St Mary's University in Twickenham is marking a landmark year, with the autumn opening of its Centenary Building coinciding with the 100th anniversary of its Strawberry Hill campus. The new building will also house the university's first School of Medicine, which admits its inaugural intake in September 2026, initially for international students only, with hopes of admitting UK students in future years. This would place St Mary's among a select group of universities with medical schools, marking a potentially transformative moment for an institution that began 175 years ago as a Catholic teacher training college.

St Mary's retains its religious foundation and caring ethos while now welcoming students of all faiths and none, and remains particularly noted for teacher training and its ten sport-related degree courses. The south-west London university has around 5,500 undergraduates and over 650 accommodation places, with catered halls for undergraduates priced between £7,061 and £11,836 for 2026-27. It offers tiered sports scholarships worth up to £2,000, choral and organ scholarships, and bursaries for care leavers and widening-participation students, while standard admission requires 112 to 128 UCAS points, reducible to as low as 96 points under its contextual offers scheme.