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MENTOR HELPLINE
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General Enquiries
Co. No: 15364722 VAT Reg: 456648553
MENTOR HELPLINE
General Enquiries
The UCAS personal statement has changed significantly for 2025 medical school applications. Until now, applicants followed a traditional essay structure with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. From October 2025 onwards, the format is very different: students must now answer 3 specific questions.
This shift has caused understandable anxiety for both students and teachers. Why? Because there is very little official guidance on how to approach these new questions. What is clear, however, is that the answers must link directly back to medicine (“this course or study”).
That means applicants need to demonstrate:
A strong awareness of transferable skills relevant to medicine
The ability to use medical terminology (“buzzwords”) that goes beyond the school curriculum
A solid understanding of NHS values, medical ethics, and GMC standards
Every year, myths circulate that medical schools no longer read personal statements. This is not true. Admissions committees carefully review them to understand your character, experiences, and suitability for a career in medicine.
In fact, the personal statement is the only part of your UCAS application where you can showcase your ability to reflect. Reflection is a skill the General Medical Council (GMC) recognises as essential for doctors. Without reflection, you cannot progress through medical training, which is why universities value it so highly.
Different medical schools use personal statements in different ways:
Some use a scoring and weighting system to rank applicants
Others design interview questions around your statement
In competitive situations, the personal statement can act as a tie-breaker e.g. the deciding factor in whether you receive an offer
If you are applying to medicine, your UCAS personal statement could make or break your application. It is not just a formality: it is evidence of your readiness to study medicine and your potential to become a reflective, ethical, and values-driven doctor.
Taking your personal statement seriously gives you the best possible chance of securing that all-important medical school offer. The process of writing it will develop your skills and knowledge to master your interviews and become an exceptional medical student.
From October 2025, the UCAS personal statement for medical school has been completely redesigned. Instead of an open essay, applicants must now answer three very specific questions:
Why do you want to study this course or subject?
How have your qualifications and studies helped you prepare for this course or subject?
What else have you done to prepare outside of formal education, and why are these experiences useful?
To make a strong impression, you must not only answer these questions clearly but also link your responses directly to medicine, NHS values, and the skills expected of future doctors.
To write a personal statement that truly stands out, you need three things:
Medical school admissions teams and the General Medical Council (GMC) expect you to demonstrate core transferable skills and attributes such as empathy, teamwork, leadership, communication, and ethical awareness. You should be able to provide clear examples from work experience, volunteering, or extracurricular activities that connect directly to medicine.
It is not enough to simply list your experiences. You must show that you can reflect on them. Reflection is a critical skill for medical students and doctors, who are required to produce reflective essays throughout their training and career. To reflect well, you should use the Gibbs Reflective Cycle (which is not taught on the school curriculum). Admissions teams use your personal statement to evaluate whether you can reflect effectively, which is seen as a predictor of success in medical school.
With only 4,000 characters (including spaces), your writing must be concise, well-structured, and grammatically correct. Every sentence should demonstrate clarity of thought and link your experiences directly to medicine. Strong English language skills and the ability to express deep insight in a limited space are essential.
The new personal statement format is not just a formality: it is an assessment of your readiness for medical school. By mastering these three areas, you will:
Show admissions tutors you understand what it means to be a doctor
Prove you can reflect and learn from your experiences and pass future reflective assignments
Demonstrate the written communication skills required to succeed in medicine
Taking the time to craft thoughtful, reflective answers to these three questions will significantly improve your chances of receiving a medical school offer.
When writing your UCAS medicine personal statement (2025 onwards), it is essential to highlight the transferable skills that medical schools and the General Medical Council (GMC) expect future doctors to demonstrate. These skills prove that you have the right foundation for studying medicine and pursuing a career as a doctor.
Keep reading below to learn about the key transferable skills you should include, along with evidence to back them up.
Medical schools want to see that you can take responsibility and inspire others. Provide an example of a leadership activity outside of school where you successfully guided a team towards a common goal.
Medicine is built on collaboration. Showcase a situation where you worked effectively in a team to achieve success.
Empathy is central to patient care. Link this to your volunteering experience, showing how you understood and supported others.
Doctors must communicate clearly with patients, families, and colleagues. Highlight an activity, job, or hobby where you demonstrated excellent communication skills.
Admissions tutors want to see that you understand the realities of the profession. Use examples from work experience (virtual or in-person) to show how you developed insight into medicine and made an informed decision about becoming a doctor.
Research skills are critical for lifelong learning as a doctor. For Question 2 of the new UCAS personal statement (academic preparation), emphasise the research and study skills you have developed that will support your medical career.
