Choosing Your Medical School

applying to medical school in the uk is more competitive than it's ever been if you saw last year applications went up by three and a half percent and re-applications up by a staggering 28 now more than ever the four medical schools that you select as part of your choices will be a massive factor in your success whether you get into medical school and get offered a place or you don't in this video i'm going to show you how to strategically choose the right medical schools for you and your given individual circumstances that are going to give you the best chance of getting in so we'll dive in there are a handful of about four or five things that i would say are the most important factors and which universities you should consider whether you're strong or weak in those areas now the first is eligibility that's such an important thing that is often overlooked now that usually comprises grades whether it's gcses a levels university if you're applying as a grad also if you're an international whether you did the international baccalaureate or another schooling system grade set you need to know that your equivalence is meeting the requirements required for those universities now they have a minimum requirement but as i said it is the most competitive it's ever been to get into medicine so really we should aim to exceed those requirements now this is your number one non-negotiable first step don't even consider putting a university down until you have confirmed you meet their eligibility requirements if you're a straightforward application say that you're coming out of your final year of a levels then you should be able to see whether you meet the eligibility requirements from the website and just simply go on and tick that box from there however there are certain circumstances where it might not be as clear-cut maybe if you're a grad an international applicant maybe if you're a reapplicant or a mature applicant these are the kind of things that you might want to either dig a little bit deeper and that usually involves contacting the medical schools admissions departments themselves and just telling them everything about you all your qualifications all of your background and saying quite frankly am i someone who would at least meet the eligibility criteria and if not you'll often find that they'll ask you to go away and do maybe often maths and english gcse if you're lacking those typically they need to see a b or a 6 7 to meet those minimum requirements so it's really worth knowing ahead of time because a lot of the time a lot of the people who come on my program and we guide them one-on-one they often have failed in previous years and they don't know why they haven't got in and sometimes it's as simple as just meeting those requirements so if you're applying as an undergraduate most of the time all they have to go on is your gcses if you're applying as a grad you might want to skip this bit because as long as you've got like i say that kind of six or above in your english language and maths then maybe other things matter more maybe your a levels or your university grade so really this is more for the undergraduates looking at where you should apply based on your gcses so when i talk about gcses we might use the term higher grade universities and isn't that they're necessarily high grade universities but that they use a system that favorably lends itself to those applying who have higher gcse grades and usually what happens with these universities is that they often have a point scoring system whereby scoring well in your gcse will put you very favorably on their list of who to select so naturally there's a network effect where students with high grades will naturally have a point score and they will get a high one so they will flock towards those higher demanding gcse universities so really what this is is a list of universities that put more emphasis on gcses therefore those scoring higher have a better chance of getting in so these are the universities that i'd recommend that you check out if you've done well in your gcses and like i say that's usually because they're based on a point scoring system that places a lot of emphasis on your gcse results now if you want to find out more about this if you have a look in the link below to my website where i have a blog that has articles for all three of the high favoring medium favoring and low gcse result favoring universities and you can find out where you fit within those now you'll notice on that list that we had oxford university this is a funny one because technically the party stance is that they don't favor high gcses but because of the competitive nature of applying to oxford medical school and also the fact that they're a very academic university they might not say that you require them to get in but if you're thinking applying to oxford medical school historically the average student that gets in typically has about 10 gcses at grade 8 or 9 and then gets about a 14 on combined sections one and two of the bmat so something to think about that although they might not say that you need them you might not necessarily score the points required to even be invited to interview if you don't have them now next we have a list of universities that place more of a moderate emphasis on gcses now this isn't necessarily saying that they don't need you to have good gcses because naturally it's going to be very competitive but on the scale of things they place the value as a little bit lower than the ones that really place a high emphasis on them let's take leicester for example last year what they did was did a combined point score for your ucat score and your gcse point score and what they did is if you got a point score total and i think it was about 54 you automatically got invited to interview so you didn't necessarily need high gcses to be invited to interview but if you did have them then you automatically got invited if you see what i mean there's a difference between kind of taking