What medical schools weigh interviews and personal statements heavily?

(title is pretty much self explanatory)

What unis weight interviews quite highly (in this case someone who's good at interviews should look into applying and someone who isn't to think again).

What unis weight the personal statement and things like work experience and supercurriculars quite heavily (say if your grades are mid and you'd want to focus on other stuff to support your application or the other way round).

Reply 1

TSR Hippocrates

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Reply 2

Ibmoahsa

most of univs look at interview only, the problem is being selected to the interview (the hardest bit).

for personal statement and work experience look at keele and Sunderland .

Reply 3

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by aksidk

I think most don't score the personal statement at all, and some don't even read it.

Often interviews are the primary metric to determine if you are made an offer. However you need to be invited to interview.

Typically academic requirements and UCAT score cutoffs are used to shortlist applicants for interview. Once you meet the academic requirements and any cutoffs then these are often not a factor in determining whether you will be made an offer post-interview.

"Mid" grades aren't going to be sufficient though, unless you are considering AAA to be "mid" or something ridiculous. You need to be aiming for the standard entry requirement for those courses and you need to be taking the required subjects. There are a few medical schools that don't consider predicted grades but these may lean more heavily on achieved GCSE grades or UCAT performance.

Note also not all medical schools score GCSEs in shortlisting so even if you have average GCSEs it's perfectly possible to get into medicine - you'd just need to focus on applying to the medical schools that just have minimum GCSE requirements and/or don't weight GCSEs heavily in shortlisting.

It's very important for this reason to actually research each medical school's selection and shortlisting criteria, because they're not all the same and someone who is a strong applicant at one could be a weak applicant at another and vice versa. And you don't need all A*s to get an offer (and equally getting all A*s won't guarantee you an offer).