Guidance for the completion of MB BS personal statement
We reserve the right to reject applications that are incomplete. Any application
submitted without a completed reference will be automatically rejected.
Applicants are reminded that they are required to declare all qualifications that
have been completed and certificated, including those that were failed, in their
application. Candidates with uncertificated A-levels should make sure this is
stated in their personal statement or reference. If you are found to have
deliberately withheld information on qualifications we will cancel your
application and inform UCAS.
It may be necessary for us to request additional information if there are gaps in your
education and/or employment record. You will be given a deadline for responding to
such a request. Failure to reply by the deadline will result in the rejection of your
application.
Your application will be assessed only on the information provided in the direct or
UCAS application. This will be used to select candidates for interview. Offers of
places will be made solely on the basis of performance at interview.
All applications are first read by our Admissions Team to ensure that you meet the
minimum academic requirements. If you do not meet these your application will be
rejected at this initial stage. If academic requirements are met, applications will be
given an academic score and passed to our Selection Panel. Applicants with the
highest academic scores - based on achieved grades at GCSE and A-level (or
international equivalent) will be invited for interview.
The remaining interviews will be allocated on the basis of evidence of non-academic
attributes. The Selection Panel will pay particular attention to your personal
statement and to the reference from your school/college. Please don't send in extra
information or portfolios of work unless we contact you directly to request it. In the
interests of fairness to all candidates, we will only assess what is included in your
direct or UCAS application form.
Within the Selection Panel, Selection Panel members will assess your direct or
UCAS application for information on the following areas:
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Understanding of the role of a doctor
Examples of regular hands-on caring work experience
Depth of experience in a role involving personal interaction
Reflection on what was learnt from these experiences
Initiative/enterprise
Work/life balance
Working in teams
Communication (particularly outside your peer group)
Quality of written application
Exceptional circumstances
If you address each of the first eight points in turn, using the guidance below, you are
more likely to score highly enough to be invited to interview. If you have a very low
score for any aspect of your application, which can easily occur if you fail to address
the area, you are unlikely to be called for interview. The threshold score above which
students are called for interview varies from year to year depending upon the quality
and quantity of applications that year.
You should ensure that this information is given to the person who will complete your
reference. Both you and your referee should address each aspect outlined above.
Referees should be aware that we expect to see more than a record of academic
achievement. References indicating your strengths in the areas listed above are
much more valuable than simple “school report”-style references.
Personal statement
The personal statement should be approached in the same way as a job application.
You should use it to provide evidence that you meet the "person specification", i.e.
that you possess the required characteristics of a trainee doctor. You should follow
the golden rule: show, don't tell. Don't tell us what you think you're good at; give us
examples of things you've done that show what you're good at. Please note that we
assess applications on the principle that observation does not constitute experience.
You should therefore avoid giving us a great deal of detail about time spent
shadowing doctors. We are interested in what you have done and what qualities you
have demonstrated, not what you have watched somebody else do. Furthermore, we
are not able or willing to "read between the lines": vague statements will not gain
marks. Unless you tell us specifically what you have done we cannot determine
whether it was a relevant or useful experience and therefore cannot give any marks.
As space is limited it is advisable not to include anything in your personal statement
that does not address these points unless it is required by another university to
which you are applying.
Understanding of the role of a doctor
Your personal statement should make clear what you understand the role of a doctor
to be and why this is the role you wish to undertake as a career. You must be explicit
about what you have done to help you understand the role of a doctor. This could
include shadowing, talking to doctors or learning from your own - or close friends' or
relatives' - experiences of being a patient. Use these experiences to explain why you
want to be a doctor. The remainder of your statement should provide evidence that
you possess the attributes (values, characteristics and skills) to make you a
successful doctor.
Work and voluntary experience
It is beneficial to undertake long-term, hands-on work experience in a caring role, so
that you are aware of what a career in caring for people may involve. Work
experience and/or volunteering can take many forms, from helping elderly members
of the community with shopping, through to helping in a hospice, or working with
disadvantaged children. Applicants who find it necessary to undertake paid
employment may use examples from their interactions with people at work. We are
not looking for medically related work experience, such as shadowing a GP or
consultant, although this type of experience might be useful for finding out what
being a doctor involves. It is direct, hands-on experience of helping ill, disabled,
distressed or disadvantaged people that is most valuable. Other valuable
experiences might include dealing with challenging people or situations, or going
above and beyond your basic duties to help someone in retail, customer service or
catering environment. It is vital that you provide examples from these experiences
that demonstrate the values, characteristics and skills required by a good doctor.
Claiming to possess these attributes without providing evidence will not gain you any
credit. Most credit will be given to applicants whose interactions go beyond
conversations and making cups of tea.
