Over the past 5 years we have consistently had over 80% of Summer School students obtain at least 1 medical school offer.  The majority of attendees are multiple offer holders.  This year’s class have smashed our record with a 90% success rate.  Students from 2019 have written about their experiences here.

Medic Mentor have been successfully preparing students since 2016.

The reason why students don’t get it in is usually because of the grades, which is sadly, not something that we can prepare you for.  However, our Chief Mentors are experienced in helping students with lower grades obtain either medical school offers or alternative routes into Medicine (of which there are 14).  Some students choose to take a gap year, resit and then successfully re-apply.  Medic Mentor will continue to mentor you until you get into medical school, even if it takes an extra year.  Zalva is a student from the most recent class of Summer School.  She obtained 3As and 2Bs at Highers (the equivalent of ABB in the English System), when ordinarily students think that they need 5 As (Scottish System) or 3As at A-level.  In the live interview below, she shares her experiences with Medic Mentor’s Virtual Medical Society Students:

London Venue

University of East London, Dochlands Campus, University Way, Royal Docks, London E16 2RD.  

Stirling

University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA

Accommodation and Safeguarding

Students will be given same-sex individual en-suite accommodation.  Mentors will be supervising 24/7 and in addition there will be 2 Safeguarding Officers on site throughout the week.  We take safety very seriously and you can review our Safguarding Policy here

Most Summer Schools cost in the region of £3000-£5000.  These are summer schools that are either run by medical schools themselves or private companies.  Thier prices only cover the cost of attending the course itself, whereas the Medic Mentor Summer School also offers teaching and mentoring support throughout Year 13 and S6.  The Medic Mentor Summer Schools cost £2750, which is still a considerable investment, but not a lot for what students get for their money.  This includes all of your food and accommodation for 6 days, 2 face-to-face mock interview days in Nov and December after the summer school, skype interview practice before and after each interview, unlimited personal statement revisions, UCAS consultations, question banks for UCAT & BMAT and all of the Medic Mentor books. The actual per hour teaching rate works out at around £5/hour from Doctors and medical students (once all admin and running costs have been removed).  This is only acheived by our doctors working on a voluntary basis to help students.

There are also 0% interest no credit check options to spread the cost of the summer school for up to 2 years which makes it more accessible to the majority of medical school applicants.  You can register and secure your place now with a £250 deposit and even spread the cost for up to a year after the summer school.

Students from low-income backgrounds:

We will be offering 5 free summer school places for low-income students from 2021.  Applications will open in September and close on the 31st December.  We may be able to extend the number of spaces depending on the availability of government and charitable funding.

For 2020 registration click here (year 12 or S6)

For 2021 registration click here (for current year 11 or S5 students)

For 2022 registration click here (for current year 10 or S4 students)

Keertana Anne, attended the Summer School and is now a 3rd year medical student.  In this live interview, the mentors discuss whether it is worth the cost:

Students spend an entire day learning about current affairs, the principles of biomedical ethics, landmark discoveries and figures in the history of medicine and surgery, research principles, NHS structure and important medical organisations such as the GMC, NICE DoH etc.  This is covered through didactic teaching and small group interactive scenarios on the Monday of Summer School.

Personal statements are one thing less to worry about.  Students will complete their personal statements at the summer school.  We achieve this through our personal statement tutoring process which is very different to personal statement ‘review services’.

Personal statement review services are frowned upon by medical schools.  A review service does not make an effort to get to know the student and encourages someone else (often unkown to you) to edit the personal statement, which paramounts to cheating and can end up disqualifying the candidate.

We can however, provide support with personal statements using a proper tutoring process, where students write their own personal statements, which keeps your personal statment individual and personal to you.  Mentors can advise on what to include by selecting the most medically relevant experiences to include and they can provide feedback on several drafts until your statement is completed to a very high standard. They will not write the personal statement for you, but they will save you a considerable amount of time.  It usually takes about 4 weeks for a student to write the personal statement independently, whereas at the summer school you will be able to complete this in 2 days.  This approach is in keeping with the Medical Schools’ Council guidance on personal statements (watch their video) and is included on Tuesday and Wednesday of the Summer School teaching programme.  If you need to make tweaks following the summer school, your mentor will be happy to work through an unlimited number of revisions until it is a personal statement that is unique to you and also meets the requirements of all of the medical schools that you are applying to. It’s just one less thing to worry about!

