مقال جيد و مفيد للشباب

وجدت هذا المقال و برأي هذا نوع من المحتوى الذي يكون مفيد للقراء في هذا الموقع

Accessibility Links

World

Comment

Life & Style

Business & Money

Sport

Culture

Travel

Puzzles

Magazines

The entry criteria is tough and the course even tougher, but the career rewards can be immense. Plus, search the top 39 medical schools in the UK

Doctor running up a stack of books with a heartbeat line above.

Julie Henry | Katherine Fidler

Friday September 19 2025, 5.55am BST, The Times

hen Ashley Hilton turned 16 he got a part-time job as a teaboy at his local hospital in Sutton Coldfield. It changed his life.

“I took the job because it was a great one for a teenager,” he says, “but I quickly realised I really liked engaging with patients and being on the wards.” When his GCSE results came through a few months later, it dawned on him that applying to medical school might be an option, and that his serendipitous part-time job could make all the difference.

Hilton graduated with a degree in medicine from Cardiff University in 2013 and now runs a service called Future Doc, which helps candidates with their applications to medical and dentistry schools.

• The best universities in the UK: the Sunday Times league table revealed

“I was from a normal state school and no one in my family had studied medicine,” Hilton, 37, says. “I was lucky, and the reason I help people now with their applications is because I had to work it out for myself — what makes the difference between people who get in and people who don’t?”

It is a question that thousands of Year 13 students will be asking themselves as they finalise their Ucas forms to apply to medical schools by the October 15 deadline. Ucas data shows that 19,130 undergraduates, plus those applying to graduate entry courses, were applying for one of 8,326 places. Meanwhile, pupils in Year 12 who harbour ambitions to be a medic are working out what they need to do over the coming months to give them the best chance to realise those dreams.

Putting together a good medical school application is a Herculean task with no guarantee of success.

But there are some crucial ingredients for a strong showing. Here, experts give the inside track to help you decide if medicine is for you and how to increase your chances of getting in.

How important are my GCSE grades?

Year 9 pupils choosing GCSE options don’t need to overthink it, according to Julietta Dawson, the head of careers at the Queen’s School, Chester. “As long as you take the three sciences — biology, chemistry and physics — it’s wise to keep a broad mix of other subjects,” she says. “What matters most is your results.”

Some state schools don’t offer triple science, so a candidate who takes double-award science will not be disadvantaged. However, significant weight is put on GCSE attainment by some medical schools, so strong grades do make a difference.

Fern Britnell, a chemistry teacher at Lancing College, West Sussex, who also runs a Medics Club there, describes universities like Oxford, Cambridge and Nottingham as “very GCSE-centric”. “They will rank you on your GCSEs before they look at anything else and you’ll instantly be dismissed if you haven’t got 8s or 9s,” she warns.

There are other medical schools such as Bristol and Birmingham where GCSE results are less important, but once grades start slipping below 7, the fewer the number of medical schools you can apply to.

And what about my A-levels?

One misconception is that biology A-level is essential. It is required by some but not by all. Chemistry, however, is mandatory— and it is a tough A-level. “It is the one that students often struggle with,” Britnell says. Universities ask for chemistry because a medical degree includes the study of pharmacology and drug interactions. If the subject is a sticking point at A-level, it could be an early sign that medicine is not for you.

Medical school hopefuls not taking biology should do maths or physics. Subject choice for the third A-level (discounting general studies and critical thinking) matters less. The consensus among experts is that you should do a subject you are good at, which is most likely to secure you a top grade with the least effort.

Medical schools generally want a minimum of three A grades at A-level. Many now ask for an A. Cambridge is AAA. Some specify that the A must be in chemistry or biology. The Medical Schools Council, which represents all undergraduate medical schools plus one postgraduate school in the UK, has updated its website with entry requirements for all courses starting in autumn 2026 (medschools.ac.uk).

Medical students studying anatomy on a digital table.

Anatomy lessons for the 21st century

COLLETTE O’NEILL/ULSTER UNIVERSITY

A contextual offer, also known as an adjusted or alternative offer, could bring your entry requirements down by two grades to about AAB or ABB. These are aimed at pupils who are deemed disadvantaged by the academic performance of the state school they attend, or their backgrounds.

Kent and Medway Medical School (KMMS) contextualises all applicants’ academic results against their school’s average performance and uses relative attainment for selection rather than absolute attainment.

Dr Philip Chan, the admissions lead at KMMS, says: “We know from strong UK evidence that undergraduates admitted to medical school with the highest grades from high-achieving schools don’t end up with the best scores on the course. Students that present with the slightly lower grades but from low-achieving schools overtake them.

“So rather than shortlist people based on their Ucat [University Clinical Aptitude Test] scores, which is what most universities do, we look at your attainment — GCSEs and actual A-level grades for those who take a gap year — against your school attainment. Our aim is to give places to high achievers from not necessarily the best educational background.”