Whatever examples you choose to write about, it is important that you tell us how
long and how regularly you have been involved in the activity, why you chose to
undertake it, what your responsibilities were/are and, most importantly, what you
have gained from it.
In simple terms, you must tell us exactly what tasks you have undertaken in your
various roles, how much time you spent on them and what you learned from doing
them. For example, "During the last six months I spent one morning a week in a care
home, where I took responsibility for feeding three elderly residents. I learned that it
takes a long time: one of the residents would not co-operate without a lot of coaxing
and another had difficulty swallowing following a stroke, so I learned to feed very
slowly. I can now share experiences with the families and other carers in order to
improve the feeding experience of the residents." This is only an example. In other
examples you might be able to demonstrate the benefits of your intervention to the
recipient, such as progress made by a child with reading difficulties as a result of
work you have done with him.
There is no value in writing something along the lines of "Working in an elderly care
home for 6 months showed me the importance of respecting each resident as an
individual." You must explain how it taught you this and how you put this lesson into
practice (in this case, how you demonstrated respect for residents as individuals).
You should be aware that we might request confirmation from the host organisation
of any work experience detailed in your application.
Interests and extracurricular activities
Medicine can be a rewarding career, but it can also be challenging, frustrating and
distressing. Success depends upon the doctor's ability to keep up to date with
developments, cope with uncertainty and respond rapidly to change. At the same
time, it is important that a doctor's work does not dominate her/his life to the
exclusion of everything else. You should provide evidence of your ability to interact
with the wider world and make your own choices and decisions. This may include
examples of leadership, responsibility, enterprise and/or initiative, which might
involve activities in the community, workplace or school/college/university. You
should also provide evidence of a healthy work-life balance to demonstrate your
ability to cope with multiple - and possibly conflicting - demands on your time.
Extracurricular activities within community organisations, churches, sports clubs,
bands, etc., are all equally valuable but there should be some demonstration of how
you relax and find time to do things you enjoy, rather than a long list of worthy
causes and achievements. We are aware that different kinds of opportunities are
open to different people - e.g. that not everybody can play sport regularly or travel
independently - and will look at all kinds of activities.
Therefore we will give credit to applicants who show that they have successfully
achieved something over and above academic success through using their own
initiative. Credit can only be given to students who write clearly about their own
contribution. Credit may be given for setting up clubs/societies, organising fundraising, community activities, awards/prizes, evidence of achievement in a previous
career, etc. If your efforts were successful, remember to provide evidence for this as
well. For example, "While in my final year I found a number of other students were
interested in photography, so I set up a club that meets twice a term. I organised
outside speakers and competitions to be judged by the school governors. There is
now a thriving club with about 20 regular attenders."
We also give credit to applicants who have been able to demonstrate commitment
outside of the school/academic environment in any area that interests them. This
might relate to charitable work as well as sport, music or hobbies. No credit will be
given for simply listing interests. Commitment may be demonstrated by passing
exams or tests (e.g. music grades), completing significant challenges (e.g. three- or
five-peaks challenge), undertaking significant roles or participating in significant
events. Do tell us how much time and effort has gone into this, otherwise we cannot
give extra credit for activities that required an exceptional level of commitment.
Communication and team-working
Doctors must be able to communicate effectively with a wide range of groups of
people on a variety of levels. Experience in communicating with different groups,
including those with significant communication barriers, is highly valuable. Credit can
only be given to applicants who give an example of a task they have undertaken in
which they have demonstrated good communication skills. This does not have to be
limited to public speaking but ideally will be with people outside the applicant's own
peer group. Most credit will be given to applicants who can demonstrate that the
communication was effective, e.g. from feedback they received or an outcome from
the communication example.
Medicine involves working within teams and it is vital that potential doctors
understand how teams work, and how their own role would contribute to the overall
effectiveness of the team. Examples of team-working may be taken from a wide
variety of experiences both in and out of school/college/university. Credit can only be
given to applicants who give an example of how they contributed to the work of a
team, either as a leader or as a team member. Most credit will be given to applicants
who provide a credible statement about the outcome of their contribution to the team.
For example, applicants will not gain credit for stating that they passed a Duke of
Edinburgh award; however, they are likely to gain credit if they can give an example
of how they worked as part of a team during a DoE exercise.
Presentation and style
Applications will be assessed for the quality of the writing. Careless errors of
spelling, grammar and punctuation will affect your overall score, so please consider
carefully how you have presented your personal statement. Including unnecessary
abbreviations, acronyms or technical details (e.g. listing the names of the operations
you observed in a hospital shadowing period) is likely to lower your score.
Exceptional circumstances
Make sure you tell us if you have made any exceptional achievements or had to
overcome exceptional difficulties. It is helpful if these statements are backed up by
your referee.
