University of Oxford

Oxford don't score GCSEs anymore for medicine so it's a non-factor. They might have minimum requirements for maths and English language though - check to make sure you meet those (if not plan to retake as needed).

Hey thanks for replying.
I’ve exceeded the minimum requirement for English Lang and Maths, but if you look at the statistics for the 2020 cohort, no person fewer than 4 passes at an 8 or above was offered a place. Doesnt that affect my chances. To be fair, they haven’t done the 2021 cohort or the 2022 one.

That's because at that time Oxford did score GCSEs and was in fact one of the most GCSE heavy medical schools in the country. However they stopped scoring them after that due to COVID and related issues and have indicated they will not go back to scoring them for the forseeable future.

For those unable or unwilling to use google or similar search engines:

https://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/study/medicine/pre-clinical/statistics

Under section: "How shortlisting works & relevant 2022 statistics", literally the second and third paragraphs:

"Before 2021, the first stage of our shortlisting process had used a combination of contextualised GCSE performance (for those candidates with GCSE grades) and BMAT score. As in 2021, we used a contextualised measure of BMAT performance in the first stage of our shortlisting process in the 2022 admissions round. Contextual data (read more about the University's use of contextual data) were used to assess whether an applicant’s BMAT score likely reflected an under- or over-performance within the context of the candidate’s socio-economic and school environment.

In 2021, this decision was taken (following advice from the University Admissions and Outreach team) in the best interests of widening participation given the absence of a metric which would allow us to compare GCSE performance between schools fairly. Our modelling of shortlisting on the basis of contextualised BMAT had suggested the constitution of our shortlist would not be altered to any systematic disadvantage of already disadvantaged groups compared to ordinary years, and this proved to be the case in both 2021 and 2022. BMAT is the only element of an application that is common to all applicants for Medicine and giving as it does a snapshot of ability and aptitude, it is an important selection tool when assessing a large number of extremely well qualified applicants."