Some UK medical schools offer foundation years. Hull York Medical School’s medicine with a gateway year course, for instance, is a widening participation initiative for those who do not meet the standard academic entry requirements. Students who pass the year automatically progress to the five-year course.

Work experience and extracurricular activities

The mistake that teenagers make, Hilton says, is forgetting that the application is “holistic”. “It is all based on a foundation of good work experience in a hospital or clinical setting, which is something that hasn’t changed since I applied,” he says.

What you do and how you reflect on it at an interview gives you opportunities to stand out

in a sea of A-grade predictions. “The difference between success and failure is knowing where

to ask but also how you ask,” Hilton says. “People have a ‘spray and pray’ approach, sending off hundreds of emails, whereas actually it is much more difficult for people to say no to you on the phone or if you are there in person.”

Britnell says that spending time in a care home or a nursery or volunteering for St John Ambulance all count — aim for any kind of people-based activity that tutors can ask questions about in an interview.

“Keep a diary of how you and the people around you dealt with situations,” she says. “Notice your reflections both from any work experience you do and also your own life experiences.”

Professor Dr Anthony Heagerty, the head of the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Manchester, the UK’s biggest medical school, describes it as “societal work experience”.

“We know that it is difficult, post-Covid, to get into hospitals and primary care, but what we want is the kind of work experience that actually opens up the eyes of the candidate to their contribution and an appreciation of social need,” he says. He adds that those thousands of Ucas personal statements outlining sporting captaincies, starring roles in drama productions, grade 5s in piano and volunteering at the food bank are “certainly read”.

Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) prefers not to score personal statements because responses have become too “generic and similar”. What students can do to boost their chances is to complete the medical school’s online work experience programme.

Darren Beaney, the head of admissions and student welfare at BSMS, says: “We recognised some time ago that it is difficult to secure clinical work experience. We developed the virtual work experience programme, which was used extensively around the world during the pandemic, and

is recognised by several UK medical schools.”

University students in a pathology lab.

Scrub up: a live practical at the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge

ELODIE GIUGE PHOTOGRAPHY

The University Clinical Aptitude Test

Noble aspirations will get you nowhere without a good Ucat score, however. Every year about 37,000 candidates sit the computer-based medical school admissions test (ucat.ac.uk).

Registration for the test opens in May and opportunities to sit it run from July, when pupils are in Year 12, to September, the first month of Year 13. You can sit the test only once in a yearly cycle.

Adam Cross, the co-author of Getting into University: Medical School 2026 Entry, describes the Ucat as “like the 11-plus on steroids”. It consists of three sections: verbal reasoning (22 min), quantitative reasoning (26 min) and decision-making (37 min). Each section has a maximum score of 900 with a total maximum score of 2,700. A fourth section, the situational judgment test (26 min), puts candidates in a band from 1 to 4 depending on performance, with 4 being the lowest.

Through the Ucat website, candidates can prepare, master technique and sit mock tests. Candidates have less than 30 seconds to answer some questions and about a minute to work out maths conundrums with tables of figures and four-step processes. Mock tests will tell you how long you took to answer a question compared with the average.

The test has changed for 2025, going from four sections with a maximum score of 3,600 to three. For those sitting the Ucat in 2024 and starting medical school this autumn, the average score was 2,523 out of 3,600. The cut-off for interview at Manchester was 2,710.

“It might say it took you 20 seconds to answer but everyone else did it in 18. It’s completely demoralising,” says the mum of one teenager who is sitting the test this month. She believes that whatever medical schools say about “rounded applications”, if your Ucat is too low “you’re out”.

All medical schools look at Ucat scores and some apply more weight than others. Exeter’s weighting to shortlist candidates for interview is 75 per cent for academic attainment and 25 per cent for the Ucat score, making it a good choice for candidates who are confident that their A* A-level predictions are accurate but have relatively mediocre Ucat scores.

According to Cross, a general rule of thumb is that candidates scoring more than 700 in each part are going to look very competitive, those between 650 and 700 are likely to be OK, but those under 650 will be “starting to look tricky”. On the “situational judgment” test, band 1 or 2 is the aim. Band 4 candidates can expect a rejection.

Ucat practice questions

The interview

Triya Anushka got through a nerve-racking interview at Oxford medical school and now works as a doctor in south London. She advises prospective candidates to keep up to date with healthcare news and cast their eye over the British Medical Journal or the New Scientist.

“It’s about fostering a genuine curiosity for the subject,” she says. “I’d also really recommend reading some medical non-fiction. That gives you an idea about life as a doctor, and often medical school interviewers love talking about books.”

While some universities, like Oxford, prefer the traditional panel of two or three interviewers, others offer multiple mini interviews. Candidates move between five to ten stations, being asked questions by different people, not unlike speed dating.

Applicants might be given a short scenario and asked how they would handle it. Assessors are checking for personal attributes and soft skills, such as ethical reasoning, communication skills, teamwork, problem-solving, empathy, critical thinking and professionalism.