control with the university like that versus kind of being within the remit of being invited then there are those universities that place less emphasis on the gcses now some of the lists that i'm going to include are also the graduate entry-only courses so of course they look at other things like your a levels and probably more importantly your university degree level so i'll show you the list here of the universities that place less emphasis on the gcses however what you need to realize is that it doesn't mean that it's a carb lunch for people who have no gcses whatsoever they will still have some minimum requirements so for example most universities at least require a six for english language in maths some even a seven now there are exceptions to that so for example in that list brighton and sussex and also bristol they i think need only a five for english but they still need a six or some even a seven for maths but typically like i say that six mark is the benchmark there are also a couple in here such as buckingham which is a private university and again cambridge similar to oxford they say that they don't necessarily place a high value on gcses but when you're competing with people who are getting 11 nines at gcse it's really difficult to set yourself apart with a very academic university that places a lot of emphasis on that if you're not achieving those sorts of levels so again this is the difference between what universities say that happens in actuality that you really need to be aware of if you'd like some help with choosing your universities and actually help with the entire medical school application process i recommend that you check out my one-on-one academy program where we've helped plenty of students one-on-one to get into their first choice medical school at the first attempt so equally important let's have a look at the aptitude test because that is another massive factor as to where you should apply tactically for your universities so we'll look at the ucat first because out of the 44 medical schools over 80 percent use the ucat exam as part of their medical school selection process but each of those universities uses the ucat differently for their admissions process some have a minimum cutoff some rank them based on their score or some use the decile to give that a score and use it as part of their process but what constitutes a high ucat score does vary depending on the year but typically if you are in the top two deciles i would consider that a high score different universities will look maybe some will just look at the sjt some will just look at the first four sections so the numerical score that you get and ignore the sjt some look at a combination of the two on our program we obviously go into the high ucat universities on a more individual basis and go into a lot more detail with them but it's really worth knowing each of them and what their stance is on the ucat for example with newcastle they naturally have a very high ucat threshold and typically they're looking at about a 2800 and a birth for the undergrad course and they say that if you don't meet that threshold then they probably won't even look at your application so worth bearing these sorts of things in mind when selecting your universities some universities like nottingham for example will take the verbal reasoning score and double that and add that as part of the other scores so things to be aware of based on the breakdown of how you did in your ucat so looking at high ranking ucat universities last year if you scored over 2730 in the first four section combined score that is classed in the top 20 so the first two deciles and that would be considered a high score here is the list of universities that you should consider if you kind of reach that threshold now bear in mind it changes year on year but it doesn't fluctuate so much that you have to completely disregard it you can allow a little bit of leeway maybe allow 20 to 40 points for a bit of a buffer as to how it might vary year on year then looking at if you got an average ucat score now to give you an idea of context last year the average score was 2499 so 2500 for argument's sake and these are the universities that you'd get into with that kind of score now then there's a situation where you may have got a below average score so i'd probably say if you're getting 2 300 and below that would be considered a low score and these are the universities that you might want to consider in that instance now bear in mind some will have a sjt requirement like i said before and some will have a score requirement so to give an idea the two that i've asked that are scottish universities aberdeen and glasgow do favor scottish applicants more so if you maybe don't have the score you're requiring you might have a little bit of a bump in your point score by being a scottish applicant it's also a similar situation in anglia ruskin if you are local to essex or if you're local to yorkshire and are applying to holland york medical school also you can see i put an asterisk next to queen's university belfast because any score above 1 900 will score points on your application but different universities will allocate points differently based on the sjt versus the score for example hull and york do allocate some points just for the sjt so maybe if you've got a low point score but maybe you've got a band one in the sjt something worth considering that you will pick up significant points on that might get you in contention to get to interview because the thing that i want you to bear in mind for this is that our main aim at this stage is to get us in front of the interview panel so that we can wow them with our amazing interview skills and showing them that we are the kind of person that would make a great doctor and then we can take control and put things in our own hands a bit more and you might get the opposite you might have actually done quite well with your point score for the first four sections but got a not so good sjt score so in that