You’ve already taken the first step: you’ve decided you want to study medicine. So why do you need a mentor? Do the other 20,000 applicants who apply each year use a consultant? It’s well known that there is a large disparity in access to medical school in the UK. 80% of medical students come from roughly 20% of the sixth forms. What does that tell us? Accurate, up-to-date information with trained coaching makes a wealth of difference in a student’s outcome. So no, not all applicants use a consultant, but those who do have a great advantage. 

Dr Jiva has experience helping students get in who have the IB, various european baccalaureates, US and Canadian high school grades, Indian grades, as well as more than 10 other educational marking systems. She can help you understand the strength of your results compared with the medical school’s requirements. If you have a French Baccalaureate out of 20, you may think that there is an equivalent to your grade in British System. But unfortunately, it is not that simple. If you apply to UK medical schools with the French Baccalaureate, some medical schools will not accept it even if you are the top of your class, while some may require you to have an average of 16 and others an average of 14. This is true for grades from all educational systems where you cannot simply think about what is the equivalent British grade, but instead you need to find out for each programme how your achievements would be considered. Dr Jiva can speed this up for you 10 fold. 

Another consideration which is specific to international applicants is how to decide where to apply, as beyond the selection process, the competition ratio for internationals may be the most significant factor affecting your chances. On the medical schools website you will find how many international students they accept, as well as how many total applicants apply. But sadly, that does not tell you much about the competition within the international applicants pool. It is easy to get fooled and apply to a school that accepts 14 international students rather than one that accepts 4, but maybe the one that accepts 14 received 100 international applicants, while the one that accepts 4 only got 8 applications. These numbers are not correct but they illustrate a very real point which occur every year. Dr Jiva will help you understand where you have the best chances taking into account your fee status and the international competition ratios.