so a late PMQ submission is a common and entirely avoidable reason for losing a diet.

Applying the Format to Your Preparation

• Build every mock around the real unit of work: 100 questions in 180 minutes, not 20-question quizzes with unlimited time.
• Rehearse a flag-and-return policy. Give any item that has not resolved in about 90 seconds a provisional answer, flag it, and move on. You can return to flagged items within the same paper; you cannot return to a paper you have already submitted.
• Because there are no images, radiology and ECG content is examined in words ("the ECG shows 3 mm of concave ST elevation in all territories with PR depression"). Practise converting those descriptions into a diagnosis rather than relying on pattern recognition from a picture.
• Treat the 6-hour day as an endurance event: candidates routinely report that accuracy in paper 2 falls, so at least two full-length two-paper mocks belong in your final month.