Can you get into medical school with 8 GCSEs?

[sheep73]

Just that really..

The school is likely to push DDs science set into dual award rather than triple award sciences which will leave her with 8 rather than 9 GCSEs. Will this leave here at a disadvantage for A levels / medical school? She will cover the triple award material but likely sit the dual award exam.

Many thanks

OP, take a look over on the medical entry thread in higher education. Medical schools all differ on what they look for, and the important thing (when the time comes) is to select ones that play to your child's strength. Each medical school has a 'formula' to score applicants, based on GCSE grades achieved and the UCAT admissions test result. So - some score an applicant's top 5 GCSEs, others score the top 7 and a couple want 9 grades to look at and score. Obviously by having only 8 GCSEs this narrows her choice a bit, but it isn't the end of the world.

Of more importance is that she has covered all the GCSE topic material for triple science so the transition to A-level will be smoother for her & she won't have catching up to do.

No, many lower ability pupils and SEN pupils will take less than 8. My school offers 8 as standard with some additional options for the most able.

I'm sure they do, but only 8 GCSEs generally indicates a less able pupil. Is this school in an area of high deprivation?

When my ds was looking at med school entry his Uni advisor at school told him he needed
6-7 GCSEs at grades 7-9

Quality not quantity

You may find some Unis will particularly look at the Chemistry and Maths grades as definitely being within the 7-9 grades.
We were also told numerous GCSEs 10 or so with random subjects that made it confusing to surmise what the entrant was interested in were ignored by even the top schools.

My ds has others in his house also doing medicine and neuroscience. Some of them have 8 GCSEs, some have more. Some have 3A levels, some have 4.

Your dc needs to get the highest grades especially in all the key subjects

Not for Uni entry though.
Kids may do more. Schools may want them to do more and a lot of them push kids to do loads to improve their stats.
Unis look at A levels and grades from GCSEs. 8 is enough ( all taken in the same sitting ) and generally Unis only look at the top 5/6 for grades.

This was advice we were given from two different secondary school Uni entry advisors.

A very large academy chain near us that has at least 9 secondary schools only offers 8 gcses to all pupils.

I spoke to the deputy head of another local secondary about it and he said that the government metrics such as Attainment 8 mean that schools immediately pare down their choices to fit. That school offers 9 currently but he said it's expensive to offer more subjects and will likely go to the 8 as a result.

You can’t conclude that 8 GCSEs is not enough from that graph, @OctogenarianDecathlete. The only useful information you can take from it is possible to be accepted to study medicine at Oxford with 8 GCSEs. You would need to know more information to ascertain whether having less GCSEs was detrimental eg did the applicants with less GCSEs have lower UCAT scores.

I posted the link because it clearly explains the process. Oxford selects candidates for interview by ranking them using their GCSE grades and UCAT score. They look at the proportion of 8/9 grades a student has. They also take into account how a student has performed relative to other students at their school so applicants from poorly performing schools are not disadvantaged. They also look at all the applicants who have not been selected for interview to see if there is any reason why the algorithm they use might not be a good predictor of their academic potential eg poor GCSE grades due to illness or technical issues during the UCAT test. A student who has 8 GCSEs who attended a school where that is the maximum number of GCSEs should not be penalised because there are measures in place to prevent that.

It also gives the criteria that interviewers are supposed to assess at interview. Number of GCSEs is not one of them. Nor extra curricular activities nor work experience. What they should be assessing is whether the applicant shows academic potential from their answers to questions, whether they have insight into the skills and traits needed to be a good doctor and can illustrate that they have those abilities from what work experience they do have, whether that comes from reading medical journals and a Saturday job at Aldi or mummy and daddy paid for a 4 week trip to do work experience in a hospital in Soweto.

Some medical schools don’t even look at GCSEs. You should be able to find similar information to the link I posted for other universities somewhere online.

The medical schools council has useful up to date information on work experience and GCSE requirements. You will probably have to go to the universities own sites or look at FOI requests for more detailed data and information on their selection criteria though.

TBF probably would have given similar out of date advice if I hadn’t been through the whole med school and Oxbridge application experience more recently as a parent. FWIW one of my DC did lots of outreach work and applying to medical school talks as a medical student.

You can get into medical school with 8 GCSEs. Don't need to be all 9s. As long as have 7 7s you'll be OK for most places (some score GCSEs most don't).

