Medical School Rankings

When you consider which universities to apply to, you may be wondering which schools score most highly in university league tables. These tables are created using a variety of factors (for example, graduate employability or student satisfaction). These factors are added up to create an average, which produces an overall score for the university. The aim of this page is to compile these scores to provide a table of the top medical schools across the UK and internationally.

Universities score differently in UK medical school rankings according to the different factors. These vary from year to year. Plymouth University ranked 24th for the 2016 tables, but moved to 14th for 2017. Some schools rank very highly for student satisfaction, like the University of Aberdeen (4.31) but may only score 2.89 for research intensity.

It’s important to choose the university which is right for your requirements. This may mean the best medical school for you scores highly in facilities spend, or degree completion, or graduate prospects – or all three!

To compare different universities and their entry requirements, interview style and course format, you can use our medical school requirements comparison tool.

Medical School Rankings: UK Universities

Here are the top thirteen UK universities, which we compiled by combining the Guardian‘s top ten list with Complete University Guide’s top ten. Many universities, like Oxford and Cambridge, appeared in both tables. However, some scored very highly on one site but did not appear in the other due to a different scoring system – hence thirteen schools in our table!

You can rank the top medical schools according to different factors (for example, you could filter by the Guardian score, or by student satisfaction):

Medical School Rankings – how are they judged?

The above table is ranked using the following criteria to measure the best medical schools:

1. Complete University Guide overall score
2. Guardian score – the Guardian have also created their own way of ranking universities which is largely based on student perspective
3. Graduate prospects – a measure of graduate employability
4. Student satisfaction – borrowed from the National Student Survey

However, top medical schools are also ranked with the below criteria too to give them an overall score on the Complete University Guide:

• Entry requirements – the average UCAS tariff score from undergraduates
• Research assessment – a measure of the quality of research at the university, taken from the Research Excellence Framework
• Research intensity – a measure of the proportion of staff involved in research
• Student-staff ratio – the number of students per staff member
• Academic services spend – expenditure per student on academic services (for example, library or computer facilities)
• Facilities spend – expenditure on staff and student services
• Good honours – the number of students receiving first or upper second class honours degrees
• Degree completion – the number of students who complete their degree courses

Medical School Rankings: International Universities

International universities use a different ranking system to the UK to list their best medical schools, and this is a lot more difficult to find online. Top Universities ranks them according to an overall score, as well as by academic and employer reputation – though it is unclear how these are assessed. The table below shows how international universities score in medical school rankings:

Learn More:

• What A-Levels do you need to be a doctor?
• A-Level Resit Policies
• Medical School Comparison Tool