”If you actually have a sensible argument do feel free to respond with relevant citations. Or just insult Singapore.”
Just merely stating some harsh, hurtful and hard facts re Singapore/Oxbridge, nexttime4 - every single word, data and statistics. From none other than the <a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/11/2019-Recruitment-Stats-and-Facts-Report.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiT6Km6tMXmAhWQXsAKHVejAoQQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0XUHxIv9QAEsNhvTUd2iNk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">UK Foundation Programme (UKFP), the official body that oversees and collates all UK (and other) newly qualified doctors and streaming them into their foundation jobs. Nothing can be more reliable and factual than their annual publications! The individual medical schools, wannabes and publishers of league tables, etc can wish, dream and fantasize and publish what they like.
On page 18 of this year's UKFP report, Total Scores Comparison with UKFP 2018, columns 3 and 7 show the Maximum Score for both the SJT + EPM exams obtained by each medical school in the UK in the last two years. In other words, the top and brightest students! For your benefit, I've summarised the results as follows for Oxbridge vs the actual top students, i.e. not the average of each individual school. This is perfectly in line with what I said earlier that The best medical students don't go to Oxford or Cambridge to learn or do Medicine - not in the last decade or so years as far as I'm aware...
FP 2018: SJT + EPM
Cambridge 96.22
Oxford 96.58
Aberdeen 96.89
Manchester 96.69
<strong>FP 2019: SJT + EPM</strong>
Cambridge 95.450
Oxford 95.883
Edinburgh 96.465
Warwick 97.991
So, from the above facts, Oxford and Cambridge <span class="italic">do not</span> have the monopoly of <span class="italic">doing substantially better in both the written and clinical/communication exams</span> like you claim.
<span class="italic">"My suggestion that they attract the best students was to explain why they get the best exam results."</span>
My point is that Oxbridge <strong>don't necessarily</strong> attract the best students insofar as Medicine is concerned - (for one or more reasons as listed upthread by someone in “factors to consider when choosing a med school”) - they may well be for every other subject under the sun.
Also, like it or not, the foremost top doctors, specialists, medical tutors, research centres, teaching hospitals as well as some of the world's premier med schools, etc are predominantly centred <a class="break-all" href="https://secretldn.com/london-hospitals-city-care/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">in and around London.</a> To say nothing about the UK’s <a class="break-all" href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/britains-best-hospitals-a-patients-guide-798352.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">10 best specialists hopitals</a>.
Even Oxbridge send some of their students to London to train in their clinical years!
<span class="italic">"Regarding Singapore - seems to really irk you that your med school (I'm guessing) isn't good enough for them then!"</span>
Like I said before, some of the British med schools were teaching/training medical students even before your beloved Oxbridge was/were founded and certainly before that swampy piece of mangrove island got its present name, "Singapore", which btw was only founded by the Briton, Stamford Raffles in 1819. St. Bart's, Queen Mary, University of London, for example, was teaching medicine some 700 years earlier! Likewise, St. Thomas' Hospital, King's College London, was founded 1173 with roots going back some 70 years even further. Now, this was a time when the inhabitants of Temasek, as Singapore was then called, were <a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=singapore+1819&prmd=imnv&sxsrf=ACYBGNR6n8UBzWdusi3GhkGTkfELxw0hfw:1577417775123&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwja2JeR89TmAhWZgVwKHSuBDO8Q_AUoAXoECA4QAQ&biw=960&bih=600&dpr=2#imgrc=0qkhmj3Mcq69UM&imgdii=-RjM1aTsP-qvyM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">running around in loincloth with their little bows and arrows – (scroll down to see their huts on stilts)</a> and yes, coconut husks for medicine coupled with chanting bomohs, never mind any British med schools are good for them or not.
And so what if Singapore has a larger per capita income than the UK? It’s also larger than the USA, Germany, Japan etc for that matter. But it is a shrinking country with the <span class="italic">local</span> population half that of London's and a negative population growth; so by definition it’s headed towards extinction if you'd asked me. The locals are utterly unhappy with their lot and the govt is desperately trying to inflate their population size by actively encouraging elite foreign immigration which results in a country filled with animosities between "us and them". And sorry, they won't see my medic DS over there anytime soon - someone who’d graduated from a premier central London school with a BSc Hons (1st) and MBBS (Distinction) whose London school is more than a dozen places higher than the very best Singapore medical school! At only 26 years of age and having just completed his F2 last August he’s earning as much as your local <span class="line-through">26</span> 62-year-old MP! Singapore and Oxbridge will have to do better to produce a medic like him, I’m afraid. . .