Reference
Your reference is likely to be written by your head teacher, college principal, head of
year or form tutor. Applicants who are not currently in school or college should
approach an academic supervisor whenever possible: a "character reference" is not
sufficient. We do, however, want to know what the writer of the reference thinks
about you as a whole person, not merely about your academic achievements and
potential. Please ensure that whoever is writing the reference sees a copy of these
guidelines.
The areas in which we require information are:
Commitment to medicine
While the length of time that you have been committed to a medical career may be
relevant here, it is not the only factor. Equally important are the steps that you have
taken to confirm this commitment (e.g. work experience in a caring role). Work
experience in other areas which has convinced you that those areas are not the right
careers for you could even be mentioned here. Some insight into your awareness of
the realities, advantages and disadvantages of a medical career would be useful.
Staying power/perseverance
While we are obviously interested in whether you work at an appropriate level of
intensity, complete work on time and are reliable, some insight into your interest and
enthusiasm for the subject would also be useful. Late developers should not be
disadvantaged by this process. We are keen to hear about students who have
blossomed in their interest and commitment relatively late in their school career or as
a graduate or other later applicant.
Communication skills
The ability to communicate is essential to the practice of medicine. However,
communication is not merely about articulation and vocabulary but is also about
listening. Thus whilst we are interested in students' contributions to class discussion
and extracurricular activity, we would be very pleased to hear about how you relate
to others, in particular the less gifted students or younger students, and how well you
accept criticism.
Humanity, humility and responsibility
There is clearly some overlap here with communication but information in this
section should primarily deal with how the referee feels about your ability to care and
empathise (is there practical evidence of this?), and how you see yourself in the
school and wider community or in the case of later applicants in the workplace or in
higher education. Direct evidence of caring is likely to come from the personal
statement, but the reference might add details of activities through which you have
raised money for - or awareness of the plight of - less advantaged individuals or
groups. It is an advantage if your referee can provide examples of your willingness to
take on responsibility and ability to deal with it.
Intellectual potential
This is not only evidenced by your GCSE grades and achieved or predicted A-level
grades or degrees. It is important for the referee to tell us about late academic
developers, e.g. the student who achieves the bare minimum GCSE grade A passes
but is likely to blossom at A-level and beyond. Other evidence of intellectual potential
beyond merely the ability to pass exams is welcome.
Teamwork
These skills may be demonstrated either within or outside school. We recognise that
not all students have sporting aptitudes but participating in sport is not the only way
in which students can excel in this area. Social and charity involvement would be
relevant here as would membership of choirs, orchestras etc. The ability to work as a
member of a team in class practices, field trips, hikes, expeditions etc. will also be
important. Once again we recognise that not all schools and colleges will have equal
opportunity to assess teamwork skills and therefore where such opportunities do not
exist within school, we strongly encourage the referee to obtain independent
information from other sources. Examples that involve leadership skills are
particularly valuable, although part of successful teamworking is the recognition that
everyone can't be the leader.
Mitigating Circumstances
We strongly recommend that in addition to all the above sections, any mitigating
circumstances which may affect not only academic performance but any aspect of
the information contained within the direct or UCAS form should be included in the
referee's report. If you experience any extenuating circumstances at the time of your
examinations, your school or college should report this immediately to the relevant
examination boards so that any allowances can be made. If we consider that
extenuating circumstances brought up in the reference should be taken into account
formally in the assessment of your application, we shall write to your referee to
request further details. Please do not send such details unsolicited.
Tips for applying to do medicine
So, how do you get in on to medicine course? There are no hard and fast rules but
there are things you can do to make sure you’re in with a chance.
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Think clearly about why you want to do medicine and write a list of your
reasons – it would be good to get these across in your application.
Whichever university you apply to, make sure you visit it, talk to the students
and have a good look around the campus and city – five years is a long time!
Try and get some experience in a hospital, GP surgery or hospice – it’s good
to see what being a doctor is really about. If you’ve tried applying for work
experience and just cannot get any, then don’t worry, think about doing some
voluntary work or some community related work.
Don’t worry about, meeting the ‘set’ criteria for medicine, everyone is an
individual and has different qualities to offer, just be positive about what you
have to offer.
If you get an interview, then be confident and relax, it’s your opportunity to sell
yourself, if you have any questions then don’t be shy and ask them!
You might have heard some scary rumours about the application process – hopefully
these points will set your mind at ease:
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Don’t worry about applying to other universities, and being discriminated
against your other choices – selectors no longer see which other universities
you’ve applied to.
It doesn’t matter if you also apply for a non-medical degree, as long as you
can show a case for applying to medicine.
If you want to take a gap year - then do so, universities encourage students
with different interests who have a range of experiences they can bring to
their course.
Our selectors are not influenced by whether your parents are doctors, or what
type of school you come from. It is you they are interested in.