Why just the 4?

I won't be applying for medicine, but I was just wondering why it is that if you are, you can only apply to 4 universities? As it's so competitive, you'd think it would make sense to have more applications, as there's such a high possibility of rejection?

i think this is because it is so competitive: it's hard enough for the universities to cope with the huge number of applications with each student only having four choices, the number if everyone could choose more would be too much to handle.

several years ago, med students were allowed to apply to 5 med schools with their 6th choice being a backup subject, now each student gets 2 backup choices if they need them!

It's been 4 choices for medicine for at least the last 10 years.

If things are competitive with everyone applying to 4 choices, it'd be even worse with everyone applying to 5. You'd increase the number of good candidates applying to any particular uni by 25% on average.