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Medical student practicing clinical skills at Castle Hill Hospital, Hull

Selection procedure

Find out how applicants meeting our minimum academic requirements are ranked for interview and offers to study Medicine.

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Introduction

Selecting for excellence

Our aim is to produce not just doctors, but brilliant doctors who will deliver outstanding care to their patients.

Our selection procedure has been designed to enable us to assess not only academic ability, but also those skills and qualities that we feel are critical for doctors now and in the future.

We believe fairness and transparency is of utmost importance when selecting applicants and aim to share as much information as possible about our selection policy, and provide support for applicants throughout the process.

Illustration of our selection procedure. The selection procedure is described in detail on this webpage.

Key facts

Applicant and offer numbers

Applications received

Each year we receive roughly:

  • 1500-2000 applications for Medicine
  • 200-350 applications for Medicine with a Gateway Year
Interviews

The number of applications selected for interview varies each year. We expect to invite roughly:

  • 830 applicants for Medicine
  • 130 applicants for Medicine with a Gateway Year
Offers

The number of offers varies each year. For 2020 entry, we made:

  • 566 offers for Medicine
  • 76 offers for Medicine with a Gateway Year

Selection procedure

Open, fair and transparent

We give all applications full consideration, irrespective of the applicant's age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, marital or parental status, religion, social class, nationality, ethnic origin, or area of UK residence.

We and our parent universities are committed to widening access to higher education. Our admissions process selects applicants on the basis of their potential, and we take account of evidence of educational, social, health or other personal disadvantage.

Our step-by-step selection procedure is as follows:

1. Academic screening

All applications are screened to meet they meet our academic entry requirements and eligibility criteria.

Please see our entry requirements for Medicine and Medicine with a Gateway Year.

If your application does not meet these criteria, it will be rejected at this stage.

2. Selection for interview

Ranking of applications

Applicants meeting our minimum academic requirements and eligibility criteria for our programmes are ranked for interview.

Applications are considered within the context of the applicants to the same programme as you (Medicine or Medicine with a Gateway Year), in the same application cohort as you.

We do not look for a specific score to be achieved, but instead rank you in numerical order and invite the top scoring applicants to interview.

GCSE results (30 points)

Applications will be given an academic score based upon the best eight achieved grades at GCSE or equivalent Year 11 qualifications.

UCAT Score (40 points)

We award a number of points based upon your total UCAT score; we do this once UCAT results are released to universities in November. As such the number of points that each UCAT score will receive as part of our Selection Procedure will be determined after the UCAS deadline.

UCAT Situational Judgement Test (15 points)

Points are allocated depending on the SJT Band achieved, up to a maximum of 15 points.

Contextual data (15 points)

We are committed to selecting the best applicants based on their potential, we therefore use contextual information alongside your UCAS form to better inform decision-making. Due to the availability and comparability of data, the use of contextual information will apply to UK applicants only.

An additional 15 points will be awarded to candidates who meet at least two of the following criteria:

  • Candidate’s home postcode is in an area of low participation (POLAR quintile 1 or 2)
  • No parental experience of higher education
  • Candidate is in receipt of the UCAT Bursary

Interview Fast Track

We offer care leavers and applicants who have completed one of our recognised widening participation programmes or activities a fast track to interview.

Please visit our alternative entry criteria for more details.

Personal statement

We do not score your personal statement; however, it is an important part of your application to Hull York Medical School as it allows you to talk about your interests, achievements and ambitions.

We do read all of these and reserve the right to take them into consideration in selection decisions. We carefully examine all the information submitted on the UCAS form when making decisions about candidates who are borderline at the selection for interview or selection for offer stage.

If you are invited for interview, your statement is likely to prove useful preparation for interview questions. It is important that your statement is honest and accurate; we may check the claims that you made on your statement, and discovery of fabricated or exaggerated material may lead to the withdrawal of a future offer of a place.

References

Any application submitted without a completed academic reference will be rejected. If it is a while since you were studying and you have been in a full time job for more than one year we will also require a reference from your latest employer who will be asked to comment upon your suitability to study Medicine.

Pre-application experience

We advise applicants to have a range of experiences, either voluntary or paid, in both healthcare settings and areas that require interaction with people.

Clinical work experience is not an essential criteria for applying to medicine.

Your experience will help you to demonstrate in your application and interview that you understand, and are committed to, teamwork and the social context of healthcare.

It will help you to develop some of the values, attitudes and behaviours essential to being a doctor.

Please visit our work experience page for more information

3. Interview performance

We run Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs), where applicants rotate around a series of short stations.

In MMIs, we want to find out more about you – your personal characteristics and values, and your ability to think critically and part of a team.

Please visit our interviews page which explains what happens during our Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) and how they are scored, as well as helpful tips and experiences from our current Medicine students.

4. Selection for offer

Your scores from the separate components of the interview process are collated, in addition to points allocated depending on the UCAT SJT Band achieved, and your contextual data, up to a maximum of 10 points each. This gives a maximum possible score out of 100.

We then rank applicants in order of total score and make offers. We make offers after all the interviews are completed.

Selection procedure

Criteria

During our selection process, the following criteria are considered:

  • Academic ability, judged by prior academic performance and, where appropriate, predicted academic results
  • Evidence of motivation and reasons for working in healthcare
  • Evidence of a realistic understanding of healthcare issues and practice
  • Written and oral communication skills, and suitability for an enquiry-based learning course
  • Evidence of conscientiousness, self-motivation, responsibility and appropriate maturity and confidence

We reserve the right to alter our process if considered necessary.

Our admission policy follows the Guiding Principles for the Admission of Medical Students agreed by the Council of Heads of Medical Schools (revised March 2010).