Studying medicine at Oxford

This may be a silly post but wanted to ask opinions regardless. I am currently a year 12 student studying Bio, Chemistry French and Maths (although will be dropping maths soon). I am aiming to study medicine at Oxford and know that they weigh GCSE grades when shortlisting for interviews. I achieved 6 9s at GCSE and 3 8s. I meet the A* threshold however my school limited me to taking 9 GCSEs, and I have seen some people saying the 10 GCSEs at this level is what students should aim for. I was just wondering whether people think the fact I only have 9 GCSEs will be detrimental to my application. Thanks!

Hi, I’ve just submitted my application and when Oxford look at your GCSEs they consider them alongside the average performance at your school. So as long as you achieved high GCSEs relative to everyone else at your school it shouldn’t be an issue. Doing 9 GCSEs shouldn’t be an issue either as Oxford look at your GCSEs as the % of 9s you achieved, so whether you did 9 or 13 it shouldn’t matter. Hope this helps

Ah okay perfect! I was the top achiever at my school so this is reassuring!

Yay thats great! Remember it’s 50/50 UCAT and GCSEs for Oxford med (for the algorithm anyway, they do also look at personal statement so make sure it’s strong, they’re after lots of supercurriculars + research), so make sure you do well in UCAT too - at the open day they did say that a high UCAT score can make up for GCSEs and vice versa.
Good luck!