Medical School
If you’re dedicated to pursuing a career in medicine, the first step after finishing high school is to choose your medical school. At that school, you will spend the next couple of years gaining knowledge at a rapid pace, with frequent examinations and tests to make sure you’re not slacking off. However, the choice of your medical school is not an easy one, as there are many ways to go around it. Keep reading to find out the best tips on how to choose your future medical school.
Consider the admission tests
Most medical schools around the world require you to pass some sort of admission test, be it a standardized nation-wide test like the UCAT or MCAT, or internal examinations designed to test your knowledge before admitting you in. Depending on which tests you want to take, different medical schools will become available to you. Whether you get admitted, however, depends mostly on your score.
If you want to be ambitious, you can take more than one admission test to open up more opportunities when choosing a medical school. However, make sure you have enough time to study for all of them, as many of them feature different criteria of grading and different content. If you’re not sure if you can nail more than one exam, it is best to prepare better for the one than have a mediocre score in several.
Choose the school in accordance with your test score
After you have already taken the admission test and have gotten your score back, you can start thinking about which exact schools to choose. If you did well on your test, you might want to choose a school that ranks potential students based solely on the score – giving you a good chance of getting accepted.
However, if you passed your admission tests with a lower score, it might be a better idea to look for universities that use more criteria for admitting students, such as high school grades or SAT score. Some medical schools also state a minimum score for admitting students, so if you’ve passed that score, it might be worth it to apply there. In some schools, you will also be expected to pass an internal interview, so remember to prepare well for that as well.
Think about what type of university you want
There are many different types of universities, but the most common distinction is between those with campuses and those with separate faculties scattered around the city. If you choose a university with a campus, the best way to go about studying there is to live on the campus. This will give you a much closer connection to the student community – albeit at a loss of some of the freedom of living on your own.
If you’d rather stay independent and live on your own rules, finding a university without a campus might be a better choice. Such universities usually feature a less tight-knit student community, but give you a chance of also living a regular life outside of studies. Ultimately, the choice is up to your preference, so think carefully about which one suits you best.