Medicine: Application Process
After submitting your application through UCAS (www.ucas.ac.uk) and registering for the BioMedical Admissions Test, you can expect the following to take place.
Note that the deadline for UCAS application is 16 October; the deadline for BMAT registration is 29 September. If you require access arrangements to your test, please make these in good time according to the timeline on the BMAT website.
Also, applicants must take the later test (October) and not the September one. Applicants applying having taken the September BMAT will not be considered for entry to the course.
Stage 1: Acknowledgement
You should receive email confirmation from the Medical School stating that we have received your application towards the end of October. Please ensure you have given us a working email address.
Please let us know by email (admissions@medschool.ox.ac.uk) if you fail to hear from us within two weeks of the applications closing date.
You must have registered for the BMAT by the deadline (see the BMAT website).
If you do not register to sit BMAT your application will not be considered further.
Stage 2: Shortlisting
We will only call you to interview if we believe you have a good chance of being offered a place.We aim to call between two and three people for each available place. In recent years we have interviewed 425 applicants (about 25% of the cohort applying to the course, although this varies according to the size of the field in any given year).
As part of the process to decide which applicants are called to interview, we establish a numerical ranking on taking BMAT results and (if an applicant has completed them) GCSE results into account. This ranking forms the basis of an initial shortlist.
For GCSE performance, we will look at the number of and proportion of GCSE passes at the top grades (8/9) and relate those to the performance of all students at the school where the GCSEs were taken. For applicants with GCSEs, we will give equal weight in the first stage of shortlisting to GCSEs and BMAT. For those without GCSEs, or who took GCSEs in 2020 or 2021, we will give double weight to the BMAT.
You should bear in mind that as we short-list the same number of people every year, and we use two variables (which carry the same weight), there is no actual cut-off for either variable. It is therefore impossible to advise on the number of 8/9 grades an applicant would ‘need’ to be short-listed. An applicant with fewer 8/9s at GCSE could compensate by achieving a stronger BMAT score, and an applicant with a lower BMAT score than average could compensate by having more 8/9s at GCSE in order to be short-listed automatically. Therefore amongst those selected for interview there will be a spread of performance in both of these variables.
You may be interested in looking at the admissions statistics relating to BMAT and GCSE performance.
The applications of candidates who do not make the initial shortlist are reviewed by tutors, taking into account any individual circumstances - both academic and non-academic - that might indicate that GCSE and BMAT performance is likely to have underestimated their potential. Any applicants deemed worthy of further consideration are then reviewed, alongside applicants immediately below the initial shortlist. As a result of this process around 80 additional applicants are added to the shortlist.
We shall advise you whether or not you have been short-listed for interview as soon as possible at the end of November.
We work hard to ensure that an applicant's chance of success is never adversely affected by their choice of college. In the rare event that a college becomes over-subscribed with applicants at the interview stage, it may become necessary for us to re-allocate a very small number of applicants to another college in order to balance interviews : places ratios and maximise your chances of success.
Decisions made at the shortlisting stage are final. Feedback for applicants not shortlisted is available on request. If your application was rejected prior to the interview stage and you wish to receive feedback please write to the Co-ordinator for Admissions, c/o Medical Sciences Teaching Centre, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PL. You can view our policy on feedback for applicants.
Stage 3: Interviews
Those shortlisted will be interviewed by two colleges: where possible, one will be your college of choice (or allocation, if you made an open application), the second will be allocated to you randomly.
The order in which colleges see you will be arbitrary, and therefore the college interviewers will not be aware of your college choice (or allocation) at the time of the interviews, and you should not reveal it to them.
The number and format of interviews at each college may vary but the selection criteria are common to all colleges. You will be interviewed by at least two academics at each college and by at least one practising clinician. You cannot predict whether your application has been successful by counting the number of interviews you receive, so don’t become anxious if you receive either more or fewer than you expect!
You can also find further information at the University interview website.
Stage 4: Final decisions
Following your interviews, your college of choice (or allocation if you made an open application) will write to inform you of the outcome. Your letter or email will be scheduled to arrive on a specified date in early January.
Stage 5: Feedback
Applicants seeking post-interview feedback should consult the Admissions Office at their college of preference (or allocation for open applicants). Please see our feedback policy.