right thank you very much yes I am
Austen Spruce admissions tutor for both
medicine programmes run at our medical
school the five-year programme and also
the four-year graduate entry course I'll
be talking about the admissions
processes for both of those programmes as
I go through go through my slides so
this first slide gives you an overview
of the information that we use to make a
decision on who we invite for an
interview first of all for the five-year
programme at Birmingham you are required
to sit the university clinical attitude
test which must be taken in the year
that you are applying the score the
applications of we score the
applications of home non graduate
applicants based on GCSE grades UCAT
result and for the first time contextual
information the slide provides the
percentage contribution of each element
to the score I'll talk more about each
of these issues later whilst we do not
score your personal statement we expect
to see evidence of your commitment to
medicine you should look upon your
personal statement as the document that
summarises what you understand about
medicine and the evidence of the
development of your skills and
attributes these are the issues that we
will explore at interview you're also
required to provide a reference which
should confirm your your aptitude and if
this is relevant the reference should
identify any concerns or extenuating
circumstances that have affected your
education
For our five-year programme our standard
offer is set at three As at a level or
three sixes a higher level for the
international baccalaureate and the
subjects must include biology and
chemistry we accept a wide range of
subjects from the arts sciences and
humanities with a third A level
or the third subject at higher level but
not for the A levels general studies
critical thinking all the EPQ we do not
score achieved or predicted grades
though a minimum of
AAB or 665 must be predicted AS grades
are not used at all in the selection
process I should advise that if you
receive calculated grades this year even
if the results do not match our offer
requirement we will still consider an
application from you but this is on the
understanding that you will undertake
examinations in those subjects where
your grade falls short upon a
requirement in other words we will
accept a mix of calculated and exam
grades so you do not need to take
examinations in all subjects if one or
two of your calculated grades are
already at the required level to fill
our available places on the five year
programme we interview approximately 1300
applicants and as as a rough guide we'll
make about 900 offers and for selection
for interview we score each application
the GCSEs we will score seven subjects five
of them are specified and these are both
of the English subjects language and
literature maths and two sciences either
biology and chemistry or double award
science the final two subjects can be
any four GCSEs we allocate scores based
on the grades UCAT is being developed
this year as you will have read on their
website and then you will also read that
it will be possible to take the test
either in person or online and when we
receive the UCAT results for our
applicants what we do is we rank we rank
the total score of the four UCAT sub
tests and segregate them into deciles
we give the top score in our process to
the top 10% of applicants and then
finally we will allocate a contextual
score if you attended a school that we
characterised as contextual the next
slide says a little more about that the
value of the score will depend on the
POLAR4 quintile for where you live
the UK is divided into local areas and
the POLAR4 measure indicates the
proportion
of young people in an area that enter
higher education therefore if your
postcode shows as POLAR4 quintile 1
this represents that your local area is
in the lowest 20 percent in terms of the
of the proportion of young people to
enter higher education in our scoring
process an applicant from the lowest
quintiles
one or two receives the maximum score of
2.5 points then we rank applicants
according to a combined application
score out of 10 therefore there is no
threshold for any of the individual
components please note that it is not
possible to advise on the threshold
score because this will vary each year
according to the number of quality of
applications we receive to find out if
you are likely to be offered an
interview please use our calculator tool
available on our website the guidance
you receive is based on data from
previous admission cycles and also the
projected impact of advertised changes
to the process it is important to note
that this tool is a guide only and does
not guarantee either an invitation to
interview or an offer to study at the
University of Birmingham we recruit
students via the
University of Birmingham's Widening
Participation programme called pathways
to Birmingham I'm not going to say anything more
about those pathways here except that
full details of eligibility criteria are
on the website that are given on this slide
there is a national strategy to widen
access into medicine and to further help
us achieve that we use contextual data
actually we have used contextual
information for some years but
previously we assigned 20% of interview
places to contextual applicants now as
I've mentioned we incorporate contextual
data into the calculation of a score for
all home applicants it is important for
me to advise you that modelling of this
mechanism shows that it is an it has
minimal impact actually on the
proportions of interview candidates
