Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS): Overview

Brighton and Sussex Medical School is a joint incentive of (surprise, surprise) the University of Brighton and the University of Sussex. With their forces combined, Brighton and Sussex universities can offer an innovative, clinically-focused 5-year medicine course that has one of the highest student satisfaction rates in the entire United Kingdom!

With just over 200 students per year, medical students at Brighton and Sussex can benefit from more personalised and focused teaching. Most clinical placements, which usually start in year 3, take place in leading hospitals in the South East of the UK, such as the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton or the Princess Royal Hospital.

Pre-interview Selection:
🔢 How does Brighton and Sussex Medical School select for interviews?

GCSEs and Predicted Grades: GCSE and predicted grades are not considered by BSMS when shortlisting candidates for an interview.

Personal Statement: Not used at any point in the admissions process.

BMAT: The BMAT is the primary component used when inviting students for medicine interviews at BSMS. Each year BSMS sets a new BMAT cut-off score, based on the number of applications and average scores. For 2022 entry and before, BSMS converted the BMAT score to a total score out of 28, where 9 points were for Section 1, 9 points for Section 2 and 5 points for each element of Section 3. All students above the cut-off score are invited to the interview.

📊 What is the lowest required BMAT score to get an interview at Brighton And Sussex Medical School?

🇬🇧 Home Students: For 2022 entry, the BMAT cut-off at BSMS was 17.3/28 for standard applications and 17/28 for widening participation (WP) students.

🌍 International Students: For 2022 entry, the BMAT cut-off at BSMS was 19.5/28 for international students.

Note: From 2023 entry onwards, BSMS will score the BMAT out of 37 (with 9 points for Section 1, 18 points for Section 2, 5 points for Section 3 language and 5 points for Section 3 numerical score).

📈 Want to save yourself some time, stress and money preparing for the interview at Brighton and Sussex Medical School? Prepare with Medfully, the best interview preparation tool for self-paced interview preparation.

📤 When does Brighton and Sussex MS send out interview invitations?

In past years, BSMS has been sending out all interview invitations in December.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 How many candidates get interviewed for Medicine at Brighton and Sussex?

🇬🇧 Home Students: For 2022 entry, 1623 students applied from the UK, and 495 of them (30%) were invited for a medicine interview at BSMS.

🌍 International Students: For 2022 entry, 352 international students applied for medicine at Brighton and Sussex and 80 of them (22%) have received an interview invitation.

Medical School Interviews at Brighton and Sussex:

🗓️ Brighton and Sussex Medicine Interview dates (2024 entry):

For 2024 entry, BSMS interviews for medicine are most likely to take place in January 2024. For the latest updates refer to the BSMS interview website.

💬 What’s the interview format at Brighton and Sussex Medical School?

For 2023 and 2024, as well as during the pandemic, BSMS has been conducting MMI interviews. Whether the interview was over Zoom or in-person, the format stayed the same:

• BSMS MMI involves 5 stations, each 10 minutes long and containing several questions around one broad topic
• there is a 1-minute break between stations and the entire medicine interview lasts around an hour in total
• around an hour in total
• in-person: all stations were located in one room and students rotated around them, online: Zoom breakout rooms were used
• the beginning and end of each station was announced by a timekeeper (separate from the interviewers)
• halfway through the station (5 minutes in) and when there was 1 minute left, students were informed about it by the timekeeper

👥 Example Brighton and Sussex Medicine MMI Station:

Watch the following video created by BSMS to get a gist of what an MMI station at BSMS looks like and your expected performance (this model candidate would have been given the highest marks):

💡 How To Prepare for Medicine Interviews at Brighton and Sussex?

Preparing for medical school interviews requires more than just reading an article or doing a mock interview. It requires intentionality, structure and commitment. Luckily, with Medfully it is simpler and more efficient than ever:

🏆 How likely is it I’ll be given an offer after an interview at Brighton and Sussex?

🇬🇧 Home Students: For 2022 entry, 495 UK students were interviewed, and out of those 297 (60%) have received an offer to study medicine at Brighton and Sussex.

🌍 International Students: For 2022 entry, out of 80 international students interviewed, 23 (29%) have been given an offer.

💅 What to do before the interview at Brighton and Sussex Medical School?

• read the official BSMS Guide to remote MMIs
• read the official guide to BSMS in-person MMIs
• prepare to ace any BSMS MMI station using Medfully, the #1 Interview Preparation Resource
• prepare a formal interview outfit in advance, try it on and see if you feel confident and comfortable in it (you can read more about the interview dress code here)
• plan your journey - if you are invited for an in-person interview and have to travel from far away, make sure to arrive in Sussex a day or two in advance so that you can be fresh on the day of your BSMS medicine interview

⏳ How long does it take to hear back from Brighton and Sussex?

