ABSTRACT
Most candidates applying to medical school tend to meet the minimum entry requirements. For the 2009 entry, there were 18805 applicants for medicine, so students can see that each admissions team will have thousands of UCAS forms to sift through. This means that most forms, including the personal statement, have only a few minutes to make an impression on the reader. Panellists are sceptical about students who ‘want to help people’ without qualifying the statement. One student who made this error on his statement was asked by an interviewer what his father’s occupation was to which he replied, ‘petrochemical engineer’. The UCAS application cycle begins on 1 September and all medical applications must be received by 15 October. The easiest way is to copy and paste it into the personal statement window. Double-check that it has done this properly with no errors.
