The rest of the applicants can skip the Eligibility application and begin directly with the UKFP application.

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The UKFP application will request a number of documents from you, you can start preparing and requesting these ahead of time in order to upload them and submit your application before the announced deadline. Documents you will need:

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• Dean's Statement

  • Ensure you request this from your school ahead of time.

  • If your not part of a British medical school ask the UKFP what the format should look like and ensure your medical school is aware of it.

• Transcript for any previous degrees

  • If done at a non-British university then you must also have them converted into a British grade system through websites like Scholaro. This could take a few weeks so make sure to do this ahead of time.​

    • If using Scholaro make sure you select "UK (CATS)" and the "Course-by-Course" option. Also, make sure you attach your full transcript and degrees.​

• Medical degree and Transcript (if you already graduated)

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Important considerations:

• If you graduated ≥ 2 years before your desired FY1 start date, you will need to retake your Medial School finals including the Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA).

  • Contact UKFP ahead of time informing them of your year of graduation and date of exams & PSA to ensure that you will need to retake the exams. You will then contact your medical school and the PSA team to schedule your exams with the rest of the Final-year medical students.​

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Requirements To Apply For FY1

 

The UK Foundation Programme Office (UKFPO) allocates students based on a 100-point system that is designed as follows:

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• 50 points - Educational Performance Measure (EPM) divided as follows:

  • 34-43 points: Depending on your decile in Medical School you are given points

    • If you are 1st decile you are given 43 points

    • If you are 2nd decile you are given 42 points

    • …

    • If you are 10th decile you are given 34 points

  • 2 points: You get a point for each publication (with a PubMed ID) you have for a maximum of 2 points.

  • 5 points: For previous academic achievements (apart from your medical degree)

    • If you have a previous Bachelor degree with 3rd class honours you are given 1 point

    • If you have a previous Bachelor degree with 2.2 class honours you get 2 points

    • If you have a previous Bachelor degree with 2.1 class honours you get 3 points

    • If you have a Master’s degree you are given 4 points

    • If you have a PhD you are given the full 5 points

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• 50 points - Situational Judgment Test (SJT) [a separate post on the SJT can be found here]

 

Adding all these points will give the applicant a score by which they are ranked.

 

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How Are You Allocated?

 

One of the steps done through Oriel is ranking your deaneries (also known as Units of Application - UoA) according to your preferences. The first person on the spreadsheet will be assigned their first preference; the second person will be assigned their first preference and so on. Once the system reaches an applicant whose first choice deanery no longer has positions available, they will be allocated to their second choice. If that second choice is also full, then they will be allocated to their third choice and so on until either all applicants have a position or all deaneries are full.

 

If all positions are full and there are applicants remaining they will either be rejected or be placed on a Waiting List. If somebody rejects their FY1 position or does not graduate from Medical School then the first person from the Waiting List will be allocated to that position.

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Once you get your Deanery

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The first thing that will happen will be getting allocated to a Deanery. This will happen around the first two weeks of March. In 2020 there were around 7,400 applicants for 6,600 FY1 positions. These 6,600 applicants will each be assigned a Deanery.

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Each deanery will then email their applicants to Match them into the jobs available at that deanery. This Matching process can be a 1-stage Match or 2-stage Match:

 

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1-Stage Match

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Let's say 300 people got allocated to East Anglia deanery/Foundation School. These 300 people will receive an Excel sheet listing the 300 jobs available within East Anglia. Each job consists of a unique combination of rotations. They can either be 3 rotations lasting 4 months each, or 2 rotations lasting 6 months each (for a total of 12 months in each case). It can look something like this:

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Job 1 = Paediatrics (4 months at XYZ hospital) + Acute Medicine (4 months at ABC hospital) + Orthopedics (4 months at ABC hospital)

Job 2 = Vascular surgery (4 months at ABC hospital) + Internal medicine (4 months at XYZ hospital) + O&G (4 months at LMN hospital)

Job 3 = Acute Medicine (6 months at XYZ hospital) + General Surgery (6 months at XYZ hospital)

... and so on for 300 jobs.

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The deanery will then use the same algorithm as the deaneries allocation to assign a job to each applicant.

