Oxford med chances w gcse ?

I’ve been reading up on gcse requirements for certain universities. Oxford med was never really an aspiration of mine until I went to visit with a society. These are my grades-

Eng Lang -9
Eng lit - 8
Chem - 8
Bio - 8
Physics - 8
Psychology - 8
History - 7
Maths - 7
Spanish - 7

Apparently I need at least 90% A* grades. Worth applying? I’m about to sit my autumn exams and I’ll get my A - level predictions then.

Before COVID the average number of A* (8/9) grades for successful applicants to Oxford medicine was 10.5 A*s. You are considerably short of that and have a relatively (for Oxford) low proportion of A* grades out of your total GCSEs as well. As Oxford is extremely GCSE heavy as it's one of only two factors they consider when shortlisting for interview, I would strongly advise against applying there as it's very likely you wouldn't even get an interview.

I would recommend focusing on other medical schools. Fortunately, which medical school you go to won't directly affect your working as a doctor - as the GMC considers all medical schools equal and the NHS, which is the only provider of graduate medical training posts, blinds recruiters to your medical school to ensure there is no bias. There is some correlation between first time success rate on postgraduate exams being higher for those going to Oxford (also Cambridge and I think Imperial), but while this might save you time and some money and stress, having to do those a second time is, I gather, not uncommon and not normally a deal breaker for anything as long as you do pass eventually (and I gather they use fixed question banks so after you take it once you'll usually have seen a majority of the questions that could come up anyway and be much more likely to pass second time I think?).

So, I would look at other medical schools (perhaps those that emphasise GCSEs less - like Imperial) and apply tactically on that basis