Careers in medicine
UCAS has just released its data on medical school applications for this year (2017 entry)……A few bits of background information are useful first. Total applications in 2015 were 82,034 for 7,424 places, which leads to the oft-cited ‘one place for eleven applicants’. However these numbers include multiple applications by students. The number of individual applicants was 20,100 and success at gaining a place depended on country of origin. Success rates were 40% for UK applicants, 10% for EU applicants and 20% for non-EU applicants.
Andrew Goddard, here. I am surprise that the acceptance rate is this high, but I guess there is a lot of self-selection. I do not have a good feel for what is influencing career choices, but the baby boomers had it better — once they got in, sadly. I will stick with my default opinion and change as the evidence changes: what happened to teaching, will happen to medicine. Politics is a dominant negative mutation, and all buckle before it.