Summary.At the conclusion of undergraduate medical education in the United Kingdom most students pass a university qualifying examination and obtain a degree in medicine and surgery. Some students pass an external non‐university qualifying examination in medicine as an alternative to obtaining a degree, and some do both. The degree may be obtained in the same year as the non‐university qualifying examination, or in a different year. Some students from a medical school intake qualify in a later year than expected, for various reasons. Data from university, Health Department and other sources may relate to the academic year, the calendar year, or a fixed date such as 30 September. It is not a simple exercise, therefore, to define the exact number of people who qualify to practise medicine, for the first time, in any given ‘year’. In counting qualifiers from individual medical schools, the problems are further compounded by the movement of students between the preclinical and clinical stages of the course, particularly from Oxford and Cambridge to London teaching hospitals. This paper analyses the situation for the calendar years 1977 and 1983, showing a decline in the number of students obtaining double (i.e. both university and non‐university) qualifications. The number of UK graduates not registering with the General Medical Council to practise, at least for a time, in the UK was small, and the population base compiled for Medical Career Research Group studies was reasonably accurate in each of the 2 years