Entry mostly depends on UCAT score and sometimes predicted a levels. But each Uni does things differently. There always a thread for medicine in Higher Ed so have a read.

It doesn't indicate a less able pupil at all. The grades achieved indicate the ability of the student.

What? How can that be shown by the stat that 25% of students sat 8 GCSEs? Why does that suggest they are lower-ability pupils? I mean the stats about numbers of pupils taking xx GCSEs tell you nothing about ability.

And yes, as lots of people have indicated, a good number of schools (more and more) offer 8 or 9 GCSEs to students. In 2024 53% of students took one of those numbers – because that was what their school offered. Not bc they were weaker than those taking 10/11/12 (very very few took 12 or more as stated).

I thin your previous experience is colouring your views and it's out of date.

A less able pupil couldn't get all 7-9s in 8 subjects because they were only doing 8 subjects.

A less able student couldn't get 7-9 in any topic because they wouldn't sit for eg the higher tier papers.

In the past it was true that private and selective school added more and more GCSEs to their students timetable as a way of showing how academic someone was but that is no longer the case in the vast majority of schools. And it would be entirely wrong and perpetuate the already acknowledged disadvantages even exceptional students who attend state comps are at risk of. Demanding either a number or subject choice that is usually only available at independent or selective schools would be unfair and risk excluding many appropriate from application to med school.

When we were kids my brother got 11 O levels which were mostly Bs,Cs and Ds but my school took a different approach - we did 8 but I came away with As and Bs.
I would have thought that quality is more important than quantity.
Our local comp only offers double science not triple science.
Our child has ended up with 8 rather than 9 GCSEs as her original choice there was a clash of 2 subjects so she had to choose one. We decided not to opt for drama / art / music which would have been the alternative as she doesnt have a particular interest in them.

I think it may just depend on area/school. My children have all taken GCSE’s recently, as they are close in age. The last one last year. Our school (state) does 9 as standard, one of my DC’s took 11 last year, other took 10, my two children with Sen took 8 each so I can see where people may be getting the idea that it shows lower ability. I had a battle to get the school to allow them to drop the one GCSE that they eventually dropped. Some schools don’t even offer triple science. At my DC’s school, you have to stay out of school hours to do it and it’s only the top 30, out of about 300 children, from top sets that are allowed to sit it.

This isn’t relevant as many medical schools set a baseline and if you meet this they disregard any extra GCSE’s above this.

A levels.
UCAT score.
Voluntary work.
Interview score.

These are all much more relevant for medicine so long as you meet the threshold for the GCSE results.

So the school does offer 9 as standard but she chose to do less? This might land her in a pickle with admission.

Quantity is important, as is quality

I'm not sure about chooses to do less.. the school is gaming the system by putting kids in for double rather than triple award sciences as a strategy to get better grades.. the choice of GCSEs clashed so they had to choose one of two.
It may be that they still do the triple award and further maths in which case she would do 10.. I'm just checking the low case which would be 8 GCSEs (hopefully grades 8/9)

I think possibly Wonderberry has misunderstood, @sheep73. Am I correct in thinking that your DD chose the maximum amount of options, which included triple science, and now triple science has been changed to double science so any students who chose that option will be taking less GCSEs than students who didn’t opt for triple science. Your post is slightly confusing as it sounds like she didn’t chose any option from the block with music, art and drama so has free periods instead IYSWIM?

Yes confusingly there were no options blocks..it was a free choice but two of the humanities clashed. So she has free periods. But she has some full on hobbies including something on a British pathway so it's useful to do some homework at school.
She would like to do triple science but the school is gaming the system and talking about putting them in for double science. It's not really a choice as such

Some high performing schools e.g. Michaela only do 8 including combined science as standard.
It may be worth looking at a few places e.g. Birmingham require 7 including either combined science or biology and chemistry. They score any at 6+ so higher scores are better.

www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/medical-school/applying-to-medicine/entry-requirements-five-year-programme

I’m really confused now! Does she have free periods because she has opted to take 1 less subject than other students or do all students have some free periods too eg she has chosen to have free periods rather than do art, music or drama?

That’s unusual tbh. Is she in year 10 now? If so not much to be done, but if not then I would certainly advise doing the max number of GCSEs offered. How many others have frees? I have never heard of a school facilitating frees for KS4 students.