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2nd in the UK for nutrition and dietetics (Daily Mail University Guide, 2025)
98% of graduates are in work or further study 15 months after graduation (Graduate Outcomes, 2021/22)
Graduate with registered dietician status
Dietetics is the interpretation and communication of the science of nutrition, to enable people to make informed and practical choices about food and lifestyle in both health and disease.
Dietitians work with individuals with special dietary needs, inform the general public about nutrition, evaluate and improve treatments, and educate patients, doctors, nurses and other health professionals.
This dietetics course covers the broad range of sciences that inform dietetics and is the first of its kind in the UK to award academic credit for practice placements. Placements are offered in the NHS, as well as in non-NHS settings. Dietitians are employed in the NHS in both hospital and community settings, and also work in other areas such as sports nutrition, the food industry, charities, education and research.
This full-time 3-year dietetics degree, ranked 2nd in the UK (Daily Mail University Guide, 2025) offers you an undergraduate route to qualify as a dietitian in three years, rather than the usual four.
You will benefit from our strong industry connections and placement opportunities: Placements are offered in both the NHS (acute and community) and other settings to ensure you gain the practical experience and skills needed to succeed in your chosen career, and are awarded academic credit.
Strong employment prospects: Dietetics graduates are in high demand. 98% of Herts health, nursing and social care graduates are employed or in further study 15 months after graduation (Graduate Outcomes, 2021/22).
This course offers professional accreditation: You will graduate from the BSc Dietetics with registered dietitian status. This is unique in the East of England.
Take advantage to study abroad: Herts is the only higher education institution to offer a study abroad year for dietetics students.
Benefit from a wide range of cocurricular opportunities to boost your CV: Take part in volunteering to enhance your skills and employability.
This BSc (Hons) Dietetics degree is approved by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and accredited by the British Dietetic Association (BDA). Graduates are eligible to apply for registration, meaning you are fully qualified to practise as a dietitian.
Dietitians are employed in the NHS in both hospital and community settings. In addition, dietitians work in sports nutrition, food industry, charities, education and research or on a freelance basis. This dietetics degree gives you the theoretical knowledge and practical experience to meet those expectations.
Dietitians work in a range of specialist areas including:
We will get you ready to stand out in the graduate job market. This dietetics course is specifically designed to ensure you leave with the skills and knowledge to succeed in your career. You will benefit from CV-boosting opportunities and optional modules that further enhance your employability.
The BSc Dietetics degree is delivered over three to five days, with 12-25 contact hours per week. In addition, up to 20 additional hours a week of self-directed study is required.
A variety of teaching approaches are used, from seminars, tutorials and workshops to practical laboratory sessions.
In your first year, you will learn the basics of society and how food is embedded in our daily lives. You will learn the fundamentals of recognising nutritional requirements and how deficiencies can occur and explore these practically in simulated environments. You will be out on placement from your first year of study, developing your communication skills and professionalism.
In the second year, you will explore nutrition in health and disease. By now, you will already know how a normal healthy body functions. In this year, you will learn what can go wrong, how to recognise and diagnose nutritional illness and create treatment plans. You’ll start to develop your research expertise, and how to apply this to evidence-based practice. This learning culminates in a clinical placement, supervised by Registered Dietitians as part of a dietetic team.
In the final year, you delve deeper into complex clinical conditions, learning from experienced practitioners from specialist areas of dietetics, public health and contemporary nutrition. You’ll also be introduced to the work of leadership and management roles. You’ll learn to reflect on the effects of your choices on the patients and their loved ones. At the end of your final clinical placement, you will confidently provide quality nutritional care for children and adults emerging as autonomous practitioners, ready to take on your first graduate role!
You will undertake three practice placements, consisting of a total of 28 weeks over your three years of study. This will give you the opportunity to develop the appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes to be ready to qualify as a registered dietitian. Placements are in a variety of stimulating NHS settings such as Acute, Mental Health and Primary Care Trusts, where trained practice educators will support and help you to develop your learning, providing experiences ranging from acute clinical practice in hospitals to GP clinics, visiting clients in their own homes and health promotion activities. Placements will be across the eastern counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridge, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Assessment methods include: written course work, group work, exams, lab reports, poster presentations, case studies, vivas (verbal examinations) and practice placements.
You’ll have a personal tutor to guide you through your course, all the way to graduation.
If you need additional support during your time with us, rest assured that we’ve got you covered. For help with study skills, including referencing, essay writing and presentations, you’ll have access to our academic support services. You can attend workshops, 1-to-1 sessions and online tutorials. Both of our Learning Resource Centres run drop-in study skills sessions.
Study Abroad offers the opportunity for an amazing experience that will help make you stand out from the crowd. The University of Hertfordshire is the only higher education institution to offer this opportunity to dietetics students. With more and more companies working internationally, experience of living in another country can make a great impression on future employers.
This course offers you the opportunity to enhance your study and CV with a sandwich year abroad. The University has partnerships with over 150 universities around the world, including the USA, Canada, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and closer to home in Europe.
If you study abroad between your second and third year of study, you’ll pay no tuition fee to the partner university and no tuition fee to us either. We’ll ask you to make your decision in your second year, so there is plenty of time to think about it.