A sustainable medical career requires resilience and balance. Demonstrate this through achievements such as medical awards, essay competitions, or additional qualifications (e.g. first aid).
The word “doctor” comes from the Latin docere, meaning to teach. Since teaching and mentoring is an essential part of medicine, include an example where you have taught or mentored others, proving you have begun to develop this vital skill.
To ensure you are fully supported, we have created a 4-day online personal statement tutoring programme, designed specifically for medical school applicants.
Flexible Schedule – The programme runs on Saturdays and Sundays, and you can choose the 4 days that best suit your timetable. You can select any Saturday or Sunday from the 13th September until the 5th October. Please be prepared to commit the entire day to working with your mentors (9am-5pm and then 6pm-8pm).
Online Delivery via Zoom – Learn from the comfort of your home, with structured guidance from our team of medical students and doctors. Ensure you have a working camera and microphone with a stable internet connection.
Step-by-Step Writing Support – Your tutors will guide you through the writing process, providing multiple rounds of feedback to help you refine and focus your personal statement quickly.
In your medicine personal statement, it is not only the activities and experiences you discuss that hold importance but also the quality of reflection that you demonstrate. Reflective writing techniques play a vital role in conveying the depth of your understanding and the impact of your experiences. In this section, we will explore the importance of using reflective writing techniques to enhance the quality of your medicine personal statement.
Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle is a widely used framework in the medical field for structuring written reflections. It helps individuals critically analyse their experiences, identify areas for improvement, and enhance their professional growth. In this section, we will explore how you can utilise Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle to structure paragraphs effectively within your medical personal statement. It is worth noting that this reflective framework remains relevant throughout medical school and as junior doctors progress through their training, with written reflections being an integral part of NHS E-portfolios and appraisal processes. Therefore, using Gibbs’ reflective cycle when writing your personal statement, will truly demonstrate great insight and make you stand out from other applicants!
Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle consists of six key stages that guide the reflective process which you can use for your ‘paragraph sructure’:
Description: Begin by providing a detailed description of the experience or situation you are reflecting upon. Set the context, explain the events, and provide relevant background information.
Feelings: Reflect on your emotions, thoughts, and reactions during the experience. Consider both positive and negative feelings, as they contribute to your overall learning and growth.
Evaluation: Analyse the experience and critically evaluate its impact on your personal and professional development. Identify what went well, what could have been improved, and any challenges faced.
Analysis: Dig deeper into the experience and identify the factors that influenced the outcomes. Explore the underlying reasons, theories, or frameworks that can help explain the situation.
Conclusion: Summarise your overall understanding and learning from the experience. Highlight the key insights, lessons, or changes in perspective that have resulted from your analysis.
Action Plan: Outline specific actions or steps you will take to apply your learning and improve future practice. Consider how you will address any challenges or enhance your skills based on the insights gained.
We fully understand the immense pressure that students face when tasked with writing a personal statement, and we are here to provide guidance and support throughout this crucial process. But students can make significant mistakes in the writing process that you must take care to avoid. These usually happen because students feel under pressure, or they run out of time, or they are misinformed and end up using resources that could get themselves into trouble. By highlighting these common pitfalls, we want to ensure that you don’t find yourself making any unnecessary mistakes, or burn out during the writing process.
Crafting a personal statement may feel overwhelming, but remember that you have unique experiences and qualities to share that will make your application shine. With our expert advice and step-by-step guidance, you can confidently navigate the personal statement writing journey and present your best self to admissions committees.
Writing a personal statement can be a daunting task, especially considering the immense pressure students face during the application process. However, it’s important to remember that you possess a wealth of experiences, skills, and aspirations that make you a strong candidate.
Some of these might be tempting but they will actually work against you or even get your flagged for plagiarism…
We want to assure you that we will never ask you to submit your personal statement for faceless reviews or edits. You will meet your mentors (genuine medical students and doctors) and it will be your own work. We will not provide you with multiple “perfect” examples, which often results in students accidentally plagiarising. Perfect examples and faceless review services are not reputable and can potentially harm your personal statement. Instead, our approach is focused on teaching and mentoring you through the process (similar to a subject tutor or teacher at school) but supported by experienced medical students and doctors, who in turn benefitted from the same personal statement tutoring programme and were successful.
We teach 50,000 students every year and our authenticity policy mandates us to abide by the GMC’s professional code of conduct: honesty, integrity, respect and politeness. All photos and stories are of real people. We will never engage with false or paid for reviews on third-party review platforms. To learn more about our authenticity policy click here.
