What schools are good in the UK?

[rjs888]

I live in America and really want to study in UK. (Not for education reasons but moreso for the culture)

I looked at the more well known colleges like Cambridge and Oxford but I only have a 3.79 so I probably don't have too good a chance there.

I have tons of extra curricular(class president lead in play, publicity director for our theatre department, volleyball, etc)

I want to study medicine and theatre (Yeah, it's a weird combination but it's what I want).

Any advice?? I have no idea where to start looking because we don't advertise for international universities here.

[Sandwich]

1. Pedantic/trivial point, but if you say 'school' in the UK you mean the place that the little kids go! Call them Universities if you ask anybody else

2. In the UK you study for a particular degree. So if I wanted to do History, I'd apply to study History and then literally, when I arrived I would not study anything else but History (broadly speaking). You CAN have joint honours degrees (e.g. Law with Spanish, Music with French etc.) but they're specific combination courses offered by specific Universities. Medicine can never be combined with another course because no University offers it, so you couldn't do Medicine and Theatre. You'd have to just go to some kind of theatre stuff in your free time if you wanted to.

3. As a rule and largely because we don't have them here, the GPA mark that you have doesn't mean anything. You could have a GPA of 0.1 and probably nobody would ask for it - what matters are your academic qualifications, i.e. the scores you get from your IB exams and any other proper external standardised exams you've done previously. If you're predicted high IB points, don't fret about a GPA because it's not going to mean anything to anybody. To be honest, given that a GPA is essentially a measure of totally arbitrary and very relative qualities including how many smart people are in your class and whether you stayed up extra late to make your homework look pretty, it doesn't necessarily say too much about your academic skills. It's very important that your IB grades are good, however, because those DO give a measure of your academic prowess under formal conditions. You can look at Universities and they should display minimum diploma requirements for particular courses on their websites.

4. Extra-curricular activities are good, especially for any very competitive/vocational type courses, because everybody will have good academic marks and so they have to start looking elsewhere to decide who to take and who to drop. However they're basically the icing on top of the cake that is your academic achievements, so prioritise IB grades and use the extra-curriculars as a sort-of vector for showing off. When you apply to University in the UK you have to write a personal statement in which you can list all the amazing things you've done - but they look at said document in conjunction with your grades, so grades = most important! They are the base on which your application either stands or crumbles.

5. For Medicine you need to make sure you have some work experience. You will always be interviewed and it's a very competitive course, so just bear that in mind.

6. To find more Universities google Times University Rankings 2011 and take a look through that.

If you have any specific questions, please ask.

[dessskris]

Sandwich made really really good points there... so then where should you start?

I suggest going to www.ucas.com, this is the website you will use when you apply to the UK. all the information about applying can be found there and it's a whole lot of things to explain, so you better do your own research first and if you have questions regarding the application process you can ask us folks here.

which uni should you apply to? use the Course Search feature in UCAS --> http://www.ucas.com/students/coursesearch/ I think it has all the necessary information, so it's awesome.

please note that your deadline is some time in January so you need to get started as soon as possible!

[Guest azntastic]

No one cares about GPA in the UK =] they do look at public exams more though. Are u an IB student?

I suggest you apply to oxbridge anyways, because if you have a good IB score/ good AP scores, there's a good chance thay'll grant u an interview.

Not sure about the medicine part, but I strongly suggest you look into Central Saint Martins - I have friends there who love it and I'm pretty sure their theatre department is v. good.

I'm an American citizen too =] Born n raised california but I fell in love with the UK the first time i visited, so now I am all set on applying there as well.

Good luck!

[Gaby]

You should also check with universities you want to apply to what subjects they require! You won't get into med with History, English and Philosophy HL, or something similarly irrelevant to medicine.

What subjects are you taking?

[HiggsHunter]

I live in America and really want to study in UK. (Not for education reasons but moreso for the culture)

I looked at the more well known colleges like Cambridge and Oxford but I only have a 3.79 so I probably don't have too good a chance there.

I have tons of extra curricular(class president lead in play, publicity director for our theatre department, volleyball, etc)

I want to study medicine and theatre (Yeah, it's a weird combination but it's what I want).

Any advice?? I have no idea where to start looking because we don't advertise for international universities here.

Edinburgh has an excellent reputation for medicine, and the College of Medicine gives equal weight to academic results and non-academic qualities in the selection process. But competition for places in the MBChB programme is very high. (About one place for every 30 overseas applicants):

http://www.ed.ac.uk/...lying/selection

Although you can do Theatre and Performance Studies at Edinburgh, you can't combine this with an MBChB course. But there are more than a dozen permanently active amateur theatre companies in the city, as well as the hundreds of visiting companies that put on around 2500 productions there during the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe.