The Student Room Group

How did you select the "right" medical school?

I'd like to know how you chose (or going to choose) the 5 universities on the UCAS list. Did you rely on the rankings (although they fluctuate quite a bit from year to year!)? Do the medschools present themselves so differently on the open days? I know that the course structure of the med schools differ; however it's hard to really see the difference.

I'd like to have some advice, as I am an EU student and just looking at TSR and the medschools' website don't seem to be a solid basis for choosing the right school.
Step 1) Get your predicted grades and do the entrance exams.

Step 2) Look at all the medical schools and see which four look mostly favourably on your grades and admission test scores.

Step 3) Apply.

I get that there is a lot of sentiment surrounding some schools being better than others, but medical school is medical school and the best place for you to apply is the place where you have the best chance of getting in!
Reply 2
You only have 4 choices for medicine.

Rankings do not make a difference at all. Did not factor in to my decision in any way.

The schools can be very different, their delivery of the material, clinical exposure etc. Use the different university websites and you'll see the differences more easily.
I don't actually think it's easy to divine course information from a Uni website, they never say much useful stuff. I think the big things are just
1. PBL or 'traditional' less PBL?
2. Do they have to intercalate or not?
3. Where in the country do you want to live...?
4. London is expensive, can you afford London?
5. BMAT or UKCAT or both?

Town versus city, campus versus city centre... blah blah. Really there's no 'way' to tell. Sure you should check out the profiles of who is usually accepted, you want to apply to Unis which value the things you offer to maximise your chance of interview. Official rankings may help a little bit but at the end of the day, it's going to give you a medical degree regardless of where you go and there's not much actual "elitism" apart from psychological in medicine. Nobody will actually discriminate against you, in fact the application for your first 2 years of jobs is completely blind to where you went. If anything, the less academic your fellow cohort the better because you'll rank higher and it's just done on relative ranking regardless of if you went to a very competitive or a 'less' competitive place.

There is no right/wrong, just do your research.
Reply 4
Firstly, sit your entrance exams and thrive in academia then my advice is as follows:

Print this - http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Applying_to_Medical_School_using_your_Strengths
Go through each medical school and cross through any that your statistics don't match. E.g. Manchester wants high UKCAT, if you have 600 nulify it
Go through the booklet again and see which ones you can apply to smartly
Now cross them out according to preference (based on opinion, teaching style & league rankings - on websites, and your experience of that place), leaving five or so left
Go through the booklet once more and write down those still remaining on a separate piece of paper

Voila! These are your universities, enjoy Med!
Reply 5
Original post by vale98
I'd like to know how you chose (or going to choose) the 5 universities on the UCAS list. Did you rely on the rankings (although they fluctuate quite a bit from year to year!)? Do the medschools present themselves so differently on the open days? I know that the course structure of the med schools differ; however it's hard to really see the difference.

I'd like to have some advice, as I am an EU student and just looking at TSR and the medschools' website don't seem to be a solid basis for choosing the right school.




The obvious #1 consideration:

Do your research and apply to schools where you have the best chances to get in. Unless your application is slum-dunk acceptance, you have to apply to your strengths.
Different schools look at different things, look up the wiki part on TSR (link in the post above) with regards to the important parts of your application, and what parts are important for which school.

The mistake many applicants make is to apply to schools because of their appeal that includes location, program, prestige etc. These are important factors, but what good are they if you have no chance to get in? Once you figure out where are your best chances, look at those other factors, whichever are important to you.

Regardless to which university and program you attend, your medical degree will be the same.
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 6
Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate them. I would like to pose my question more precisely: I believe that the required grades ( and all other necessities) are achievable (perhaps with the exception of Oxbridge) and I have not yet sat the BMAT or the UKCAT, so I will have to consider that on a later stage.

I know that the degree I'd get would be the same from any medschool; however, I believe there is a difference how they teach, how the medschools are organized. The medschools will have to display their very own profile to attract students like us.

To explain where I stand at the moment, here are my thoughts (wich most embarrassingly show that I hardly know anything at all): there are the two afore mentioned universities where you need to be truly excellent AND lucky to get in. Then there are the medschools in London; as a Non-UK-resident Imperial and UCL are better known to me. And then there is .... "the other universities". Admittedly, I have not been to any Open Days yet, but to me it's hard to see the difference between e.g. Aberdeen, Southampton and Edinburgh. That's why the rankings and some factors such as 'student satisfaction' come into play.

In other words: if you got accepted into more than one medschool, how did you decide (any factor which is related to medschool)? Was there a tipping point?
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by vale98
Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate them. I would like to pose my question more precisely: I believe that the required grades ( and all other necessities) are achievable (perhaps with the exception of Oxbridge) and I have not yet sat the BMAT or the UKCAT, so I will have to consider that on a later stage.

I know that the degree I'd get would be the same from any medschool; however, I believe there is a difference how they teach, how the medschools are organized. The medschools will have to display their very own profile to attract students like us.

To explain where I stand at the moment, here are my thoughts (wich most embarrassingly show that I hardly know anything at all): there are the two afore mentioned universities where you need to be truly excellent AND lucky to get in. Then there are the medschools in London; as a Non-UK-resident Imperial and UCL are better known to me. And then there is .... "the other universities". Admittedly, I have not been to any Open Days yet, but to me it's hard to see the difference between e.g. Aberdeen, Southampton and Edinburgh. That's why the rankings and some factors such as 'student satisfaction' come into play.

In other words: if you got accepted into more than one medschool, how did you decide (any factor which is related to medschool)? Was there a tipping point?


