Leicester Medical School offers a patient-focused, integrated curriculum, with early patient contact. The programme includes a range of active learning opportunities, working within a small group for practical cadaveric dissection sessions and practical skills sessions.
You'll undertake clinical attachments in each year of the course; during Phase 1 – Year 1 and Year 2 – these will be in the form of 'early clinical attachments'.
During Phase 2 – Years 3–5 – you’ll undertake the following clinical placements:
You’ll find a full breakdown of the curriculum here.
Gain access to a recording of our free webinar and find out what a day in the life of medical student Helen looks like. There's also videos covering all aspects of medical school applications and the UCAT.
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During ‘Phase 2’ you’ll undertake student selected components, which will give you the opportunity to explore an area of clinical or non-clinical medicine that is of interest to you.
In your final year, you’ll have the opportunity to undertake a six-week elective, exploring any branch of medicine of your choice, either within the UK or abroad.
In addition to this, Leicester Medical School also provides the opportunity to study an optional intercalated degree, giving you the option to pause your MBChB course for one year to study for an additional degree. Leicester offers a range of intercalated MSc or integrated BSc options; you can find out more about their intercalated degrees here.
Leicester offers Medicine with Foundation Year, which provides applicants who do not meet the entry requirements for the course an alternative route. Successful completion of the Foundation Year allows you to progress on to the standard five-year MBChB programme. You can find more information about this option here.
Leicester Medical School uses the Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) format for its interview.
The MMI consists of a 'number of individual mini interviews', aimed to assess a wide variety of areas, such as:
It is worth noting, that while many medical schools clarify that they do not assess academic ability, Leicester does list this as an area that will be assessed through the MMI.
For 2023 entry, interviews will take place online across the following dates:
You can find more information about Leicester’s MMI and an extensive list of what is assessed here.
For most UK medical schools you’ll be required to pass an admissions exam before you’ll be selected for interview.
Admissions exam for Leicester: University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT)
The UCAT assesses your skills, characteristics and professional behaviours against those required for medical school. The exam is separated into 5 sections: Abstract Reasoning, Decision Making, Quantitative Reasoning, Situational Judgement (SJT) and Verbal Reasoning.
Leicester uses your UCAT score alongside your GCSE, AS/A Levels (achieved) and degree (achieved or predicted) grades to score and rank you in comparison to other candidates to determine if you’ll be selected for interview. Leicester also specifies that you must achieve a minimum of band 3 in the SJT. Therefore, it’s essential that you perform well in the SJT section and achieve a competitive total UCAT score.
Our adaptive UCAT question bank will help you to prepare effectively with questions personalised to your learning needs. Using artificial intelligence, our algorithm automatically assesses your strengths and weaknesses, and ensures that you’re focusing on the areas which you need to develop to improve your UCAT score.
The question bank dashboard (below) also makes it easy for you to see how you’re performing in each of the sections with your calculated skill level, response time and the number of questions you’ve answered correctly.
If you’re applying to Leicester and need to achieve a minimum band 3 in SJT, you can see at a glance if you’re meeting this requirement, or if you need to dedicate more time to it. Likewise, you can see any area in which you’re not performing as well, which could potentially pull down your total UCAT score, which is also used by Leicester for interview selection.
For more information about the UCAT, including UCAT dates and fees, scoring and decile ranking, visit our UCAT page.