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2-Stage Match

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In this case, the applicant will first rank the Trusts (ie Hospital or Hospital associations). They will Match to a Trust and then they will rank the jobs specific to that Trust. For example, let's say 200 people got into Oxford Deanery/Foundation School. These 200 people will rank the following 5 Trusts

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1. Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust (contains Wycombe General Hospital and Stoke Mandeville Hospital)

2. Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (contains Frimley Park and Wexham Park)

3. Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (contains Milton Keynes Hospital)

4. Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (contains John Radcliffe Hospital, Horton General Hospital, and Churchill Hospital)

5. Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust (contains Royal Berkshire Hospital)

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Once you Match into a Trust you will have access to an updated Excel sheet that contains the jobs relevant to that Trust only. For example, let's say you get allocated to Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, your Excel sheet will have 70 jobs because only 70 people got allocated to that Trust. The jobs will also look something like this:

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Job 1 = Paediatrics (4 months at XYZ hospital) + Acute Medicine (4 months at ABC hospital) + Orthopedics (4 months at ABC hospital)

Job 2 = Vascular surgery (4 months at ABC hospital) + Internal medicine (4 months at XYZ hospital) + O&G (4 months at LMN hospital)

Job 3 = Acute Medicine (6 months at XYZ hospital) + General Surgery (6 months at XYZ hospital)

... and so on for 70 jobs.

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There isn't much difference between the 1-stage and 2-stage Matching process and it's a variable that does not play a role when ranking deaneries.

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As you can see, the only filtering is getting allocated to a deanery. Once you get a deanery then you are guaranteed a job within it, it's just a matter of where exactly and which rotations you will be doing.

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What now?

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Once you are Matched into a deanery and a programme, you will then need to do two things to be allowed to begin your FY1 year: You need to apply for your UK visa and you need to apply for GMC provisional registration.

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How to apply for GMC registration?

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Go to GMC Online within the GMC's website and select "new users" to create your account.

 

• If you already have a GMC provisional registration number, then select "I have a GMC reference number and I want to set up my GMC Online account". If you are a student at a British Medical school then you would've received this number during the first half of your Final-year.

• If you do not have a GMC provisional number, then select "I don't have a GMC reference number and I want to apply for registration for the first time".

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You might be asked to provide a UK bank account. If you do not have one let your school know, they will contact the GMC and lift this requirement for you.

 

Once you have your account you can find the option that says "My registration" on the left side of the screen and apply for Provisional Registration. There's an approximate £52 fee that you need to pay to submit your application. It will take a couple of weeks for you to get your application approved. Once it is approved the period of your registration will begin on the date you selected on your application, so make sure to select a date right before your FY1 begins because you cannot begin your FY1 without your GMC provisional registration. From that date onwards your name will be listed on the physician's registry within the GMC's website and will be visible to the public.

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How to apply for the UK Visa?

 

Health Education England (HEE) will contact you via email with a link and log in details for their HEE portal through which you will request your Certificate of Sponsorship (you need this certificate to be able to begin your UK visa application). You will log in and fill in all sections of the application (personal information, degree information, passport information, proof of programme match etc).

 

It will take a couple of weeks for it to be approved. Then it will be issued and posted on that same portal. You will not receive an email notification when this happens, so make sure to constantly log into the portal. Once your CoS is issued, you’ll be able to view it at the bottom right side of the portal’s dashboard. You will first need to read the terms and conditions, agree to them, and then you’ll be able to download your CoS.

 

Now that you have your CoS, you can go to the gov.uk website and go to their visas section. On your CoS’s first page you have the name of the visa you need, find this name on the gov.uk website and click it. You will be able to read about the requirements for the visa and begin your application. For this, you will need to input the number of your CoS. The system will take you to a long application where you will need to fill in information about yourself, your background, education, countries visited, your parents, etc. Some answers for these questions can be found on your Certificate of Sponsortship (CoS) e.g. “Is your job on the shortage list of UK jobs?” “Will your program sponsor you financially?”.  Allocate around 1-2 hours for this process to make sure you can proof read everything.

 

After paying (either for the normal or express service) two things will happen:

You will be issued with a personalized checklist of documents you need to provide; and

You will be redirected to an external website where you will need to book an appointment at a visa application centre to provide them with your biometrics (fingerprints and picture). Through that external website you can also select different services that are ad ons to your application (they are not mandatory) such as: booking a flexible appointment, having a priority application, keeping your passport with you while the visa is being processed, receiving SMS updates about your application, having the centre scan your documents instead of uploading them yourself before your visa appointment, etc.

 

Some things to note:

1. If you need your passport with you for any reason while your visa is being processed make sure to pay to keep it with you.

2. If you are from UNic-SGUL (like me) put United Kingdom as the country of your Medical School and select the “TLS South Centre” as the visa application centre for your biometrics because there is another one in Northern Cyprus.

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Useful Resources

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Messly: I found this website useful to give a short overview of each deanery and to explain how competitive each deanery is.

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The Savvy IMG is a useful website to find out information about Graduate Medical Education in the UK.

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The Student Medic provides an overview of the UKFP application process.

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EuroLebanese Medical Society put together a presentation on post-graduate Medical Education in the UK, you can check it out on their Facebook page.