instance unfortunately there are some universities that won't take you on so if you check out this video here where i talk about what to do if you get a low u-cat score that will talk through in a lot more detail what circumstances might arise and what to do in each of those the other two aptitude tests are the bmat and the gamsat of course now the bmat is taken by eight universities and actually what i would do is recommend that you check out this video here to talk about where to apply based on the score that you get so with the bmat here are the universities that use it now as you'll see apart from three that have a cutoff score most of them use it holistically so instead of going through all of that here i do an entire video here where i talk about where you might consider applying based on what bmat score that you've achieved and remember also if you're applying as an international student kilomanchester will require you to sit the bmat as well then for the gamsat here are the universities that require it if you're applying for the four year accelerated course however there are also some universities if you are a grad but are still applying to the five-year undergrad course that you will be required to sit the gamsat for as well now typically a score of on average anything from kind of like 58 59 60 is enough to get you in and is the kind of threshold that you need to be aiming for to be in with the chance of going into grad medicine which is as we know the most competitive way to get in again rather than covering all of that again i do a really detailed video of what to do as a gem applicant and what kind of scores to think about for the gamsat in this video here so you can check that out there so that is really the hard data that you need to think about when you're applying tactically so actually what i've done is as a gift i have made a university guide that i give to my students and it helps them get a good initial idea of where might be eligible on my program i actually sit down and once we've got the initial ones go through with my students individually what is the best university for them and actually sit down for a long time and just discuss this and dissect that for their individual circumstances but that guide should at least get you on your way and give you an initial idea of which you need to look at and go down the route of because once we've got past all of that stuff which is the more hard statistical data analysis sort of phase then we're on to the more fun stuff and personal to use selections that you need to think about because one of the things you need to consider is what kind of course do you want to do do you want to do traditional integrated problem-based learning case-based learning whichever one is going to suit you more and i'll do an entire video on the different types of ones and what to expect for each which will probably appear here when i've made it the next really important thing is location you you have to live there for four five even six years maybe what kind of place do you want to live is it a big city is it maybe a sleepier smaller town what is going to suit you and your lifestyle and the kind of hobbies and things that you enjoy more and make you happier while you're there don't underestimate this part because it is a really important decision to make and will massively influence how you enjoy medical school another thing is do you want to do an intercalated degree you might have to do a bsc or msc and that could be compulsory where essentially it's kind of like joining the final year of another science based degree and in that one year you do the thesis and all the things that go with it and some exams and at the end you get another degree on top of your medical degree while you're halfway through that five to six years this is a fantastic opportunity especially if you want to go into academic medicine later and if you've got a special area of interest that a university is particularly known for that would be a consideration as to whether you want to choose that as one of your four med school choices and finally there's cost not only for the fees if you're an international student which can be anything from 15 000 a year to 50 000 a year so it could cost you up to maybe a quarter of a million to go through your entire med school degree but not just for international students maybe if you're a domestic student and you're going to live in london that is going to be a much higher cost of living than anywhere else and something to factor in if affordability is an issue for you as it is for probably most people so these decisions are going to have a massive impact on the likelihood of you succeeding with your medical application if you're at this stage then the likely next step for you is that you're going to have to see your interview so if you want to know all the subjects and knowledge that you need to know to make sure you smash it check out this playlist here also you might be applying for a second time maybe you didn't get in because of a ucat score or bad medical school choices we've had lots of people who've come to us in that situation and gone through our academy program and done really well so if you want to find out more about that you can apply to the program here check all of that out and exactly how we help people one-on-one to get into the medical school of their dreams as always thank you for watching and i will see you over in one of those videos

Channel: FutureDoc

Views: 5,011

Keywords: university clinical aptitude t, bmat, get into medical school, how to, how to get better marks ucat, how to prepare for the ucat, kcl, king's college london, medical school, medical school ucat, medical school uk, ucat, ucat 2019, ucat abstract reasoning, ucat decision making, ucat quantitative reasoning, ucat reasoning, ucat situational judgement, ucat verbal reasoning, ukcat preparation, ucat2020, verbal resoning, biomedical admissions test

Id: 1ue99D5pSUo

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022