After interviews in January 2023, BSMS will be reviewing applications and informing students about the outcome of their interviews from February 2023 until April 2023.

🧠 Brighton and Sussex Medicine Interview Questions:

Motivations For Medicine:

• Why would you make for a good medical student?
• Why would you like to become a doctor and not a researcher?
• Let’s imagine medicine as a profession disappears from this world and you cannot study medicine or work as a doctor. Which other career would you choose?

Personality:

• What’s your greatest strength? What is holding you down?
• What is the non-academic achievement you are most proud of?
• Tell us about a time when you had difficulties working as a part of a group and how you overcame them.
• What are your methods for coping with stress?

Insight Into Medicine:

• What is empathy and how can it be taught at medical schools?
• What is the role of scientific research in medicine?
• Tell us about a situation from your work experience, which demonstrated to you the importance of good communication.
• How does the day-to-day work of a GP differ from that of a surgeon? Follow-up: What challenges do GPs face nowadays?

Insight Into BSMS:

• Why would you like to study medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School?
• How does the medical course at BSMS suit you?
• How could you contribute to the student life at BSMS?

Medical Ethics:

• What do you understand by the term “competencies” in a medical context? Follow-up: Have you heard about Gillick’s competence? Can you provide a scenario when Gillick’s competence can be applied?
• Imagine you are the head of the surgical department in a hospital. There are two patients, A and B, both requiring an urgent liver transplant, but there is only one viable liver. Patient A is a 32-year old social activist, with a drug abuse history. Patient B is a 78-year old woman, who takes care of 3 children, whose parents died in a car accident. How would you allocate the liver and why?
• A young mother comes with their 3-years old child to your GP practice as a part of the routine immunisation schedule. However, the mother reveals that she decided not to vaccinate their child against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and appears to be anxious. What would you do?

The NHS:

• Currently, around 9.6% of the UK’s GDP goes to funding the NHS. Should the UK spend a larger percentage of the GDP on healthcare?
• What challenges will the NHS face in 20 years that aren’t as significant now?
• Nearly all medical interventions are free on the NHS, but only a limited number of dental procedures are. Can you think of any reasons why this is?
• What are the values underlying the NHS?

🚀 TOP Tip: Have a hard time answering any of the above questions? You’ll find insider tactics to tackle all of the above questions and formulate convincing and structured answers at Medfully - The Best Medicine Interview Preparation Resource.

Please note that these aren’t questions that have been asked at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in past years. Publishing such information would be against BSMS’s policy. The above questions are adjusted for the interview style at Brighton and Sussex and are meant to give you a broad sense of the questions you may face.

✅ Brighton and Sussex Medical School Interviews: 3 Tips

Study the GMC’s Good Medical Practise Guidelines & The NHS Constitution

The NHS Constitution outlines what the patients and staff working in the NHS can expect from the NHS and what the NHS expects in return. Reading it will help you understand what values and rules all NHS workers have to abide by.

GMC’s Good Medical Practice sets out guidelines for doctors working in the NHS and will help you understand what it means to be a “good doctor”. These documents aren’t the easiest reads, but reading them carefully and analytically will certainly help you with answering questions about medical ethics and the NHS.

Practise With Strangers

Practice is the best prevention for interview stress. The more you practise, the more confident and at ease will you be on the interview day.

Reach out to other candidates applying to Brighton and Sussex via online forums like TSR or Reddit and arrange an online mock. They may be slightly less encouraging than your friends or family, but that’s a huge advantage and can give you a fresh perspective.

Additionally, doing a mock interview with a stranger from the internet can add a bit of extra stress to the mock, which will help you mimic the feeling of the actual interview and get used to it.

Be Prepared For Follow-up Questions:

Although each station at the BSMS MMI will last for 9-10 minutes, you won’t have to speak for 10 minutes straight answering a single question. Each station will include several questions, but all of them will be centred around the same topic. Some of the follow-up questions may be predetermined, but some may be based on what you’ve just said.

Although this can sound scary, because of that the medicine interview at Brighton and Sussex will feel more like a friendly discussion, rather than an interview or worse, an interrogation. Having said that, it will still require you to think on your feet, which isn’t an easy thing to do under stress.

When practising for your BSMS medicine interview, make sure to expose yourself to random questions that you haven’t seen or prepared for before, which will help you learn how to think on your feet. You can use the Interview Flashcards Arena, containing 300+ interview questions and built exactly for that purpose.

🤞Good luck at your Brighton and Sussex medicine interview! Fingers crossed!