Fifteen questions
The questions parents actually ask
Short answers, because this is a handout. Every one links to the guide that answers it in full, so a parent who wants the detail can find it without asking you.
1.What is the UCAT, and when does my child sit it?
The UCAT is the admissions test almost every UK medicine and dentistry applicant has to take, and most veterinary courses do not require it. It is a computer based test of reasoning rather than of science knowledge, so there is no syllabus to learn: it tests how quickly and accurately someone can handle information under time pressure, plus a separate section on professional judgement.
It is sat in the summer holiday between Year 12 and Year 13, before the application is submitted, and it can only be taken once in a cycle. That timing is the single most important thing for a parent to know, because it means the serious preparation happens in the summer term and the holiday, not in the autumn when the application is being written.
2.What counts as a good UCAT score?
There is no fixed pass mark, and this is the question parents are most often given a misleading answer to. Scores are reported alongside deciles, which show where a score sits against everyone who took the test that year, and universities set their thresholds against that distribution. A score that was competitive one year may not be the next.
So the useful question is not whether a number is good but which universities that number is realistic for. Each medical and dental school publishes, or can be shown to have used, a different threshold, and some barely use the test at all while others rank almost entirely on it. Looking the score up against the cut off table before the four choices are decided is worth more than any amount of worrying about the number itself.
3.How many universities can they apply to, and when is the deadline?
UCAS allows five choices, but only four of them can be medicine, dentistry or veterinary medicine. The fifth has to be a different course, which is why you will hear students talking about their back up: it is not pessimism, it is a rule.
The deadline is in mid October, several months before the January deadline that applies to most other subjects, and the reference has to be finished before the application can be sent. In practice the whole application is written during the first half of the autumn term, which is why schools start the conversation in Year 12.
4.What A levels do they need?
Chemistry and biology is the combination that keeps the most doors open for medicine and dentistry, and for veterinary medicine biology is normally the one that is non negotiable. Beyond that, requirements vary more than people expect: some schools require both sciences, some require chemistry and one other, and a few are more flexible.
Grade requirements are typically in the A*AA to AAB range, and are not the whole story, because most schools also set GCSE requirements and some look at the profile across all of them. If your child is choosing options now, the safest route is to check the requirements of a handful of real universities rather than relying on a general rule.
5.How competitive is it, honestly?
Competitive enough that a very strong student can be rejected without having done anything wrong, and that is the most useful thing a parent can understand early. There are several applicants for every place, the applicants are largely self selecting and therefore strong, and the four choices mean a student is not spreading risk the way they would in another subject.
It is worth looking at the current published figures rather than the numbers people remember, because the ratio moves year to year, and it differs between medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine. The honest framing for a parents' evening is that a sensible spread of four choices matters at least as much as raw strength.
6.Do they need work experience, and does it have to be in a hospital?
No, it does not have to be in a hospital, and the belief that it does is the commonest reason good applicants panic. Medical schools are explicit that what matters is what a student understood from an experience, not how impressive the setting was. Caring for people in a care home, a pharmacy counter, a charity shop that serves vulnerable customers, or a long running volunteering commitment can all evidence more than a week of standing at the back of a ward.
What does matter is duration and reflection. A commitment held for a year says something a one week placement cannot, and a student who can explain what they saw and what it changed in their thinking is in a far stronger position than one with a longer list. Dentistry and veterinary medicine are different here: both expect subject specific experience, and veterinary courses expect a genuine breadth of settings.
7.What is the personal statement now that it has changed?
It is no longer one long essay. UCAS replaced it with a set of structured questions, so instead of writing a single piece and hoping it covers everything, a student answers each question in turn. The substance being assessed has not changed much, but the shape of the writing has, which is why advice from an older sibling or a few years ago can mislead.
It is also worth knowing how much it counts. Most medical schools use the personal statement at interview or as a tie breaker rather than for shortlisting, which is done on scores and grades. It still has to be right, because a weak one can cost a student at interview, but it is rarely the thing that decides whether they are shortlisted.
8.What happens at a medical or dental school interview?
Most schools use an MMI, which is a circuit of short stations. A student moves between them every five to ten minutes and meets a different interviewer and a different task at each: a scenario to talk through, an ethical question, a role play with an actor, sometimes a practical task. A smaller number of schools use a traditional panel interview instead, which is a longer conversation with two or three people.
