THE FIFTH CHOICE


Only four of your five choices, on your UCAS application form can be for medicine. This is to protect you from ending up with no offers at the end but, what should you put as your fifth choice?


You have four options when it comes to your fifth choice on your UCAS application form. The most common, the most popular choice is to put a fifth medically related subject down. Biomedical sciences; biochemistry or molecular biology. Something that could potentially lead to medicine in the end. There are lots of options that this gives you. Make sure that your fifth choice has lower grades than your medical school applications. Because if on results day you find that you don't get those results, your fifth choice is going to be your insurance choice. Your personal statement isn't going to be tailored towards this fifth choice, so be prepared in an interview to ask questions about this. Why would you be a good student on this course even though you really want to be a Doctor?


There are lots of other medical related jobs and there are always other paths in to medicine. I've covered all of those in different chapter. There are other vocational courses that you could put down, for example dentistry and ophthalmology, but those courses generally want people that really want to be dentists and ophthalmologists. And because of this don't always accept people that put it down as a fifth choice.


You could put down an access course. An access course is a year-long course which is either done at college or at university and is aimed to prepare you to do a medical degree. It's like doing a course that is in-between A-Levels and a degree course, a year that gets you ready for university. It bumps up you’re A-Level grades if you didn't quite get them. These access courses are often designed in conjunction with the medical schools, and the medical schools have a lot of impact into what is taught on that access course. Some of them even guarantee you an interview at the end of the year.


You could take the rather risky choice of not writing anything. If you are absolutely certain that the only thing you want to do is medicine and you do not want to do anything else, then you could leave this fifth-choice blank. This is quite risky. Because if you change your mind, and you do want to do biomedical sciences, you'll then have to apply through clearing.


And then lastly, you could put something completely, completely random. The universities do not see what your other choices are. Your medical school choices will not see for example that you put, for example, dance down as your fifth choice. The dance school might be slightly confused, while you sent them a personal statement which is a little bit about how much you want to be as a Doctor. This isn't a very popular option, but it is something you could do if you wanted.


That fifth choice, it is there to protect you, it's there to give you kind of like a safety net if you don't go on to any medical schools, so use it wisely.