Koby and Laura attended the summer school in 2019 and have each obtained 4 medical school offers.  Koby will be attending Cambridge and Laura is going to Oxford this September.  They talk to Dr Siva about personal statements and the impact that summer school has had on the success of their applications.

The UCAT and BMAT are 2 completely different entrance exams.  Students applying to medical school will have to sit at least one (usually the UCAT) or both depending on which medical schools they choose to apply to.  On Thursday, students will undertake a full day on teaching on UCAT.  The teaching style is completely different to other UCAT courses because it is a lot more interactive and makes use of quizzes and gamification alongside useful lectures which detail each section of the UCAT.  The BMAT is taught on Friday in a similar way, but this time using a Kahoot Quiz and this ensures that students have demonstrated their understanding of each section before they leave the summer school.  In addition to this, Summer School students are given access to UCAT and BMAT question banks.  We select the best question banks from a huge selection of banks available out there each year.  The central committee undertake a review in May, which includes the feedback from previous summer school students.  This ensures that students have the best resources and teaching to prepare them for the entrance exams.

Read our UCAT blog that has been written by 1st year medical student, Rebecca Glendell who attended the summer school in 2018, received 4 medical school offers and scored in the top 1% of the UCAT in the UK.

On Saturday morning students will undertake formal mock MMI (multiple mini-interviews) and panel interviews with Mentors (doctors).  In the run up to Saturday morning, students will have interview preparation every evening throughout the week in a more informal and fun way. On Monday, we will introduce them to advanced communication skills and ask them to complete fun interview stations.  By Friday evening, they will be interviewed by the mentors they have been working with during the week in preparation for the brand new Doctors who will interview them on Saturday morning.  Summer School students will have been interviewed at least 10 times throughout the week and they will be given verbal and written feeback with mark schemes to take home.  In November and December, students will be invited to further mock interview days in London/Birmingham/Stirling for additional refreshers during interview season (November-March). In addition, they will be given skype interview practice with the Chief Mentors before every medical school interview that they attend.

Find out what last year’s students thought about the interview preparation that they received:

Choosing 4 medical schools out of 42 is a significant and time consuming challenge.  Your selection plays an important role in obtaining your offers.  Medical Schools differ in their entry requirements, competition ratios, weightings for various parts of the application (e.g. UCAT/interview etc) and teaching style.  Selecting your universities carefully will give you a distinct advantage in terms of obtaining offers.

On Saturday afternoon, your Mentor will conduct a UCAS consultation with you.  We invite parents to attend this too.  Together, your Mentor will be able to guide you through this process and help you to select the 4 universities that are most likely to give you offers.  These choices might change, but you can discuss this with the Chief Mentors as often as you need to before applying.

The medical school UCAS reference is also a very important component of your application.  It is also a little different to the sort of reference that your teachers would write for other courses.  You summer school mentor will write a detailed medical school reference which is checked by our Chief Mentors and then forwarded to your school teachers, in support of your application.  These references have always been well received in the past and saves your teachers a considerable amount of time too.

Medic Mentor run the largest scholarship programme for medical students in the UK.  This year we have 70 scholarships available for students starting in September 2020 and our Chief Mentors have fast-tracked 50 students, 48 of which are summer school students.  This means that they are interviewed first for the scholarships and the reamaining scholarships are awarded to students who have completed the Medical Gold Award (and passed their interview). The scholarships are merit-based and awarded to the most talented and hard working students.  They are worth up to £12,000 across a 6 year medical degree. Therefore, attending the Summer School does not guarantee a scholarship, but it does prepare you well.  We want to reward the best medical school applicants and naturally, Summer School students are the most prepared, committed and hard working.