The MMI format is designed so that one bad station does not sink a candidate, because each is scored independently. It is genuinely different from anything a seventeen year old has done before, which is why schools that run mock interviews see the benefit: the format itself is most of what needs practising.
9.When will we hear about interviews and offers?
Invitations arrive from roughly November through to March, and universities work to their own timetables, so the gaps between them are long and uneven. A student can hear from one school in November and another in February, and the silence in between is normal rather than a signal.
Offers and rejections follow on a similar spread, and some schools hold decisions until they have interviewed everyone. This is the part of the year parents find hardest, and the most useful thing you can do is look up the published interview windows for your child's four choices so the waiting has a shape to it.
10.How do we decide which four to apply to?
By matching the student's actual profile to how each school selects, rather than by reputation. Schools differ enormously in what they weight: some rank almost entirely on the admissions test, some care more about GCSEs, some weight the interview heavily, and some use contextual criteria that may apply to your child. A list of four that all select the same way concentrates risk instead of spreading it.
The second question is what the course is like to study, because the teaching styles differ more than the name suggests. Some courses put students in front of patients in first year, others teach the science first; some are problem based and largely self directed, others are lecture led. A student who would be miserable on one style can be very happy on another, and this is a conversation worth having before the list is fixed rather than after an offer arrives.
11.What does it cost, and how is it funded?
For the first years, tuition and maintenance work as they do for any other undergraduate degree, through Student Finance. The difference is length: a medical or veterinary degree runs five or six years rather than three, so the total is larger simply because there are more years of it, and the terms are longer with less opportunity for term time work.
Funding for the later years of a medical or dental course is arranged differently from the earlier ones, and those arrangements are changed by government from time to time, so check the current position directly with Student Finance and with the individual university rather than relying on what was true for an older sibling. Separately, many universities offer bursaries and scholarships that are not widely advertised, and they are worth looking for early.
12.What happens on results day if they miss their grades?
Nothing is automatic. A university may still confirm a place with grades slightly below the offer, particularly if they have space, and they may not; the decision usually appears on UCAS Track early on results morning, before the school opens. If the firm choice is not confirmed, the insurance choice is considered next.
If neither is confirmed, there are more routes open than most families realise on the day: Clearing occasionally has medicine or dentistry places, a resit year is a well trodden path that many schools support, and a reapplication with a stronger admissions test score is a genuine strategy rather than a consolation. The one thing worth agreeing in advance is that no irreversible decision gets made before lunchtime on results day.
13.What if they get no offers at all?
It happens to strong candidates every year, and it is not a verdict on whether your child can be a doctor. The useful response is diagnostic: work out which stage they were filtered at, because the fix is completely different depending on the answer. Rejected before interview usually means the admissions test score or the grades against that school's threshold; rejected after interview means the interview itself.
From there the realistic routes are a reapplication with a better test score and a more sensibly chosen four, a foundation or gateway year designed for exactly this situation, a graduate entry course after another degree, or a related career that leads back to medicine later. A gap year used deliberately, with a stronger test score and real experience, produces a noticeably better application than a rushed reapplication does.
14.Does my child need a private tutor to get in?
No. Students get into medicine every year from schools with no tutoring budget and families who spend nothing, and there is no part of this application that requires paid help. The admissions test rewards practice far more than teaching, and the official practice materials are free; the personal statement is best helped by a teacher who knows the student; interview practice works well between students and with staff who have read the format.
If a family is considering paid support anyway, the honest advice is to be specific about what it is for and sceptical of anything sold as a package for the whole application. Be wary of any promise of a place or a score, ask who is actually delivering the sessions, and start with the free material first so you know what is genuinely missing. Spending early on a diagnostic rarely makes sense; spending later on one weak area sometimes does.
15.What can I actually do that helps?
Protect the summer between Year 12 and Year 13, because that is when the admissions test is prepared for and sat, and it is the one window that cannot be moved. Keep the four choices honest by looking at the entry criteria together rather than at league tables. Ask your child to explain the format of things back to you, since teaching it is how they find the gaps.
Then leave the content to them. The commonest way a well meaning parent makes things harder is by writing, rewriting or heavily steering the personal statement, which produces something that does not sound like a seventeen year old and falls apart at interview. Being the calm person who knows the timetable is worth more than being an extra editor.
