Cardiff Medical School Applicants 2016

Hello everyone, I'm going to be a medical student here in September so if anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
I would definitely recommend applying to Cardiff. The medical admissions team are incredibly friendly and Cardiff itself is a lovely place to study.

Good luck everyone !!!

Thinking of applying to Cardiff - doing A levels in Biology Chemistry and History. Got ten A* at GCSE. Just wondering what your A levels were and whether you did Maths as am starting to worry I won't get an interview if I'm not doing Maths A2 Also some other questions - what sort of work experience did you have and how were your interviews?

Many thanks

Thanks that is great and really helpful. Good luck with the course...

Hey guys, thinking of applying to Cardiff, I have 6A* and 1A at GCSE O-Level and have achieved A*AA at A-Levels. Would it be advisable to apply as I only have 7 GCSEs ? My previous school permitted 7 GCSEs. I would love to go to Cardiff.

Considering you only have 7 GCSE's they are very high grades, also cardiff usually add on points for having achieved A2 grades.

I would email cardiff medical school admissions just to be 100% clear, ideally a score of 24 or over is a minimum, but this year they are using the personal statement so it could be lower.

with you GCSE grades you would score 20/27, but email them and ask them if having your achieved A2 grades could up this, and by how much.

I honestly wouldnt reccomend applying with below 24/27 points, last year the cut off was 25/26 points, but I think grading personal statements this year will bring this score down.

To add to your point about the cut off. I was really worried about this when I applied and one thing I have learnt is that Cardiff use no strict rigid cut off score.

I asked medical admissions what the cut off was this year and they said it was 26 and for 2014 entry it was 26 as well however this is NOT entirely true I know people who got interviews including myself with 25 and 24 and NO contextual flags.

I think what they do is if you score highly enough but your borderline to the cutoff then what the admissions team do is grade and really focus on your PS/School references to decide whether you get an interview.
Once your at interview, the interview decides who gets the place and hence people with straight A*s often get rejected.

This was true for our year of entry, if you didnt meet the cutoff score but were close your personal statement was graded and the best ones got interviews.

This year you get both a GCSE score and everyones personal statements get graded, this score is then combined to make a proper cut off. Thus we cannot tell this year what a the cut off will be, or what the standards will be.


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Cool and that's how it should work to be honest, but where did you get this information from ?

Is it possible to get into Cardiff with 4 A*s 4As and 2Bs as majority of people who Cardiff pick have very very good GCSE results?


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How will the UKCAT score be used this year? Also will the SJT band be used?

What were your two Bs in? Cardiff has a scoring system for the academic side of the application where they score your best nine GCSEs (exception: they will always include English, science and maths GCSEs in this so might not be your best nine) out of 27, giving you 3 points for an A*, 2 points for an A and 1 point for a B. They then calculate a cut-off score for that application cycle.

Unfortunately in a best case scenario your score comes to 21/27 and it's usually risky applying with anything less than 23/24. You may want to email Cardiff about it because I think as a general guide they say you should have around 5 A*s so you're a borderline case.

Also, the cut-offs in the last two application cycles have been set at a high 26/27 so apparently from this year onward they'll place more emphasis on personal statements than they have in previous years so you could compensate for a lower than average academic score. I advise that you email them directly as well.

I just wanna thank you guys in advance for taking the time to answer questions.

Is 26 points from GCSEs competitive for an international student?

And also do Cardiff like extra A levels and A* predictions at A2? Like will it give me any advantage in my application? Cuz I know some unis like Leeds and Nottingham don't care about extra A levels at all.