Medicine 2026 entry - part 1

[rockstuckhardplace]

Starting a new thread for parents of prospective medical students looking to start in 2026.

My daughter and her friends doing UCAT are all using Medentry and then the official UCAT mocks once they've done enough practice. Her school have advised on the process of applying for med school and the personal statement but didn't tell which websites to use for ucat revision - I'd be wary if they did since it's parents that are paying for it. Anyway Medentry worked well for dd, she was consistently getting between 1850/1900 in their mocks (and crying about it!) but then got 2200 band 1 in the actual test.

@aintnothinbutagstring thanks. We just assumed school will be best placed to advise given the years of experience.

I must say we are not relying on info from DD’s school as I don’t think they are particularly in touch or encouraging.
Her Head of Sixth form told her she needed all 8s and 9s for medicine. Not true!
@mumsneedwine seems to be determined to get all of her pupils into med school, whereas DD’s Head of Sixth Form says they get about 2/3 and that some pupils had unrealistic expectations! I was rather disappointed with his whole approach and attitude to it - hence me always being on these threads picking @mumsneedwine ’s brain!
My DD is at a non-selective state school but it has a high attainment 8 score and she has no contextual markers so I feel I need to support her loads to help her achieve her ambition, as I don’t think it’s going to come from school ☹️ - though I’m sure they’ll be glad to take any credit when the time comes! Having said that, often schools publish how many pupils they get into medicine, and other competitive uni places, but her school doesn’t - maybe not many got in. They have about 150 in each sixth form year and I think there were 4 or 5 medicine offers when I spoke to a teacher earlier in the year - not sure how many got their offers.

@Mamaof2cuties medic portal is good. It's more expensive than medics and meds try but does pretty much the same things. Do use the free resources on UCAT site too.

@SuperSue77 not everyone gets in, but everyone gets to try. And with strategy and prep we do have a very good success rate. It's about maximising your chances of an interview and being flexible. So if UCAT doesn't go well cross of Bristol. Unfortunately some schools don't advise this strategy, usually because they don't have singing with the time to learn it all.

DC1 school was quite good with medicine prep (and DC1 was called in to give a talk to the next couple of cohorts about applying along with the others of this year’s medic applicants after the exams)

DC2 school isn’t. The previous member of staff who was focused on university applicants left and they have reallocated the task (supporting all university applications) to the support teachers for each house, so no one person building up the knowledge. And when they all took over a couple of years ago they had no particular university application knowledge.

My kids went to a very high ranking state school and they were pretty useless at advising pupils on university entry. Like a Pp said, it’s been delegated to individual pupil support teachers so it’s the luck of the draw if you get one who is well informed. My kids have been given the wrong information on more than one occasion so now I check everything myself and do my own research.

My DC (and I on the quiet!) is just starting to dig into the detail of different med schools, now he has his UCAT score.
I am a bit puzzled by the whole PBL thing. When described in its pure form - groups of students working alone together to tackle themed questions with just some mediation, it sounds, in my view, horrific - so exposed to difficult or lazy group members and asking so much from relatively young students, especially in a field when surely learning a huge amount of info is necessary early on. Yet most universities seem to claim to do it to some degree (or CBL which sounds much the same).
Do the old hands know if some med schools are truly commited to this being their main learning style (Brunel seems to) or whether for most it is just one in a range of techniques, alongside lectures, classes, etc and that one doesn't need to get too het up about it?

@Michaelah Manchester are the most PBL Uni. Most have stopped it as their only teaching style, for the reasons you've mentioned. CBL is very different as you will learn about one type of system at a time (so lectures, dissection, seminars all on one type) and then be asked to relate it to cases. Even PBL involves lectures and small group teaching. But most Unis now use an integrated teaching, so a bit of everything.
Some people love PBL. Others think it's horrible.

I think the issue with schools reporting how many get into medicine, or get into Oxbridge/RG is that there’ll be equal (or more!) number of parents who want/don’t want to hear such things.

DC1’s school has always done that - and in the last couple of years have caught flack from parents who’ve said ‘all universities are good’, and ‘why are you picking out those who are going to medicine and not those going to do nursing/sociology anything else in other universities’… and so on. Of course, there are others who don’t comment but have commented when those posts haven’t come out in time (fueling gossip and fear that this year’s cohort didn’t do as well as previous years)… and so on.

