Summer School Widening Access to Medicine 

What is Widening Access and Participation?

Widening Access and Participation is designed to diversify the clinical careers, and support students from disadvantaged backgrounds into the professions by levelling the playing field for underrepresented communities to access clinical courses at university.  Medic Mentor is committed to raising aspirations and widening access.  Each year at Medic Mentor we honour our commitment to widening access and participation to Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary careers pathways, with our annual funded places to summer school application scheme.

Eligibility

This is exclusive to year 12 students only, as the summer school programme operates throughout the summer holidays prior to applying via UCAS.

Students’ achieved and predicted grades will be taken into account and aligned to contextual offer data from the universities. Which is cross referenced against references obtained from your teachers/tutors.

Students will need to be able evidence at least one of the eligibility criteria if shortlisted.  Eligibility has been carefully compiled through understanding the individual medical, dental and veterinary schools eligibility criteria to ensure our eligibility is aligned.

From the below eligibility, students can identify with one or more of the criteria, and if shortlisted, will need to be able to provide evidence on request – which is documented alongside the eligibility.

  • Quintile 1 or 2 postcodes/POLAR 4 – As part of your application, you will be required to visit the following website to enter your postcode and upload a screenshot of your postcode results – Search by postcode – Office for Students
  • Students in receipt of Free School Meals – Evidenced by school confirmation letter
  • Students whose families are on Means Tested Benefits (Universal Credit for Job Seekers Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Personal Independence Allowance and Working Families Tax Credits) Please note – Family Tax Credits and Universal Credit alone are not Means Tested benefits and are not eligible.  Evidence will be a letter confirming type of Universal Credit issued by DWP within 3 months previous to shortlisting.
  • Students in receipt of either 16-19 bursary or EMA – Evidence by school confirmation
  • Students with experience of being in care/looked after children – Evidenced by local Social Services
  • Students who have had a parent/s serve within the British Military Services at any point before the students 25th Birthday
  • Students estranged from their families for 1 year or more (Evidenced by school/local authority letter)
  • Students with Refugee/Asylum Seeker Status – evidenced via Home Office Correspondence
  • First Generation in family to University – this includes mother, father and siblings.

Students can apply via the form below.

This is a standard application process and will include the completion of a 4000 character count personal statement, which will be used to shortlist students initially, and this is an opportunity for students to outline their motivations to study their desired career and experiences and skills development commenced so far.

Medic Mentor’s Summer School programme is the largest and most well established personalised mentoring programme in the UK for prospective Medical, Dental and Veterinary applicants. From its starting in 2015, the summer school programme has expanded almost exponentially and for our most recent Summer School 2022 cohort, there were over 650 applicants.

Our UCAS focussed Summer School is unlike any other because the programme extends far beyond the 5-day residential course. There is a tremendous level of mentoring and support given to prospective Medical, Dental and Vet students before and after the Summer School to help secure a place at university.

At Medic Mentor, we are incredibly passionate about widening access for students. Each year we strive to provide over thirty fully funded summer school places for widening access students. Many of these students go on to secure multiple offers from universities. As we grow in size, we envisage that over 25% of our students will come from a widening access background and they will be eligible for fully funded positions at our Summer School. It is clear that our programme facilitates a gateway for upward social mobility for our WAM’s student’s and we are incredibly excited for what lies ahead.

With the difficulty of navigating a new world post Covid-19, we here at Medic Mentor decided to meet these challenges and set up a completely virtual online summer school for our students, alongside our in person summer school for those who could attend. This pilot was extremely successful, and across the UK we had over 190 students attending our virtual SS. Alongside this, our virtual students will be entitled to 4 in-person interview days so they do not miss out on vital preparation before interview. 

With the ease of a virtual set up, we were able to cast a wider net on the number of widening access students that were able to attend our virtual summer schools. Each year we envisage that our numbers continue to increase as Medic Mentor reduce the barriers to access for our most disadvantaged students 

As stressful as the medical application is, there’s so much support from Medic Mentor that’s available to you. The support that we receive makes the application a lot less difficult and the team at Medic Mentor are brilliant.

The level of support has been amazing. I knew that we would get support but I didn’t expect it to be as in depth as it’s been. It was just brilliant, I can’t put into words how much help I received and how much impact that’s had on my application.

It was also great to meet like minded people. However, to be able to do this with students from all over the country and international students too has been a great experience. To make friends with these other students gives us a support network through our applications and medical journey.

I’m looking forward to getting the rest of the application completed. Now that my personal statement is done, I can concentrate on that and I know with Medic Mentor it won’t be as stressful as it may seem. Queen Tanimowo

Year 13, Basildon Upper Academy