HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO GET INTO NIGERIAN MEDICAL SCHOOLS.

 You must have heard a bunch of stories about the technicalities involved in  getting accepted into med school not just in Nigeria but across the globe. 

This blog post is designed to give you tested methodologies to securing a med school slot in Nigeria

The number of med students that can be admitted into major medical colleges in Nigeria happens to fixed in most cases. This carrying capacity is usually called a "quota" 

Universities with more facilities for training  the "would be" doctors usually have a higher quota. While the university of Ibadan and the university of Nigeria Nsukka both have a quota of 180, other medical schools like the college of medicine, university of lagos have a quota of 150 most other schools have lower quotas.

It is also important to note that fully accredited medical schools tend to be more competitive and hence more difficult to get into. Same goes for federal universities since the general idea is that they are cheap and offer the opportunity of exposure to an avelanché of cases for clinical students. 

What are the factors to consider to get into a good medical school in Nigeria with your current UTME score and O-level result?

It is general believe that  to get into medschool in Nigeria, one has to have a UTME score of above 300 and like 5 distinctions in the O-levels but this is not always true. I have coursemates who had below 300 in their utme but still got into medical school and are doing quite well. Usually such candidates would have a very strong O-level result or may have performed outstandingly in the post utme exams. So if you're in this category you shouldn't loose hope just yet. 

Students seeking admission into top tier Medical schools in the country would have to be in the very narrow top percentile scores to be sure of entry this doesn't necessarily mean a UTME score of above 300 as utme is not the only score taken into consideration. Different medical schools have their own methods of calculating their aggregates so you should make your research about this as well and know how to calculate yours.

What's next after utme and O-levels

Try calculating your aggregate using your target university's methodology. Now that you know your aggregate, proceed to compare this with me medicine and surgery cut off mark for the previous year. 

This changes from year to year but this would give you a rough idea about your chances. Many factors affect whether the cut off will drop or rise such as the pass rates of both utme and wassce/neco. How many people had above 300 this year and how many did last year? How was the wassce general performance this year, did more people get distinctions this year compared to the previous? 

All these factors should give you a rough idea about if the cut off will rise or drop and by how much. If you haven't written post utme yet and your target university takes post utme then minus  the quota sum for both wassce and utme from last year's cut off. This gives you a glimpse of how much you should score in the post utme test. If you expect your uni's cut off to be higher this year then you should plan to score well above this. 

Getting admission into studying medicine like any other thing in life has technicalities to it. It doesn't just stop at having a high utme score. 

I wish you the very best