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2nd September 2021
From planning your Personal Statement to keeping up with medical news, here are the things you should be thinking about once you’ve sat your UCAT test.

Finalise Your Medicine Choices

You’ll get your UCAT score immediately after you sit the test. This is hugely advantageous because it means you’ll have a good idea of whether you’ve got a high, low, or average score – and you can use this to shortlist Medical Schools.

Find out how each university will use your UCAT score and make sure you’re shortlisting ones that you stand a good chance of being shortlisted for, based on your test performance.

You’ll need to be realistic when choosing a Med School – you might have set your heart on a particular uni, but if your UCAT score isn’t enough for them, don’t waste an application there. Remember if you apply to your strengths you are so much more likely to get an offer!

If your score isn’t as high as you need, it’s worth considering BMAT universities to increase your chances.

Start Building Your Personal Statement

In an ideal world, you’d have a fully complete draft of your Personal Statement before the end of the summer, so that you’re only left with the fine tuning once you go back to college/sixth form.

If you’re unsure about how to go about starting it or don’t know what to include, make sure you check out our guide to Personal Statements for Medicine.

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Start Preparing For BMAT

If you’re sitting the BMAT, it’s a good idea to start thinking about the test. For 2021 the only testing date is in November – but it’s worth knowing that people who start their prep earlier often score higher! It’s never too early to think about your BMAT prep and start considering how you can plan your revision in.

Keeping Up With Medical News

After submitting your application, everything will happen so fast and before you know it you’ll be going for your first medical school interview – some of them can even be as early as November!

One of the things you need to definitely start doing now (if you aren’t already), is keeping up with medical news. This doesn’t have to be too intense, but you do need to be aware of what’s going on in the medical field on a day-to-day basis – and start to get yourself around NHS Hot Topics.

Just spend half an hour or so everyday looking through BBC Health and Guardian Healthcare and keeping up-to-date. I used Twitter for this (and still do) – I follow a handful of journals and reliable Health news sites and skim through my feed everyday, reading any titles that interest me.

Words: Masumah Jannah

Masumah is a 1st year medical student at the University of Manchester. She writes a blog documenting her experience through medical school and also giving tips to aspiring medics: lifeofamedic.com

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