Okay. Before I go into this, I would just like to stress that getting into medical school in the UK first time is an achievement. No matter whether friends that have applied before you have got in to 4 places, 1 or none at all, do NOT begin choosing your unis on the assumption that you will definitely get in anywhere, and do NOT apply to places based on a friend's recommendation (unless they're talking about interviews...I'll explain later).
The most important thing I found about choosing my four medical schools was that, in the end, they HAD to be places that were right for ME. I had to do the research myself. My friend P who had applied before me chose UCL as their top choice, and naturally due to its credentials I thought I might put it down as one of my choices. If it weren't for a visit to the UCL Open Day and a week's work experience in London, I would have put it down as a choice and regretted it. So before we start, bear in mind that you should try and visit as many open days as you can, and if not at least try and visit the city/town first.
Now that's over, let me tell you that I didn't visit any of the places I applied to before I applied there, because I'm an idiot.
I also went in with expectations that I would get into a couple of places, as P had got into 3 out of 4 when they applied (which let me tell you is, firstly, extremely rare, and secondly absolutely bloody brilliant), and ended up getting into one, which was originally my last choice.
So don't do what I did, haha, and you'll spare yourself a whole lot of difficulty later! ;)
Right, let's get down to it. Here are some different factors to consider:
Type of course: Thing number one to think about: What type of course suits you? There are three main types in British medicine:
- TRADITIONAL: A traditional course is usually offered at the older medical schools, such as Oxbridge. It involves a teaching method based mainly around lectures and tutorials/seminars.
- PBL: This stands for problem-based learning, and is offered (last time I checked) at universities like Manchester and Plymouth. PBL is no longer used on its own as a teaching method, however there are unis such as the ones I just mentioned that use PBL as a main learning tool alongside others. It involves the presentation of a medical scenario to small groups of students, so that they can learn through adapting their knowledge to the problem and coming up with a solution.
-INTEGRATED: The majority of UK medical schools offer courses of this type, which combine a multitude of teaching methods including elements of traditional and PBL courses.
It's difficult, obviously, to know which of these will suit you, as you've spent your whole learning career in a school-structured environment, but the main thing to remember is that all of these involve a great deal of learning in your own time. I would say, however, that I decided PBL wasn't for me because I know that I learn better from taking notes in class, lecture-style, than I do being given a problem and learning from that.
Achieved Grades: Okay, now if this hasn't helped very much perhaps you should start thinking about basing your choice on your achieved grades. By this point in your application cycle you will have your AS grades, or you might have taken a gap year and have your A-Level grades ready. However, please please please take note of the fact that having high grades does NOT mean you have to apply to Oxbridge. It REALLY doesn't. A lot of people with all As at AS-Level feel pressured to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, but you must remember that you ONLY have four choices, and you must be entirely happy with all of those choices, or you might find yourself in a situation where you only have offers from the choices you aren't happy with. Oxbridge is always a risk, as they are SO selective, and everyone that is applying will be just as good or better than you. However, if that IS the route you want to go down, good for you, and I'll be recounting my Oxford interview in detail later for those who are considering the big guns!
UKCAT: Another factor to consider is your UKCAT score. If this is low, perhaps consider applying to schools that don't consider the UKCAT such as UCL, Bristol, Cambridge, Liverpool or Birmingham (bearing in mind that UCL and Cambridge will require you to take the notoriously difficult BMAT test). Also bear in mind that the universities that do not consider UKCAT or BMAT scores tend to be the most applied to - for example at Bristol the applicant to place ratio is 16:1. If this is average (which is usually around 660, but gets higher every year) then you need to do some research regarding the different UKCAT cutoff marks universities use. Some use a UKCAT threshold to decide who they invite to interview, and some use the UKCAT score as a factor amongst many factors in the application process. For example, Newcastle's cutoff is notoriously high (when I was applying for 2013 entry, it was 680 to get an interview) so if you have a high score, you have the option of applying somewhere like this and having a good chance of getting an interview.
I'll update this again soon with more tips, I haven't had much time to blog recently as I've been packing up my room ready to move to Bristol! Feel FREE to message me or comment on the posts for any advice, I'll try and reply as soon as possible, and I'm planning on starting videos to accompany the blog once I get to uni - watch this space! Speak soon!
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