As well as having a good range of GCSE qualifications you will need 3 A Levels. Of these three A levels, chemistry is mandatory. In addition, with regards to the second A level, biology A level is highly recommended although not absolutely essential. For the third A level, this is usually a science subject however an arts subject can also be considered. The third A level is often mathematics that students choose for medical applications in the UK.
It is possible to have non-science A levels and still be considered for medicine by the universities however they will require that you carry out the additional foundation year before being given admission to the 5-year course.
In addition, some students will have non A level qualifications such as the International Baccalaureate however it is best to ask UCAS and the individual medical school to see if you are still eligible as they will need to “convert” these into a suitable format for them to consider you.
Notwithstanding the above, UK medical schools will be expecting students to achieve grades at AAA simply because of the competition for places.
Having stated the above, there are caveats that students need to be fully aware of. This is because there will be many students that are predicted the top grades and even attain the top A level grades but still receive no offer. They are then surprised why they didn’t get at least one offer out of the 4 applications to UCAS. These reasons can be numerous which we will highlight briefly, however they have been considered in extensive details in some of our other articles.
A common reason for being rejected despite having the top A level grades is that the personal statement is not fit for purpose. Sometimes students complain when they come to us that their personal statement was checked by the school, however we have to remember that the school has many personal statements to look through and they simply do not have the time and resources to put that much effort into getting it absolutely 100-percent perfect.
We commonly see glaring grammatical errors, common spelling mistakes and a disjointed sentence structure in the personal statements. This certainly does not send out a message of confidence to the UCAS application team. Other reasons are that during the interview, the student’s’ knowledge was lacking and glaring deficiencies in their communication skills. Some universities such as Sunderland medical school have their own additional forms that students are required to complete and if these are not completed with the instructions in 9, it will lead to a rejection.
Some students will not have adequate work experience and therefore it is difficult for a university to consider these applicants as their insight into medicine will be deficient. Next comes some students with a lack of structured extracurricular activities to show. Universities state that they want to see structured extracurricular activities for which you have demonstrated over a considerable period of time and not things that you decided to take up in the last 2 months before your application is due.
Some students have a lack of relevant volunteering experience and this also raises eyebrows at the Newcastle admissions teams. To conclude, although A-level grades are important, nevertheless many students get rejected because they don’t show the university that they will be a good well balanced student who is bright, has other interests and can learn to think laterally which are skills required to become an effective doctor.