This subject guide provides information on what studying Medicine at Oxford is like, as well as work experience advice, personal statement tips and Oxford interview advice!
What does a typical day studying Medicine at Teddy Hall look like?
Medics usually start the day with 1 or 2 lectures at the Medical Sciences Teaching Centre (MSTC, shown on the right). In first year, these cover subjects such as anatomy, biochemistry, genetics, physiology and pharmacology or medical sociology.
Some days this is followed by a lab class, usually in histology or physiology, or an anatomy class using prosected (pre-dissected) specimens in the demonstrating room.
We also have 2 to 3 tutorials a week, where we discuss essays we've written that week in small groups ranging from 2-5 students in size. Our tutors at Teddy Hall are fantastic, they give really engaging tutorials with lots of discussion, as well as useful essay feedback for you to build on. They are always happy to help you with any questions you might have!
Then in the evenings we have dinner in college, work on our essays and reading together or relax in the bar/JCR. The picture shows first year medics at a BOP (a 'Big Organised Party' in college) dressed as surgeons! Depending on what clubs you join, you might also have sports training, music rehearsals or committee meetings.
Why do you like studying Medicine at Teddy Hall?
Definitely the community! Teddy Hall medics stick together and help each other out, across students in all 6 years of the course. We also have loads of socials and events together as a group so we all get to know each other really quickly! Medics are offered the chance to move colleges after the first three years, so it's rare to have support from medics in much older years, but Teddy Hall students love it so much they almost always choose to stay.
Medicine at Oxford is pretty unique in that it offers the chance to do a research project in any field in your third year, which is one of the reasons I picked the course - it's really nice to get to choose different modules in third year and explore the underlying science of medicine more deeply. You also get an extra degree at the end of it - this means medics get to graduate twice from Oxford!
One of the other unique things about our course is the way we're assessed - Oxford sets essay based exams, which is a really great way to learn, as writing an essay encourages you to read around the subject in much more depth than a multiple choice or short answer question. This allows you to gain a much wider understanding of medicine, often encompassing the research underlying the science as well.
Work Experience
For medicine it's important to have some relevant work experience to demonstrate an understanding of what being a doctor is like. It doesn't matter how much you have, or how impressive it is, as long as you learned something from it! Things like long term volunteering in a care home or hospital are just as valid as a short placement in neurosurgery for example. For Oxford, it may be useful to find out a bit about working in a lab, whether that's through a placement (although this is by no means necessary!) or reading about it online. Our course has a research project in the third year, so it can be good to get a taste for whether you'll enjoy that or not!
Personal Statement
Oxford recommends that personal statements have a balance of around 90% academic content to around 10% extracurricular content. Academic content doesn't mean you have to write an essay on something in medicine or anything! It means you need to show evidence of your efforts to find out more about your subject outside of school. This can include your work experience, as well as other activities known as super-curriculars (meaning above and beyond your school curriculum). Some of the ones we enjoyed are suggested in the list below:
Reading books - some we've read and enjoyed recently are:
This is Going to Hurt, by Adam Kay - an interesting insight into being a junior doctor.
Complications by Atul Gawande - Gawande is an American doctor who writes about being a surgeon.
Unnatural Causes by Dr Richard Shepherd - this describes being a forensic pathologist, one of the many career paths you can take in medicine.
Diagnosis by Lisa Sanders - if you like the TV show House, you'll like this book! It describes a variety of unusual and difficult cases in medicine.
Gene Machine, by Venki Ramakrishnan - this is about the discovery of the structure of the ribosome, and gives a good insight into lab science!
The Health Gap by Michael Marmot - about why there are disparities in health in different populations.
Inferior and Superior, both by Angela Saini - these are about sexism (Inferior) and racism (Superior) in science, which are important issues to consider as a doctor.
Listening to podcasts - podcasts are free to listen to online! Some of our favourites include:
The Food Medic podcast - this podcast is run by a junior doctor discussing different issues in medicine with experts in their field.
Sharp Scratch by the student BMJ - this podcast discusses issues affecting medical students.
Life After the Letters - two junior doctors discuss the stories and challenges they've come across while working in medicine.
Oxford University on iTunes U - there are several lectures on medicine free to access on the Oxford iTunes U channel.
Massive Open Online Courses
FutureLearn - this is a site where you can take short online courses for free. They have a range of courses taught by a range of universities, lots of which are related to medicine and can be taken over summer or fitted easily around schoolwork!
