Graduate Entry Medicine: Are there any advantages to expressing a college preference?
In academic terms, the colleges are similar (though different tutors may have different specialist interests) and much of the course is in any case taught by the medical Faculty in the hospital. Colleges do, however, differ in tradition, size, location and population (some colleges admit only graduate students; others take a mixture of graduates and undergraduates), and these are factors that you might wish to take into account in choosing your college. You may, however, genuinely have no preference, in which case you might prefer not to express a choice. Students who submit such “open” applications are randomly distributed between colleges in order to balance the number of applications as evenly as possible between the participating colleges.
When particular colleges are heavily oversubscribed, we may redistribute some applications to other colleges, to even out the numbers; so even if you express a preference for a particular college, it is possible that your application may be sent to another college. Again, the intention is to give everyone an equal chance as far as possible.