Buckingham vs Dundee

Buckingham requires AAA including Chemistry and Biology.

Dundee 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 — Buckingham: Min 5 GCSEs at grade 6 including Maths, English Language, dual-award Science. UK's only private medical school - no UCAT/BMAT required. Dundee: Biology, English and Maths required at GCSE grade 6/B (if not studied at A-Level). Higher GCSE/National 5 grades essential due to high academic weighting in shortlisting.

Buckingham uses MMI (Three-stage selection: academic screening, digital Multiple Mini Assessment (MMA), then an MMI/OSSE task circuit); Dundee uses Traditional (Two-part selection (~1h40m): observed 30-minute group discussion, then a structured traditional one-to-one discussion with an assessor). 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, Buckingham is the better fit.

Interview windows: Buckingham interviews in December - March; Dundee in December - February.

Buckingham runs a Integrated curriculum; Dundee runs a Spiral curriculum. The teaching philosophies are different — Buckingham delivers more didactic lectures with structured systems-based progression, while Dundee uses a more traditional lecture-led structure.

Specifics: Four-and-a-half-year accelerated MB ChB (no UCAT required). Clinical placements at Milton Keynes, Stoke Mandeville and partner NHS sites. Five-year MBChB spiral curriculum - concepts revisited with increasing complexity. Clinical placements across NHS Tayside, NHS Fife, NHS Highland, and

Intake size: Buckingham — ~70 home + significant international places per year (UK's only private medical school).; Dundee — Home (Scottish + Contextual) ~825 places; RUK ~130; International ~156 (2025 entry).. A larger cohort means more peer breadth; a smaller cohort means more tutor contact.

Buckingham: Refused to state. Dundee: RUK Non-Contextual (2025): 73/130 = 56%; Scottish: 647/825 = 78%; International: 86/156 = 55%.

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.

Buckingham: UCAT not used in selection - the MMA computer-based test replaces it. Private university with £40k tuition fees. Apply directly outside UCAS rather than via the standard route.

Dundee: Scottish medical school renowned for anatomy teaching and medical research. Shortlisting weights 60% academic / 40% UCAT for school leavers (40/60 for graduates). Both A-level predictions and GCSEs feed the academic score.