Study Abroad offers the opportunity for an amazing experience that will help make you stand out from the crowd. The University of Hertfordshire is the only higher education institution to offer this opportunity to dietetics students. With more and more companies working internationally, experience of living in another country can make a great impression on future employers.
This course offers you the opportunity to enhance your study and CV with a sandwich year abroad. The University has partnerships with over 150 universities around the world, including the USA, Canada, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and closer to home in Europe.
If you study abroad between your second and third year of study, you’ll pay no tuition fee to the partner university and no tuition fee to us either. We’ll ask you to make your decision in your second year, so there is plenty of time to think about it.
Find out more about study abroad optionsYour main campus is College Lane, this is where the creative arts, science and health-related subjects are based. This means you’ll share the campus with future nurses, scientists, artists and more. You can use the common rooms to relax with friends, work out in the 24-hour gym or have a drink in our on-campus pub or cafes. We also have restaurants for you to eat in or grab something on the go. Our Learning Resources Centres are open 24/7, which means you can study whenever suits you best. Want to pop over to the other campus? You can take the free shuttle bus or walk there in just 15 minutes.
You will be taught by our team of highly qualified academics, who are all registered practitioners with postgraduate and teaching qualifications.
We offer a range of support services, from childcare to counselling, ensuring that you make the most of your time at Herts and can focus on studying, having fun, and have the support you need.
Maia - My typical day
Hello! I’m Maia and I’m just about to go into my second year of studying Dietetics! (Most people go blank when I say Dietetics so think of it as the science behind food and nutrition!)
As a Dietetics student, my day always starts with a killer breakfast! My go-to is chocolate orange oats but I sometimes have pancakes – depends on how much time I have! I live in Barnet; a few towns away from Hatfield and therefore I commute. My commute is one of my favourite parts of my day, as I drive, and the roads around the university are rural and beautiful – particularly on those frosty winter mornings!
When I arrive at uni, I grab a coffee from either the Starbucks or Costa we have on campus. Then I’ll head for a morning of lectures and workshops. I love that every day is different and walking between lectures there is always something going on at the university – whether it’s a vintage sale at the Forum or a mini lunchtime concert.
For lunch, I sometimes go and choose something from the Forum restaurant, or I’ll bring my own! I often want to do a little reading before an afternoon lecture, so I’ll take a packed lunch to the library and find a cosy little nook to spend an hour or so! There are so many great little comfortable spaces to chill or study in across both campuses, and I and my course mates often find one for lunchtime!
After lunch, it’s usually time for some more timetabled work. The Dietetics course at Herts is really varied, so I’ll often have a day with lectures, seminars, workshops and lab practicals, both in the science building and in the dedicated diet lab for Dietetics and Nutrition students!
At the end of the day, I walk to the bus stop to get the park and ride the bus back to my car. This service is great by the way! Saves me having to walk to the car park when I’m tired or it’s getting dark. I plug my music in and drive home!
Once home I like to catch up with my family over dinner and then after dinner is usually when I will start some reading or revision depending on the day. I keep a big folder on my desk where I can add any notes from the day, and I try and keep it organised! Then, sometimes I’ll head to the gym and other times I’ll see some friends, it really depends – but it’s important to me to keep a good work/social life balance and my schedule really allows me to fit all of this in!
Maia - Things you should know
Hello! I’m Maia and I am about to start my second year at the University of Hertfordshire studying Dietetics.
So, you’ve just firmed Herts – congratulations! It’s about to get extremely exciting!
Maia - Why I chose Herts
Hello! I’m Maia and I am going into my second year of Dietetics at the University of Hertfordshire. It was quite a journey for me to get here! I started first at the University of Nottingham studying Sociology and knew within the first week that it wasn’t for me! Besides the degree not being something, I was passionate about, I felt like a small fish in a big pond on a course of over 200 students! At Herts, I’m on a course of around 30 students, we all know each other, and I feel as though I really have a place here!
What initially attracted me to Herts was, unlike so many other universities, I could complete my Dietetics degree in just three years instead of four. This is rare for my subject, so it really appealed! I’d already decided that I wanted to live at home, and living in Barnet, it takes me just 25 minutes to drive to Hatfield. This is convenient for me, and it was important to me that my commute to wherever I decided to study does not take up too much of my time.
When I visited Herts on an open day, I was amazed at how friendly everyone was. Having been to university before I’d already visited loads of universities across the UK and none of the open days felt as warm or welcoming as Herts did. The ambassadors and staff members really couldn’t do enough to help – in fact, I remember talking to one ambassador (who happened to study Dietetics!) about the course for over an hour! No one had too little time for me.
I was really impressed with what I saw on the campus tour – College Lane is a green campus with interesting looking buildings. The facilities for my course just seemed great – we even have our own diet lab (aka kitchen) for nutrition practicals! The library is huge and has so many amazing study spaces, as well as a great café serving both hot and cold food! I loved the idea of Active Students – a scheme where all students are welcome to try and join in on a choice of daily activities, from aerobics to dance to Zumba to yoga! All for free! A timetable is posted weekly and all you need to do is get yourself down to wherever the class is being held and get active!
