Keele OR Manchester?

. I know they rank the UKCAT, give the top 50% (at this stage) interviews and still consider the bottom 50%, referring back to their PS and references.

Ask yourself whether you want to spend day-to-day life on a campus where most things are walkable, or do you want a big city?

You also have to ask yourself whether you want a traditional course or a PBL (I might be wrong here) but Manchester is a traditional course whereas Keele is a PBL course.

It's not the top 50% of all their applicants that receive interviews - just the top 50% of those shortlisted.

The process is as follows:
1) Academic assessment
2) Personal statement and reference assessment (all applications scored and those meeting a certain score go on to stage 3)
3) Ranking by UKCAT
4) Top 50% of those ranked go straight to interview. The remainder are selected on the basis of their application plus UKCAT scores)

The process as far as stage 2 is the same as previously and they usually interviewed ~1,100 applicants (out of ~3000). They've introduced the UKCAT ranking stage to cut down on the number of applicants being interviewed - they want to interview about 750 next year.

Keele is awesome, just graduated with a degree in Geog but I loved my time there. My best mate there is a medic, he is loving it, lots of hard work,shed loads of work in fact, but really really nice medical facilities (they are 3 years old!) and excellent campus.

That's cool

So, how's the social life? (Not like I will have too much of one..)
Do you know how your medical friend got along with free time - whether you can get a part time job? Does the university have career help and how's the library? What about a student union?

I am still going to have to read more on their website..

The Keele SU is good, I used to work there when I could and most people did the same if they wanted a job. Hours are very flexible and there is mostly bar work available but also hospitality for bands and ents crew if you like that sort of stuff. It also comes with the perk of getting you are your friends in free into any union night, which makes the social life pretty good (and cheap!) too.

There are also some big clubs (Liquid) in Hanley, or Stoke city centre.

My friend and I went sailing as I was the head of the sailing team and he was a good sailor so we spent our free time sailing, which was awesome! But there are shed loads of societies and sports teams to join, all on campus or transport is arranged for you.

There are two libraries, the general library and the health library which is off site, you, as a medic will spend time in both of these over your career at Keele, but you can normally work out of the main library as they will organise books to be brought over for you to the main campus. Although, you will spending a lot of time at the Universities hospital as well which is where the Health Library is as well, so...

The Health Library and medicine has modern books and is very well stocked.

The university has career help, but never used it so not sure how helpful it is!

And yes, as above, the university has a SU.

The only negative about Keele is that it is in Stoke on Trent, but you will hardly ever see it unless you go off campus, and the campus is VERY pretty with lots of green spaces and shed loads of squirrels. I swear those squirrels are going to take over.

It really is an awesome uni, I loved my time there, feel free to browse onto the Keele subforum on here or facebook me (full name in profile) or PM or whatever! Keele is very friendly, haha!

Graham

Sounds good, thanks
As long as the squirrels don't take all the places!

I may go for Keele then..

I guess I'm the Keele type of person who likes living in rustic areas so I'd vote for Keele!

Basically I think what it boils down to is: are you a city person or a country person? Like, what environment would you prefer?

I think the OP mentioned about Keele being above Manchester in the League tables, which a) shocks me and b) doesn't really count for much. If this were true, people with degrees from Dundee would be the best doctors in the UK, which may or may not be the case but it seems unlikely that they'd be superior to all others (according to the Guardian).

Don't get me wrong, Keele is an awesome place, I think I'd personally prefer to spend 5 years of my life in sunny Manchester. Having said that I'm at a campus university myself and totally loving it!

Apply where your heart tells you to, I think you've made your decision already though

I wish!