Cambridge BMAT over AS UMS/Oxford BMAT over GCSE (Medicine)

Suppose a person gets a better BMAT score than most, but his UMS is less than 90% but more than 80%, do they have a fair chance of an offer at Cambridge? Any instances of this having happened before? Same for Oxford - any instances of BMAT making up for less A*s at GCSE than most?

Reply 1

nexttime

The bottom line is that very few people get into Cambridge with less than 90 UMS and very few people get into Oxford with less than 70%A*. Of course it is theoretically possible that a fantastic BMAT will override an otherwise poor profile, but in practice this rarely happens below those cut-offs and you'd be being very hopeful if you applied anyway.

Reply 2

Colmans

Original post by originaltitle

A UMS less than 85% will not get an interview at Cambridge. A UMS of less than 89% may not get an interview for medicine. Almost nobody gets an offer less than 90% and it is likley most of these have extenuating circumstances.

This gives an indication of the competition for medicine at Cambridge:

http://www.study.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/teachers/docs/student_conference_teacher_forum_presentation.pdf

Reply 3

prafto

Original post by nexttime

What about 92%?

Reply 4

Colmans

Original post by prafto

What about 92%?

Look at the presentation in my previous post. Its the best way to gauge the competition.

Reply 5

ClickItBack

I think a good way to read the presentation, instead of looking at absolute numbers, is to look at applicant: offer ratio for the band you're interested in to gauge your chances.

E.g. say you have 87% UMS and are applying for medicine. Look across the graph between 85% and 90% UMS, estimate number of applicants and count number of offers. In this case it comes out to about 7-8 offers for what looks like lots of applicants . . . say 100. So with 87% UMS, you have a roughly 7% chance of getting an offer.

Contrast with 95%+ UMS. Here the applicant: offer ratio seems better than 1:1, so if you have above 95% UMS and all other things being equal, it appears you have a better than 50% chance of getting an offer.

You can add # of A*s as an additional filter.