We do three practice placements for Dietetics, and one of which is a community-based placement – which is rare for Dietetics as most placements are all in NHS hospitals. To get that variety in placement is important and will help me to decide where I might want to work once, I graduate! I got the sense that the lecturers really want us to have the best, seasoned experience at the open day, and it is so true, they do! My lecturers really cannot do enough for us and the work, time, and effort they put into making your experience great is immense! Now, a year into my course, I can say with confidence, that starting at the University of Hertfordshire was one of the best decisions I’ve made thus far!
The University of Hertfordshire is committed to welcoming students with a wide range of qualifications and levels of experience. The entry requirements listed on the course pages provide a guide to the minimum level of qualifications needed to study each course. However, we have a flexible approach to admissions and each application will be considered on an individual basis.
| Typical offer (UCAS points) | (enter tariff range) |
|---|---|
| Typical A Level offer | (enter range) |
| Typical IB offer | (enter range) |
| Typical BTEC offer | (enter range) |
| Typical T Level offer | (enter range) |
| GCSE | EG: Grade 4/C in English Language and 4/D Mathematics |
| Access courses | EG: An overall merit profile in 45 credits at Level 3. |
| Additional information | Find out more about our standard and contextual Undergraduate Entry Requirements. |
| English language | All students from non-majority English speaking countries require proof of English language proficiency, equivalent to an overall IELTS score of 6.0 with a minimum of 5.5 in each band. If you do not have the required IELTS or equivalent for direct entry on to your degree programme, our Pre-sessional English and International Foundation courses can help you to achieve this level. |
|---|---|
| Additional information | Find out more about International Entry Requirements. |
| Typical offer (UCAS points) | 128–136 |
|---|---|
| Typical A Level offer | ABB–AAB Mandatory subjects: Biology or chemistry at grade B or above and one other applied science. |
| Typical IB offer | 128–136 Mandatory subjects: Biology or chemistry at HL5/SL6 and a second science or mathematics at HL5/SL6. |
| Typical BTEC offer | DDM–DDD Mandatory subjects: Extended Diploma in Applied Science, with distinctions in biological and physiological units and/or units related to chemistry. |
| Accepted T Levels | Healthcare Science; Health; Science |
| GCSE | Grade 4/C in English language and mathematics. |
| Access courses | 45 Level 3 credits to include 30 level 3 credits at distinction and 15 level 3 credits at merit. This must include 15 level 3 credits in biology or chemistry and 15 level 3 credits in a second science or mathematics. |
| Additional information | Find out more about our standard and contextual Undergraduate Entry Requirements. Occupational heath and DBS check. |
| English language | All students from non-majority English speaking countries require proof of English language proficiency, equivalent to an overall IELTS score of 7.0 with a minimum of 6.5 in each band. If you do not have the required IELTS or equivalent for direct entry on to your degree programme, our Pre-sessional English and International Foundation courses can help you to achieve this level. |
|---|---|
| Additional information | Find out more about International Entry Requirements. |
| Start date | Study type | Apply |
|---|---|---|
| September 2025 | Full time - Year 1 | Apply via UCAS |
| Full time - Year 2 | Apply via UCAS | |
| Full time - Year 3 | Apply via UCAS | |
| September 2026 | Full time - Year 1 | Apply via UCAS |
| Full time - Year 2 | Apply via UCAS | |
| Full time - Year 3 | Apply via UCAS |
At Herts, we’re dedicated to providing world-class teaching supported by industry-level facilities and incredible social spaces. We believe cost shouldn’t be a barrier to higher education, and we strive to keep both our standard and additional costs as low as possible.
| Study type | Fees | |
|---|---|---|
| UK students | Full time | £9,250 for the 2025/2026 academic year |
| EU students | Full time | £23,200 for the 2025/2026 academic year |
| International students | Full time | £23,200 for the 2025/2026 academic year |
Tuition fees are charged annually. The fees quoted above are for the specified year(s) only. Fees may be higher in future years, for both new and continuing students. Please see the University’s Fees and Finance Policy (and in particular the section headed “When tuition fees change”), for further information about when and by how much the University may increase its fees for future years.
| Scholarships, grants and bursaries | Depending on your circumstances, you may be eligible for a non-repayable scholarship, grant or bursary to support your studies. |
|---|---|
| Disabled Students' Allowance | The Disabled Students’ Allowance can cover any study-related costs you have because of a mental health problem, long term illness or any other disability. |
| Student loans | Find out about securing a student loan, from how much you could be eligible for to when you need to start making repayments. |
| Accommodation costs | We offer a great choice of student accommodation, on campus or nearby in the local area, to suit every student budget. |
| Additional course fees | Read more about additional fees in the course fact sheet. |
| Course fact sheets | |
|---|---|
| BSc (Hons) Dietetics (Revised 2024) | Download PDF |
| Programme specifications | |
|---|---|
| BSc (Hons) Dietetics | Download PDF |
| Additional information | |
|---|---|
|
Applications open to international and EU students |
Yes |
Course length |
Sandwich, 4 Years |
