Bristol vs Keele

Bristol's published UCAT threshold for home applicants is around 2260, while Keele sits at approximately 1700.

That's a 560-point gap — large enough to put the two schools in completely different competitiveness tiers. An applicant scoring in the 1900-2100 band would be competitive at Keele but borderline at Bristol.

Contextual / widening-participation cut-offs differ — Bristol: ~1450+ /2700 (A108 Gateway / WP - lowest invited has reached as low as 1340); Keele: ~1700+ /2700 with up to 3 contextual points (UCAT bursary, postcode, local school). Eligible applicants should weight this heavily when choosing.

Bristol requires AAA including Chemistry and Biology.

Keele requires AAA including Chemistry and Biology.

Both demand the same A-Level grade band, so academic prediction is unlikely to differentiate your application between them — provided you meet the required subject combination at each.

GCSE profile matters at both schools — Bristol: Mathematics at grade 7; English Language at grade 4. GCSE resit applicants welcome. Keele: Min 5 GCSEs at grade 6 (B) including Maths, English Language, dual-award Science.

Bristol uses MMI (Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI)); Keele uses Traditional (Two 15-minute structured online interviews (traditional format, not MMI; Microsoft Teams), usually around two hours apart). These two formats reward different skills — MMI emphasises breadth, station-recovery and structured answers under time pressure, while Traditional rewards malleability and intellectual honesty.

If your strengths lie in conversational depth, either may suit you more. If you prefer discrete capsule answers under time pressure, Bristol is the better fit.

Interview windows: Bristol interviews in December - February; Keele in December - March.

Both schools deliver a Spiral-style curriculum, so day-to-day study habits will feel similar across years 1-3.

Specifics: Five-year MB ChB spiral curriculum - concepts revisited with increasing complexity. Clinical exposure from Year 1. Five-year MBChB with spiral curriculum. Strong rural/community placement strand across Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire.

Intake size: Bristol — ~220 home + ~30 international places per year (A100 Standard Entry Medicine).; Keele — ~150 home + ~10 international places per year (5-year MBChB) + ~30 Health Foundation Year places.. A larger cohort means more peer breadth; a smaller cohort means more tutor contact.

Bristol: Total: 650/968 = 67% (2024); A108 Gateway to Medicine: 63/88 = 72%. Keele: International: 23/54 = 43%; Home Non-Contextual: 167/491 = 34%.

Post-interview odds give you the clearest signal of how competitive each school is at the final stage — a school with a 60% post-interview success rate is structurally easier to convert than one at 25%, even if the interview thresholds look identical on paper.

Bristol: Russell Group university with strong medical and dental programmes. Shortlisting is wholly UCAT-based - neither personal statement nor SJT is used in selection. Bristol has the highest UCAT cut-off of the major English schools.

Keele: Personal statement is heavily weighted (/15 of the /25 total score) - Keele has very specific PS criteria. Strong PS with band 1-2 SJT can compensate for relatively low UCAT. International applicants selected on UCAT only.