DC2’s school did a social media post about how the number of kids who got into medicine doubled the national average (what is that?!)… or something like that. Not sure how helpful that is…

So basically, schools can’t really win, I feel. (I’m not a teacher in a school so not defending schools in any way).

Sorry, this must be the most obvious question but what is CBL? I know what PBL is - problem-based learning?

I think this whole teaching differentiation thing must be a thing they’ve had to do to differentiate from their more traditional colleagues in Oxbridge, and especially as new medical schools are created/re-accredited.

Case based learning.

It's not about differentiation, it's a policy to teach in different ways. Lots of different schools of thought which is the best.

@SuperSue77 @mumsneedwine thank you.

Unfortunately she doesn't have Biology so all of those great suggestions didn't make the longlist.

Hi wooly, and thank you. If this was directed at me (Sheffield is DD's favourite, UCAT 1940 looks to be borderline based on last year), the 1800 is kinda meaningless as Sheffield rank solely on UCAT for interview and the cutoff is likely to be well above 1800. The 1800 may have relevance for contextual offers maybe. But at least she is above the cutoff!!

Unfortunately DD is not doing Biology A-level so HYMS is not an option. But thank you for taking the time to make the suggestion.

Why not Sunderland? I guess it's just a bit close to home (although Newcastle is our closest) and she wants to spread her wings. Also I think she is concerned about the med school being smaller and newer, and the whole uni experience not being quite the same as at older unis. We should probably go and take a look. She has a youngish teacher at school who went to Sunderland and really raves about it. It seems that a good uni experience is also really important to her.

I'm guessing your friends' kids are all happy at Sunderland?

Hi yes and I bumped into them recently and they are now in their final year!! One friend’s kid is doing med there and the other dentistry. They seem to be thriving (the kids but also the parents!!).

we are wanting to consider our local one (but it’s abit of an opaque entry requirement thing so I’m trying to understand whether we fit their criteria…). I get that it’s nearby but we spoke to a few students at various open days and they were all quite open about wanting ‘mum’ around. Not in a whingy way but in a “i wish there was help around whilst I tried to adult and study so much” way.

Thanks for the positive feedback on Sunderland!

Sorry but I'm not quite sure what you mean by your second paragraph. Do you mean that your most local med school attracts kids that are quite dependent on their parents still?

Manchester have switched to TBL (Team-Based Learning) now, except for Graduate Entry Medicine, which still uses PBL.

https://www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/study/medicine/your-studies/teaching-learning/

Sorry for not being clear. Just woke up.

I meant that we met several students across different med schools who all
mentioned that med school is not easy (we know that) and if they could live nearer or had more support (for home non school life), it’ll be easier. I guess they’ve gone from just being responsible for going to school and studying hard to doing that for 40h/week and cooking and cleaning and shopping etc.

not suggesting that we continue to mollycoddle them. I wasn’t (my mum died when I was going to uni and I spent my A level years going to hospital and school and back) but it was tough then so I remember things being difficult.

What is the difference?

Hi - my DD is scoring between 1800 and 1940 in her Medify mocks - she sits her exam in a week. Too stressful!

Does anyone know how a GCSE-scoring uni like Cardiff actually works in practice - she has 8s and 9s in her GCSEs so will score highly there. But I just worry that many applicants will have the same kinds of results and they’ll end up resorting to the UCAT anyway to rank them? Though I guess there will be applicants with lower UCAT scores trying there because of their policy?

Another thing - her friend scored 1840 in her UCAT last week. She had been scoring over 2000 in mocks and said the test was much harder than any Medify mock she sat. Is this likely? Or perhaps it just seemed that way under pressure. I’m so sorry that she might not have scored highly enough to get a place. A brilliant A+ student who would make an excellent empathetic doctor. I hate this system!

@MiceandFrogs no one knows ....

@PurryGrowls Cardiff you needed all 9s in last few years, and they give preference to Welsh students. UCAT is used as a tie breaker.

I think wait until interim deciles are out mid Sept as only then will we know what results this year might look like. It's deciles more than reassures that matter.

Rae scores ! Hate spell check.

Cardiff - their website says GCSE 9s and 8s are both scored as 3 points?
Yes, guess it’s a waiting game 🤯