If you're confident of getting an offer from any school, then of course other factors come into play. The vast majority of applicants don't have that luxury—but I digress :smile:

You've touched on it a bit yourself: visiting the schools will help you make the decision. Some people love cities, others the greener universities (Warwick, Nottingham) which have nice campuses etc. Then there's teaching styles: some people live and die by dissection, others give zero ****s about it. Some people prefer PBL-style learning, some people would rather go the traditional route.

Finally talking to current students and staff is really helpful. You can find out about their workloads, their extracurricular activities and so on.
Reply 8
Original post by vale98
Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate them. I would like to pose my question more precisely: I believe that the required grades ( and all other necessities) are achievable (perhaps with the exception of Oxbridge) and I have not yet sat the BMAT or the UKCAT, so I will have to consider that on a later stage.

I know that the degree I'd get would be the same from any medschool; however, I believe there is a difference how they teach, how the medschools are organized. The medschools will have to display their very own profile to attract students like us.

To explain where I stand at the moment, here are my thoughts (wich most embarrassingly show that I hardly know anything at all): there are the two afore mentioned universities where you need to be truly excellent AND lucky to get in. Then there are the medschools in London; as a Non-UK-resident Imperial and UCL are better known to me. And then there is .... "the other universities". Admittedly, I have not been to any Open Days yet, but to me it's hard to see the difference between e.g. Aberdeen, Southampton and Edinburgh. That's why the rankings and some factors such as 'student satisfaction' come into play.

In other words: if you got accepted into more than one medschool, how did you decide (any factor which is related to medschool)? Was there a tipping point?

Unless people get an offer at Oxbridge, or some of the other unis which are viewed as being semi-prestigious vs. others that aren't, prestige (never mind rankings, which vary depending on what table you're looking at and can seem political) doesn't come into it. Even if a uni is generally seen as a 'good' one to go to, it is only like that due to the university as a whole. It means nothing for your medical degree or your medical career - unless you're looking at rankings which show how medical graduates did in postgraduate medical exams.

International prestige/rankings (which often don't correlate with UK rankings at all) might be worth looking at for you if you don't plan on staying and practising in the UK.
I studied a pharmacy degree previous so this meant that I knew how I learnt best.

What I found out was that self directed learning was NOT for me. I preferred being taught in a didactic fashion therefore full PBL courses were out of the question.

In my last year of pharmacy we had a PBL style module which was hit and miss. Our group comprised of 'slackers' and 2 others who were semi dedicated.

My advice is find out about the medicine open days that offer mock PBL sessions and mock teaching to give you an idea.

The other great debate is about early clinical exposure vs a set pre clinical and clinical year. I myself prefer early exposure.

Thirdly a lot of people debate about dissection vs prosection. My course teaches anatomy via whole body prosection with rare opportunities to dissect in the labs. I have seen people completely hack to bits important landmarks such as nerves when dissecting therefore i prefer having core anatomy taught by prosection. They do have SSC's for dissection.
Original post by Killuminati1989


Thirdly a lot of people debate about dissection vs prosection. My course teaches anatomy via whole body prosection with rare opportunities to dissect in the labs. I have seen people completely hack to bits important landmarks such as nerves when dissecting therefore i prefer having core anatomy taught by prosection. They do have SSC's for dissection.


That isn't a good reason, just because you saw a few people who can't do proper dissection hack a body to bits doesn't mean dissection is bad.

I loved dissection, the opportunity to see the body in situ and cut yourself is useful. I wished I had more time to do dissection and fewer people in the group, of course in my class some people loved it and others couldn't care less. There is also a historical part, almost a rite of passage to becoming a physician that I like about it.

It depends on the person, but I personally thought it was amazing to be able to see a small cell lung cancer tumour in the lung and attempt to dissect it out.
Original post by vale98
Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate them. I would like to pose my question more precisely: I believe that the required grades ( and all other necessities) are achievable (perhaps with the exception of Oxbridge) and I have not yet sat the BMAT or the UKCAT, so I will have to consider that on a later stage.

I know that the degree I'd get would be the same from any medschool; however, I believe there is a difference how they teach, how the medschools are organized. The medschools will have to display their very own profile to attract students like us.

To explain where I stand at the moment, here are my thoughts (wich most embarrassingly show that I hardly know anything at all): there are the two afore mentioned universities where you need to be truly excellent AND lucky to get in. Then there are the medschools in London; as a Non-UK-resident Imperial and UCL are better known to me. And then there is .... "the other universities". Admittedly, I have not been to any Open Days yet, but to me it's hard to see the difference between e.g. Aberdeen, Southampton and Edinburgh. That's why the rankings and some factors such as 'student satisfaction' come into play.

In other words: if you got accepted into more than one medschool, how did you decide (any factor which is related to medschool)? Was there a tipping point?


Campus, uni size, prestige all helped factor into my decision.
If you're Scottish or from the EU, applying within Scotland is always worth a consideration. Financial implications were always at the top of my mind when choosing medical schools. The rest came down to what city the unis were in, and how the courses were structured/taught. It was a relatively easy choice because St. Andrew's was right out because of location/course structure. :tongue:
Original post by Okorange
That isn't a good reason, just because you saw a few people who can't do proper dissection hack a body to bits doesn't mean dissection is bad.

I loved dissection, the opportunity to see the body in situ and cut yourself is useful. I wished I had more time to do dissection and fewer people in the group, of course in my class some people loved it and others couldn't care less. There is also a historical part, almost a rite of passage to becoming a physician that I like about it.

It depends on the person, but I personally thought it was amazing to be able to see a small cell lung cancer tumour in the lung and attempt to dissect it out.


Please read the full comment... I didnt say dissection is BAD. I said I prefer prosection. That is my opinion.
I did dissection and the sessions we had with prosections were infinitely more useful to me as well. I think dissection is a much lauded thing but actually it's not necessarily the best way to learn for everyone. Mostly I had no idea what I was dissecting... even if I'd done the reading.

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