Where should I apply to?

Most of the UK’s 46 medical schools have undergraduate programmes, some also offer graduate entry and a small number only take graduates.

Oxford and Cambridge are the hardest to get into, according to Hilton, followed by the London universities, particularly King’s College, Queen Mary, Imperial and University College, then the city-based Russell Group universities, such as Manchester, Newcastle, Cardiff, Bristol and Edinburgh.

Group of students taking a selfie with a skeleton model.

Future doctors have 46 medical schools across the UK to choose from

UNIVERSITY OF KENT

“There is a hierarchy of medical schools, but at Oxbridge you spend a long time learning from books,” Britnell says. “That is fine for some people, but others prefer to have clinical experience from day one and that is how most medical schools do it.”

Applicants can list four medical schools on their Ucas form and use their fifth option for a different subject. They might want to head for towns or cities where their friends are going, but, Cross says, “getting into medical school is getting into medical school”.

That is a sentiment echoed by Dawson at the Queen’s School: “The ‘best’ school is the one where you will thrive.”

The good news is that a raft of medical schools have opened and 350 new spaces were added this year, taking the total number of medical school places to 8,326. A pledge made by the previous Conservative government in 2023 to increase that to 15,000 a year by 2031-32 is still intact.

The figures include graduate-entry medicine (GEM), four-year postgraduate degrees that are equally hard to get into and difficult to finance. Warwick Medical School has the largest GEM programme and Imperial welcomed its first graduate-entry medical students this autumn.

Genia Garrity from Ucas says: “Medicine has always been a popular and competitive subject for students and we have various guides and subject tasters to help applicants research and apply to courses.” Aspiring medics are also able to chat with students at medical school through the Unibuddy facility (ucas.com).

Is medical school hard?

In a word, yes. Students might be paying the same as everyone else — £9,535 a year — but their timetable is jam-packed, contact hours are substantial and engagement levels need to be sky-high.

The first two years are characterised by problem-based or team-based learning and lectures; the balance of these differs across medical schools. “At Manchester the course is patient-oriented,” Heagerty says. “Students work in simulation suites so that from day one you could be in an A&E department set-up as if it were a real situation.”

The third year shifts to basic clinical training in hospital/clinical settings with ward-based or outpatient-based teaching. Fourth-year students get exposure to some primary care and a series of specialities like obstetrics, paediatrics and ophthalmology.

In the fifth year undergraduates face the dreaded final exams, as well as completing logbooks of procedures and sign-offs on reflective work, which are all part of gaining their bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery degrees.

“Medical school exams were some of the toughest periods of my life,” says Hilton, who is also the chief executive of the Health Mapping Clinic, which analyses and reduces clients’ long-term disease risk.

“There is an infinite amount of work — you can always do more — but the camaraderie is incredible. I have a group of friends that I graduated with 12 years ago and have known for almost 20 years. You build some true bonds and friendships for life.”

Students have the opportunity to resit exams and the drop-out rate from medicine is relatively low, with research suggesting between 6 and 14 per cent fail to complete. Students who withdraw have to pay back any loans in the normal way up to the point of withdrawing. If they leave mid-course but their loan has been paid for the full year, they must repay the overpayment straight away.

The world of work

It may be a tough degree but that is just a taster of things to come. Two foundation years as a junior doctor (recently renamed to resident doctor by the British Medical Association), on a salary of about £40,000, follow. New medics can be sent to hospitals anywhere in the country.

“You work very hard, both during the course and in your subsequent career,” says Hilton, who has worked on the front line in A&E. “You miss out on things — sleep, life events, birthdays and weddings — but it’s a very rewarding job.”

After the two foundation years, junior doctors select a specialism and apply for training posts. It is at this stage they can choose to become a GP, for instance. Salaried GPs earn £76,038 to £114,743 a year in England, with those running their own practices earning more.

Some hospital specialities are more popular than others and training places are oversubscribed. A consultant’s basic salary on the NHS starts at £109,725, rising to £145,478 a year after 14 years.

The Times and Sunday Times student subscription

Students can access quality journalism from The Times and Sunday Times for just £9.99. Offer is for verified students and new customers only. Visit thetimes.com/student to subscribe and for full terms & conditions

Your career

Your Foundation Programme Certificate of Completion means that you are a qualified doctor. You can

If you follow a training programme in Australia, Canada or North America, for instance, your paperwork is “quite acceptable” for returning to the NHS. “You can go abroad, go into the pharmaceutical industry or into research,” Heagerty says.

“Some undergraduates go into finance and industry without practising medicine. You are free to go wherever you like and, really, the opportunities are fantastic,” he says.

Win a uni bundle with John Lewis

Times+ members have the chance to win one of five uni bundles including bedroom, kitchen and tech essentials courtesy of John Lewis. Enter here. T&Cs apply.

Practice Ucat questions courtesy of the Medic Portal