Old school (early 2000s) med school entry requirements!

Medicine has always been competitive. I can't easily find stats to compare, but from the top of my head several of my choices had applicant: place ratios of 10-16:1 (Cambridge was less) which I don't think is wildly less than nowadays. Remember that A* grades didn't exist at the time, and fewer applicants were achieving AAA back then, so the standard offers are not directly comparable. Mind you, my dad got a CCC offer for medicine back in the 70s! (and missed it )

The UCAT wasn't around, but Oxbridge applicants did still have to sit the MVAT, which was a precursor to the BMAT, and there was barely any information out there to help you prepare. Today's applicants do have more hoops to jump through, that's true, but leaving your entire application down to your grades on paper and an interview which you may or may not be invited to, is also pretty stressful! You guys have definitely been screwed over when it comes to fees though.

I think the major difference between applying now and when I did is the sheer amount of information that's now available. The internet was in its infancy, and many people didn't have a home computer, so you were much more reliant on what friends/teachers told you, and a few application books you might have been able to get your hands on (but weren't cheap). If there were applicant forums around I wasn't aware of them (and I was on TSR from very early in its life, and on other teen forums before then). Certainly no online UCAT preparation, YouTube video coaching etc. Very limited online revision resources, so you were dependent on your school library. Contacting hospitals etc to arrange work experience was also trickier as e-mail addresses weren't so easily available - I remember having to call multiple medical staffing depts and being passed around a LOT. It's probably one of the reasons MedLink was able to rinse us for so much money! And it was quite lonely - I was the only medicine applicant at my school, and not having anyone to chat to about it was hard, whereas now there are a million forums/FB groups/TikTok whatevers you can join.

Today's applicants definitely have a few more hoops to jump through, and the fees do suck, but I think things were just different then, rather than necessarily much easier.

I agree with what @Helenia said - different challenges now and then so difficult to compare. Whilst I agree that fees now really do suck, everything else you have to take in the context of them and now. Remember we’re talking 20 years ago 😮 I didn’t know anyone else who’d been to university let alone been to medical school. And there was no internet / information available to me, unlike everything that’s available now. Also A-level pass grades - proportion of A grades was much lower back then. When I applied, the only universities to require AAA were Oxford and Cambridge - but at the same time, getting AAA back then was a big deal. So, different challenges at different times I think. I don’t think it was any easier or harder now or then, just very different.

(Also, I had interviews for my other 3, just not for Southampton!)

Oh no... now I feel extremely bad for saying “you guys are sooo lucky”, I shouldn’t have said that, I’m really sorry 😅