Which Medical Schools should you Apply to?
Apply strategeically for the best chance of success
Use the free tool below to check yourself against the entry criteria of all 41 UK Medical Schools
Find out which are worth your UCAS choices
Every year I watch capable students throw away one or two of their four medicine choices on schools that were never going to interview them. Not because their grades were weak, but because nobody had told them that Imperial ignores GCSEs entirely, or that Birmingham weights them at almost half the decision, or that a UCAT score which comfortably clears one school's bar falls below another's published floor.
You get four medicine choices on UCAS. That's it. Choosing badly is one of the most expensive mistakes in the whole application process, and it happens before you've written a word of your personal statement.
What the tool does
It asks a few questions - where you live, your achieved/predicted A-levels, your GCSE grades, and your UCAT results if you have them - before checking your profile against the published requirements of each of the 41 UK medical schools.
The tool gives you:
Four schools worth applying to, explaining why each is a good fit
Four you shouldn’t waste a choice on, naming the exact requirement you'd fail
Other ruled-out schools, to save you time checking alternative options
Interview format, personal statement policy and applicant-to-place ratio for each recommendation
You can also select schools you're already considering and get a verdict on each one to see how good a match it is for your circumstances.
You do not need to register, or give me your name or email address to use the tool, and there are no hidden charges - it’s totally free to use. The tool uses a a carefully trained Agentic-AI that refers to university sources.
Why the four recommended picks are deliberately mixed
The tool doesn't just hand you the four highest scores. It builds a balanced shortlist - one aspirational, two realistic, one safer - because four choices at four equally competitive schools is a bad strategy, however strong you are.
It also spreads your choices across different selection methods. If your UCAT is the weakest part of your profile, being sent to four schools that all rank primarily on UCAT means one weakness sinks every application. The tool actively avoids that, and warns you if it can't.
Interesting observations
All these observations come directly from comparing the universities' own admissions pages and policy documents, not from forums or hearsay.
➡️ The UCAT is used in completely different ways. Imperial publishes a hard floor of 2320 out of 2700 - below it, you're rejected regardless of your grades. Edinburgh's is 1850. Sheffield pins its threshold to the 40th centile of the national cohort. Meanwhile Cambridge, King's, Cardiff and several others state plainly that they operate no minimum score at all and rank applicants against that year's field.
➡️ GCSEs matter enormously at some schools and not at all at others. Birmingham scores seven named GCSEs at roughly 45% of the shortlisting decision. Liverpool needs 15 points from your best nine. Imperial and UCL don't score them at all beyond a single English pass.
➡️ Your personal statement probably matters less than you think (with one big exception). Sheffield's policy states interviewers don't even read it. And Bristol, Manchester, Plymouth and others don't use it to select for interview. But at Keele it's worth up to 15 of a 25-point shortlisting score, making it a bigger factor than the UCAT.
➡️ Where you live changes your odds substantially. Dentistry and medicine places in Scotland are capped by the Scottish Funding Council. Glasgow interviewed around 70% of Scottish-domiciled applicants against a far smaller share from the rest of the UK. The tool accounts for this school-by-school rather than applying one blanket assumption.
What you'll need to hand
Your top three predicted or achieved A-level grades (Scottish Highers, IB and other qualifications are all supported), your GCSE grades subject by subject, and your UCAT score and SJT band if you have them.
If you have these to hand, filling in the form will take about three minutes.
If you haven't sat the UCAT yet, the tool still works - it just tells you honestly which schools it can't rule in or out until you have a score.
Double-check everything before finalising your choices
What this tool can’t do
This is a decision-support tool, not a prediction for any one individual. It models your chance of someone like you being invited to interview, because that's the stage governed by published, checkable criteria. It cannot see your personal statement, your reference, or how you'll perform on the day - and at several schools, including Birmingham and King's, the offer rests on interview performance alone once you're through the door.
Thresholds are also reset every single cycle, and several schools rank purely against that year's applicants with no fixed bar at all. Always confirm the current requirements on the university's own websitebefore you finalise your UCAS form.
One more thing worth knowing: the limit is four clinical choices in total. If you're applying to dentistry as well, those four are shared between both - you don't get four of each. Your fifth choice must be a non-clinical course.
And the part nobody can shortcut
People spend a lot of time thinking about personal statements and squeezing extra points in the UCAT, but the most basic thing every school on your list will demand is top science grades. Biology is where a great many medicine applications are quietly won or lost - it's the subject most likely to be the difference between an offer you meet and an offer you miss in August.
I've taught A-Level Biology and nothing else for 30 years, and I run weekly online masterclasses built around real exam questions, tailored to either AQA or OCR A with separate Y12 and Y13 groups. Classes are small, live and interactive, fully recorded, and every student gets a one-to-one meeting before their first session.
“Outstanding A-level Biology tutoring! Patient, engaging, and highly personalised—even in group classes, it feels one-to-one. Recorded sessions, all questions answered, and every student involved. Our daughter jumped a grade and achieved an A and a place to study Medicine at University" -Review, 2025