What are average qualifications of a student who gets accepted in a UK/Ireland school

[myst]

What are the average qualifications of a student who gets accepted in a UK/Ireland school? Do most people apply after high school? After completing their BSc? Do they have specializations, or just plain BSc? What about research, is it a 'neccessity' for getting in? Grades? MCAT?

Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated

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[leorl]

They are widely varied. Some people (few) do apply out of high school, and enter the 6 year program(s). This isn't all that common, but 1-2 people of each class with 6 yr programs. Most people apply after having completed a science degree (BA or BSc) and enter the 5-yr program, unless their degree wasn't in science - then they'd enter the 6 yr. program. Quite a few apply after having done Masters or even PhDs (this is less common). Research isn't a necessity to get in, but they seem to really like it. They focus less on scores I think, and more on your cv, general experiences and your well-roundedness. Trinity at this moment doesn't look at your MCAT. Grades - people always say you should be getting around what would be competitive in the US, but some people admitted to the programs here wouldn't necessarily have high grades. So they do seem to be more lenient.

 

[DrMann2010]

What are the average qualifications of a student who gets accepted in a UK/Ireland school? Do most people apply after high school? After completing their BSc? Do they have specializations, or just plain BSc? What about research, is it a 'neccessity' for getting in? Grades? MCAT?

Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated

There are a good number of us at RCSI who have come straight after highschool. Some would say that RCSI has lowered its standards as to who they accept, but on the contrary there are some very bright and hard working fresh out of high school students here. Yes, it's true - very few north american students who do apply straight from highschool get in. I've seen that there are more NA students who have done one or two years of college than there are fresh from highschool int he 6 year program.

Research isn't a necessity to get into RCSI - well at least for the 6 yr program. But i would deem it necessary to have lots of unique volunteer experiences/work experiences/life experiences that you could write or speak about during your application procedure, which, obviously, would consist both related and unrelated to the medical profession. In regards to grades, it's really hard to comment and say what the 'cut-off' is because the applications, to my belief, are looked at - as a whole person they are accepting i.e. their personality, grades and interests etc, rather than a person who has a perfect GPA and nothing else. For grades, I suppose anything above the 85% mark would do - provided you excel in the other requirements they are looking for.

Hope this helps.

 

[saphenous]

Hi,
speaking for uk schools they generally look at gpa no mcats. I know alot of people who have gotten in with about a 3.6-3.7 gpa.

Cheers, Saph

 

[Unch]

Grades sound about right. And as for MCATS, some schools do require them. UCD and UCC do, I'm pretty sure. And the numbers there aren't too lax. I know with my 29, the 8 in PS nearly sank me.

 

[ronin13]

Hey Unch,

How do you know that your PS mark almost sunk your application? I thought the schools were fairly vague/tight-lipped about the application process and the admissions criteria.

I only ask because I also got an 8 on my PS section (28P overall). Hoping it doesn't hurt me too much!

 

[Unch]

I only know because I applied back in April of this year and waited forever...hearing nothing. I eventually contacted Atlantic Bridge, asking why, "with my solid MCAT", I hadn't heard anything. Atlantic Bridge then replied that my scores weren't actually that high and that the 8PS was a particular concern. Thus my position on the waitlist. Then I remembered to send them my good mark in a molecular cell bio course I took last summer and the next day I was accepted. I think that a 28 or 29 MCAT is probably enough but only if you have really solid marks in your science courses. Basically, they just want to be sure that you can manage the science in med school. But then you're right, admission is all guesswork anyway.

Feel free to PM if you have more specific questions.

 

[Arb]

How do they handle mutliple MCAT scores?

 

[leorl]

They'll probably do what US schools do and take your best one, or best combination of different scores. I think the standard has risen in the past couple years, but I know a couple people who've gotten in with like a 24 and not great GPA. I think one of the reasons for the uncertainty in what exactly schools are looking for is that it depends on the applicant pool. In the US, you're pretty much guaranteed the same kind of applicant pool year after year because there's so many people applying - you're nearly guaranteed that like...say...10% of the pool will have over 36 on the MCAT (I'm just making these figures up). Whereas with the Irish schools, some years may be very very competitive with everyone having done research and everyone having good marks, and some years may not be as competitive. So you can't nail down a specific criteria or threshold level for scores or a set guideline for who to accept. So the success of your application is going to be affected by the achievements of everyone else who's applying now.

 

[FionaS]

What are the average qualifications of a student who gets accepted in a UK/Ireland school? Do most people apply after high school? After completing their BSc? Do they have specializations, or just plain BSc? What about research, is it a 'neccessity' for getting in? Grades? MCAT?

Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated

As a UK student going through the UK system:

Most UK students go to med school straight from secondary (high) school, into the 5 year programmes. Certainly don't have research! But they will have straight A grades at A level and GCSE.

UK students who are applying to 4 year graduate entry courses (ie those most likely to be competing with US students) will almost universally have a science degree - a BSc (Hons), usually in Biological Sciences or Biomedical Sciences. A plain BSc doesn't really exist here. Majority of those will be first class, or upper second class degrees (Kind of like A and B grades. All of them are honours degrees, which reflects the level of study and not the actual marks achieved).

Some of the graduate entry students will have also done PhDs, research etc, but by no means all of them.

Hope that helped a little.

 

[ayassen]

Im confused.

I thought that the programs straight out of high school were 6 years?

In Ireland there are 2 tracks. 6 year programs for anyone who dosent meet the requirements or people right out of high school, and 5 year programs for people who meet the academic requirements. From looking at the UK schools i see 3 different systems.

1) 6 year programs similar to mentioned above
2) 5 year programs for those with requirements
3) 4 year programs for espeically qualified students

Hey Mike,

Irish Medical Schools (at least RCSI) allows high school graduates, who meet certain academic requirements, to directly enter the 5 year program. For instance, I did the International Baccalaureate Diploma (done in high school) and was able to score high enough to be accepted into 5 year programs. There are several other students who attained high scores on the GCSEs and were also able to enter the 5 year program. Here's the link for RCSI's entry requirements for '06

http://www.rcsi.ie/admissions/entry_requirements/medicine/non_eu.asp?id=222&pid=220&jid=24&jpid=222

 

[dr strangelove]

Im confused.

I thought that the programs straight out of high school were 6 years?

In Ireland there are 2 tracks. 6 year programs for anyone who dosent meet the requirements or people right out of high school, and 5 year programs for people who meet the academic requirements. From looking at the UK schools i see 3 different systems.

1) 6 year programs similar to mentioned above
2) 5 year programs for those with requirements
3) 4 year programs for espeically qualified students

Mike,

There are still a few 6 year programmes left in the UK - some of them are for people that might not have the necessary sciences to get into a 5 year course, but most of these 6 year programmes incorporate a compulsory BSc into the degree, hence why they're longer. 4 years are strictly graduate only.

In Ireland, UCC and TCD are 5 year courses for everyone - this is why they're so popular at the moment. UCD is 5 years for people who acheive 600 LC points, 6 years otherwise. NUIG is 6 years without exception AFAIK.

BTW, I meant to PM you this, but I'll kill two birds with one stone by posting it here. It looks as though I was wrong about Leicester - they conducted a poll of final year students at their respective universities about how much did they enjoy their degree, and Leicester finished in the top ten! I'm very surprised by this, considering what I heard about Leicester in the past. Anyway, I'm off down to the 2nd annual UK Space Medicine conference in Leicester myself on October 15th, so I should be able to see first hand what it's like.