Imperial or UCL Medicine?

Imperial students have this reputation for being more competitive and it might be true overall, although you'll find chilled and competitive students at both institutions. I don't know about the proportion of students that resit but I'd be surprised if any UK medical school is an outlier in terms of overall failure/attribution rates.

At the moment, part of the foundation programme application process includes your decile ranking within your medical school cohort. This process changes often but is currently composed of an assessment (Situational Judgement Test) and the Educational Performance Measure (of which decile ranking is a component). The current process for determining your application score is described here: http://www.foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/pages/medical-students/SJT-EPM. Medical schools are free to use their own algorithm for determining which decile you fall into. This is subject to change and, to be honest, it's likely that there will be a whole different selection process by the time you qualify. I certainly wouldn't convince yourself that either UCL or Imperial medics are cleverer on average - trying to guess your rank within each cohort really isn't a worthwhile exercise at this point.

I'm happy to defer to Imperial and/or UCL medics in terms of describing their own experiences...

What do you think I should actually look at to come to a sensible decision?

A good question and, if I'm honest, I don't think the decision between Imperial and UCL matters very much at all.

Imperial students have a reputation for being a little more competitive and cut throat than those at UCL. I don't think that this would have much bearing on whether you pass exams or how you rank within the cohort. You might however have some feeling about the type of colleagues you would prefer to work with for the next five years. If there isn't anything obviously different about the structure of the courses (intercalation options, early clinical contact, etc) then think about which made you feel more comfortable at interview, the hospitals you would be based at, and which part of London you'd prefer to work in.

You will almost certainly enjoy whichever medical school you choose so flip a coin if necessary!

Hey guys, basically I have offers from Imperial and UCL to study medicine and am torn between these two amazing unis. How hard would you say passing the exams in medicine in each of these unis? I know that Medicine is a hard degree and it is something I am prepared to work hard for but recently lots of people have been telling me that Imperial Medicine Exams are crazy hard ! I would really appreciate any help.

Hi Lili
Can I ask what decision did you make? I have the same dilemma!
Thanks