Medical awards act as powerful indicators of a student’s potential for success in the medical profession. When admissions committees or future employers review applications, they often look for evidence of outstanding performance and a strong commitment to the field. Winning a medical award provides concrete proof of a student’s capabilities, as it is typically bestowed by renowned experts and national medical organisations, like Medic Mentor. It demonstrates that the student’s skills have been acknowledged and endorsed by esteemed professionals, elevating their profile and distinguishing them from other applicants.

There are 3 levels of awards that students can involve themselves with. Student’s will be enrolled automatically to the awards programme which will correlate with your chosen Pathway. For example, if you were to register on the Bronze Pathway, you’ll be automatically enrolled into the Bronze level of the awards programme, and should you wish to advance to the Silver Pathway, you’ll be automatically enrolled onto the Silver level of the awards programme, and so fourth. 

Students will follow the Awards Mark Scheme, completing activities for those levels, accumulating prizes, certificates and evidence of valuable medically relevant extra curricular activities in the process that makes them stand out as medical applicants. When you complete all of the criteria for the specific award level,  student’s are awarded with a certificate of completion for the Award as recognition for their commitment to medicine.

Absolutely! Regardless of which level you start on, you can use activities that you have been involved with through secondary school from year 10 onwards, as long as they are still relevant and up-to-date. This is line with medical school admissions criteria too. Medical schools rarely accept evidence of activities or prizes that you have completed prior to year 10 because it is not ‘current’ enough for your application. 

As you work through each of the criteria, you must ensure that you are gathering evidence of your achievements. The criteria for this ‘evidence’ is very flexible, for example you can submit a certificate, reference, email, screenshot, photo or even a video of your activities. This is not an exhaustive list either! We ask that you upload your evidence for each criteria onto your allocated Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum Pathway form for sign off. This will also save all of your achievements in one place and keep you organised! This process will encourage you to collect evidence as you go along, as it is far more difficult to ask for a reference from a work experience placement months after you have completed it. Medical Schools are also well within their rights to ask for your evidence at any point of the application process, and at random. That is why getting into the habit of carefully structuring and prioritising your extra-curricular activities and collecting evidence is a crucial aspect of your application process.

This depends entirely on how proactive the student is. You can complete your awards programme as quickly as you want, or you can work through it slowly and at a steady pace. However, there is a deadline on the Gold level awards programme in order to be considered for a £12,000 Medic Mentor funded MedSoc UK scholarship. This is because all of our students that complete the Gold Awards are automatically guaranteed a scholarship interview. At the interview stage, all students are on the same level and the award is made based on interview performance. We do not take into account your grades, or any means testing. That is because these are merit based awards that are awarded on the potential of the students and their enthusiasm to learn and make a difference in the future. The scholarship interviews take place in the summer just before students start university. So the deadline to complete the Gold Award is June 30th in year 13/S6/Northern Irish 14, in time for the scholarship interviews

Yes! The awards programme criteria are cumulative.  For example, under the application knowledge criteria it states that at the Bronze level you need to attend one medical conference or educational session (such as in-person or virtual societies and clubs), and for Silver you have to attend 2. But if you start on the Bronze award programme, and you have already completed one conference, in order to complete the Silver award you only need to complete one addition conference (not 2) because the criteria stack on top of each other – it is cumulative. That means, that even if you start at the Gold level and you are working through all of the Gold criteria, you will automatically complete Bronze and Silver because this criteria is already contained within Gold.  Therefore, you will still be awarded with all three levels of Award. 

Lots! 

Awards E-learning programme: E-Learning is available to students on the Silver, Gold and Platinum Pathway’s. If you enrol on one of these three pathways, the e-learning is the first thing you should watch after registering and starting your awards programme! There are detailed videos explaining every single criteria, their significance to the medical school application, and the types of evidence that you can collect to get signed off.

Awards Drop-in Clinics: We run virtual drop-in clinics every Friday for 2 hours on zoom. Students are provided with their own zoom link which they can use at any time. Doctors and mentors will be available online during this time to answer any awards-related questions that you have, and provide guidance on organising and arranging your extra-curricular activities to ensure that you are prioritising the best examples and collected the correct evidence too!  

Extra-curricular activities: We run a huge range of extra-curricular activities at Medic Mentor to help you conveniently and effectively sign off your awards criteria and build up your impressive list of prizes, certificates and valuable experiences. This includes:

  – Leadership opportunities:  Students who are enrolled on the Silver, Gold or Platinum Pathway’s can apply to the Medical Leadership Programme, apply for committee position on the UK’s largest virtual medical or wider-reading societies.

  – Teaching opportunities: You can teach at society meetings, or within your own school with the help of Medic Mentor resources.

  – Presentation opportunities: You can deliver a presentation at any of our national medical conferences or society meetings. You could even win a presentation prize!

  – Research opportunities: You could write and article and publish this in a national medical magazine with Medic Mentor.

  – Prizes: Students on the Silver, Gold or Platinum Pathway’s can apply for the national medical essay or art competitions that take place 4 times a year. We also run fortnightly competitions as part of the student societies, as well as medical ‘challenges’ during the school holidays!

  – Volunteering: Medic Mentor is an official partner of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund which is the Doctors Charity in the UK. We regularly host fundraisers in support of the RMBF which will count towards volunteering. All of our students who take part in our virtual fundraisers are awarded certificates and references from the RMBF for their valuable contributions.

Medical Conferences: We host a range of conferences every weekend, where students can strengthen their application knowledge base and receive a certificate for their time commitment to their medical school applications. 

At Medic Mentor, we have pre-prepared medical activities at the ready for students to easily slot into at any time.  All of our programmes are designed with students in mind and so we ensure that they save as much time as possible while providing the maximum amount of impact. All of our Awards students have these at their fingertips, and it is no wonder that so many Medic Mentor students go on to become successful medical students and doctors in future!

You will be automatically registered for the Awards Programme by enrolling onto one of our Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum Pathways. Each Pathway correlates to the Awards programme level, but Platinum will give you full access to the Gold level awards.