Official: University of Cardiff A100 2024 Entry Applicants

Hiya, I've heard a few people say that applying to Cardiff as an English student is hopeless as Welsh students are favoured. Is this an actual part of their admissions policy or a thought people have because of the large amount of Welsh students there (which is natural from the amount of Welsh students that apply)?

yes, its says welsh and contextual students are given additional consideration. https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/2655755/UG-MEDIC-School-Level-Admissions-Policy-2023_ENG.pdf

Is the advantage substantial enough to prevent my application (2810 B1, 999999888) from being strong?

cardiff provide no information on how much welsh applicants are advantaged, but from previous threads many welsh applicants get in with lower ucats/not perfect gcses, while many english applicants with top stats get rejected. cardiff firstly score gcses, then use ps as a tiebreaker, with ucat as a third tiebreaker. so if you wanted to maximise your chances at cardiff you could tailor your ps to the things they're looking for. ultimately, applying to cardiff is still risky though, and you will have much safer options.

Thanks for the info, maybe not Cardiff then. What safer options might you suggest? I score well above the interview threshold for Nottingham so was thinking there, and then Plymouth and I thought I'd give Manchester a shot. So trying to find a fourth option really. Seems like Birmingham and HYMS put a decent weighting on contextual students, crossing them off for me I think. I would appreciate any suggestions

hyms is still fine for you, as you score 81 pts, cutoff last yr was 77. also look at aston, qub, lincoln, aru, edge hill, liverpool, uea.

This might be a silly question but with cutoff scores, does that mean everyone above that was invited to interview or is it just the lowest possible value someone might obtain to be able to interview?

everyone with that score and above was invited to interview

This might be a silly question but with cutoff scores, does that mean everyone above that was invited to interview or is it just the lowest possible value someone might obtain to be able to interview?

International student (currently in a grammar school in Northern Ireland)
IGCSE 9999998887 27/27
Achieved a level 1A in Chinese
Achieved AS level AAAA phy chem bio maths
Predicted A*A*A*A* in phy chem bio maths
Would I have a chance?

On the basis that you are intl for your fee status...

Read through thier application policy linked to above and scour their website for hints of what they are looking for in their PS.

You haven't said what your UCAT score is, but the level 2 and level 3 predictions are strong so no obvious reason you would be filtered out at that stage.

There is a lot of negativity on here about non-welsh people applying, this is perceived as a potential issue for RUK students (because there a view that they favour Welsh applicants). However the places for international applicants are counted separately so I cannot see it being as much of a risk as if you were RUK.

That said, Cardiff gets thousands of applicants every year, and their website isn't massively clear on either what they are looking for or how they score it. So it is more of a risk in that way than other med schools, esp as they look at PS prior to interview.

Hello
I was wondering what universities I could possibly apply to. I’m not sure if it is still a possibility for me.

My predicted grades are :A*A*A*
My GCSE’s:
9chem
9physics
8bio
9english lit
8english lang
8history
7 maths
7r and p
7 Spanish
6drama

My UCAT score was quite low,
2400