from non-selective state schools versus
independent or selective state schools the
impact of the mechanism is actually on
increasing the proportion of candidates
from lower POLAR4 quintiles the
score is assigned based on attendance at
a contextual school which is
identified based on school performance
data for GCSEs or A levels in order to
to differentiate the scheme from
Pathways to Birmingham the threshold for
inclusion of a school in the contextual
category is set quite high and about 90
percent of state schools are included
an applicant need attend a contextual
school only for either GCSE or A level
not both and if successful following
interview applicants who attend a
contextual school will receive an
AAB offer I would like to emphasise that I
recommend using the calculated tool we
provide on our website because that will
guide you in assessing the likelihood of
whether you will be invited for
interview or not our graduate entry medicine
programme is another route into medicine
we have 40 places available on this
course and receive over 20 applications
per place we score an application again
but based on a number of factors which
are somewhat different from the five
year course that including obviously
results from the degree but also results
from secondary school as well as the
overall UCAT score an applicant must
offer a life science degree we define
this quite broadly but there are
exceptions we adjust the score we
assign to A levels if an applicant
attended a contextual school which is
identified in the same way as for the
five year programme except we consider
only the school attended for A levels we
wish to also recognize the acquisition
of skills gained through postgraduate
study or employment
therefore we score the time spent in
these activities the full details
of that scoring process itself is on our
website
graduates are also considered for
our five-year programme we do not score
an application for a graduate applicant
for the five-year of course requiring
only that threshold is also achieved in
the degree and A levels we are much more
flexible on the type of degree obtained
but the A level subjects must include
biology and chemistry normally graduate
applicants for the five-year program who
meet our academic requirements will be
selected for interview using the total
UCAT score I'm now moving on to
talk about how you should prepare for
interview as well as the qualities we
are assessing at interview in order to
help you succeed in the interview
process it is really important that you
gain an understanding of healthcare
practice normally the best way to
develop this as well as your skills and
providing patient care is to have an
active role as a volunteer and we know
that lockdown curtailed these activities
but you will not be at a disadvantage if
you do not offer these experiences and
what we have done instead is gathered
together a range of useful online
resources to replace face-to-face
activities one of these that we
particularly recommend is called Observe
GP produced by the Royal College of
General Practitioners
which contains videos of simulated
doctor patient consultations but with
all the resources we provide it is
important to complete a reflective
diary we provide guidance and resources
for this too - we will expect our interview
candidates to be able to evaluate their
own understanding and abilities so it is
important that you have a lot of
practice at doing this we recognise that
extra curricular activities will have
mostly stopped but this doesn't prevent
you entirely from engaging even if only
remotely with other people other than
your family and friends we suggest
sites that will allow you to connect
with others by interacting with the
public you are developing skills and
qualities that are very relevant for
interacting with patients as a doctor
and practice interviews are vital these
can happen online which would be good
practice if your actual interviews are
online and on that point it is
important to acknowledge that we may
have to deliver some or all of our
interviews online online for our face to face
interviews we use multiple mini
interviews and we will aim to deliver a
similar online format although we expect
it will need to be more restricted in
scope we are currently considering the
design of our interview process for next
year and we will update our website when
this is complete currently our website
describes the stations we used
this year and we will aim to deliver
a process that is close to that but
there will be differences
the common formats you will encounter
are indicated on this slide it is
important that you prepare for these the
main criteria we are trying to assess
are listed here too and my advice to you
is to work through a process where you
identify what is inspiring interesting
disturbing challenging about medicine
be able to explain why this is work out
what facilitates or impairs good
healthcare practice form your own
opinions on controversial issues and
reflect on your own abilities and
finally we expect candidates to
understand the importance of development
of their personal qualities to be
effective practitioners I hope you found
this information useful a comprehensive
breakdown of entry requirements and the
admissions process including interviews
can be found on the applying to medicine
section of the Birmingham Medical School
website and I give URLs on this slide
thank you for listening to this talk about
the medicine admissions process I hope
you apply here and I wish you the
best of luck with your application