applying to Oxford/ Imperial Med with ok GCSEs (comparatively)

(edited 1 month ago)

Hi, I'm just entering Y13 currently with predicted grades A*A*A in maths chem bio respectively. Still, I didn't end up doing the best in my GCSEs (comparatively to other students and my school is a good school with many students gaining mostly 8's and 9's):99988777764U with 9's and 8's in Further Maths, Maths, RS, Chem, Eng Lang. and yes I got a U in French lmao. I haven't done my UCAT yet and I know it's Oxford's first year doing it, but I expect a score of 3300 as per my mocks. The only thing holding me back is my GCSEs, so now I'm considering whether to apply and if my chances are slim or worth it. Thank you for any advice!

Imperial don’t consider GCSEs for medicine beyond meeting the minimum requirements. Oxford however, consider GCSEs quite heavily during the admissions process for medicine and your results will be considered in the context of your school, as well as any extenuating circumstances that may have impacted your performance. This was taken from the pre-clinical FAQ page regarding the 2024/2025 admissions cycle:

Around 425 applicants are invited to interview each year.

As part of the process to decide which applicants are called to interview, we establish a numerical ranking on the basis of GCSE performance and UCAT results.

For GCSE performance, we will look at the number of and proportion of GCSE passes at the top grades (8/9) and relate those to the performance of all students at the school where the GCSEs were taken. For UCAT results, we will look at an applicant’s overall cognitive subtest score. We will not use an applicant’s situational judgement score at this stage of the process.

For applicants with GCSEs, we will give equal weight in the first stage of shortlisting to GCSEs and UCAT. For those without GCSEs, or who took GCSEs between summer 2020 – summer 2021, we will give double weight to the UCAT. For applicants who did not complete the majority of their GCSEs between summer 2020 – summer 2021, any individual GCSEs taken during this period will be discounted from our measure of overall GCSEs taken, number of A*/9/8s achieved and mean proportion of A*/9/8s achieved used in the automatic shortlisting stage.

You should bear in mind that as we short-list the same number of people every year, and we use two variables (which carry the same weight), there is no actual cut-off for either variable. It is therefore impossible to advise on the number of 8/9 grades an applicant would ‘need’ to be short-listed. An applicant with fewer 8/9s at GCSE could compensate by achieving a stronger UCAT score, and an applicant with a lower UCAT score than average could compensate by having more 8/9s at GCSE in order to be short-listed automatically. Therefore amongst those selected for interview there will be a spread of performance in both of these variables.

When you have your UCAT score, you’ll be in a better position to make a decision. It makes no difference career wise where you study medicine, so if you decide to apply to Oxford and Imperial (two very competitive medical schools), you should also be looking at some less competitive medical schools to maximise your chances of gaining an offer.