Videos and online lectures
TED talks are free online talks which can be found here. There are plenty related to lots of different areas of medicine!
Crash Course Anatomy and Physiology - videos briefly introducing areas studied in first year medicine.
Centre for the Creative Brain - a series of talks linking neuroscience to creativity held every year at Teddy Hall, which you can find here.
Teddy Talks - research talks, some of which are related to medicine, which can be found on the Teddy Hall YouTube channel here.
MIT OpenCourseWare - MIT has a whole range of lectures on YouTube which are open to anyone!
Reading news and research articles
The Oxford Medical School Gazette is run by Oxford medics and is available to read online for free here.
The Oxford Scientist is a student run paper about science - health and medicine articles can be found here.
You can also read the news online regularly to keep up to date with current issues in health and medicine! It's important for doctors to keep up to date like this, as medicine is a constantly evolving field.
Probably the best approach to a medicine personal statement is to lay out the process by which you decided you want to be a doctor. Why do you want to study medicine? What did you do to help you decide? It can be useful when planning to start at the beginning and almost write a timeline of all the things you've done which can be linked to the field. Did your work experience lead to you watching a particular lecture, or reading a specific book? Mention it! It's useful for tutors to see evidence of you exploring things that interested you in more detail. Other top tips include:
Make sure you've read every book/paper/article or listened to every talk you mention. Tutors often ask about them, and you'll look pretty silly if you don't know what the book is actually about!
Try not to use cliches like 'I've always wanted to study medicine' - it's quite unlikely that since you came out of the womb you've wanted to be a doctor. Tutors want to see that you made an informed decision to study it!
It can be useful to have evidence of the characteristics Oxford tutors look for in a medic, which can be found here.
Write about your extra-curriculars by linking them to medicine, don't just list them! For example, you can learn a lot of interpersonal skills at a part time job.
BMAT - Entrance Exam
The BMAT is the entrance exam Oxford uses for medicine. Details of it are here.
The best way to practise it is to do lots of past papers, as well as checking the syllabus to make sure you have a good understanding for the science section! You can also use GCSE science notes to revise if you don't study physics/maths. It's also a good idea to practise the essay writing paper on a printout of the actual answer booklet - they won't give you any extra paper, so you need to be able to write concisely.
Interviews
The first thing to remember about interviews is that even getting an Oxford interview is a huge achievement!
For medicine, you'll have two interviews at one college, which you'll stay overnight at (under normal, non-pandemic circumstances), and two interviews at another college. Some colleges choose to divide these into one ethics and one science interview, while others choose to ask a combination of questions about both ethics and science in both interviews. They often ask you to talk about graphs or diagrams, design a study, or consider science you've studied before in a new context.
Oxford Interviews aren't a quiz with a right answer - the tutors are trying to assess how you think and approach a problem. In that respect, the interviews can't really be 'revised for', but there are some things you can do to prepare!
Talk through problems out loud - this can be things in the news, common problems in medical ethics (such as the ones on the GMC ethical hub here), or science problems. Talking through your thought process at interview is really important as it allows tutors to know what's going on in your head while you think about a problem, and they can redirect you if you're going off track!
Keep exploring medicine! Written your personal statement? Great. But that doesn't mean your interest in medicine has vanished - it can help if you read around the subject or continue watching videos/lectures or listening to podcasts outside of the ones you wrote about. Not only does it help the tutors see you didn't just do all that reading so you could put it on UCAS, you might be able to link science you read about in relation to the problems they give you in interview.
Know the pillars of medical ethics - it's important to be aware of these when talking about ethical problems.
Know about confidentiality - when are you allowed to break patient confidentiality? Are there any situations where it's acceptable to?
Don't be afraid to ask for help, say you've forgotten or you don't know. The tutors aren't expecting you to know everything about a problem, otherwise you wouldn't need to do a medicine degree! You can always let them know you haven't studied a topic in school yet, or say 'I don't know much about this, but here's what I do know' or literally 'I'm really sorry, I'm really nervous and I've drawn a blank/am thinking in circles'. However, don't respond with 'I don't know' to every question - try to link them to things you understand and give it a go, even if you think your answer is silly or wrong!
We hope our medicine guide helps, GOOD LUCK in your application and we can't wait to meet you at Teddy Hall!
Watch our Q&A to meet one of our current medics, Alex: