Free practice questions for the UCLan medicine interview, with the interview format taken from the university's own admissions pages.
UCLan describes stage three of its MBBS process as a multi station MMI, usually held between December and April. Applicants interviewing at the Preston campus are sometimes offered a facilities tour on the day. Interviews are held in person, at the Preston campus for UK applicants and at overseas locations for some international applicants. UCLan does not publish a station count or station timings. Check your invitation for current timings.
Original MedicHut practice questions. Real interviews may differ.
You are preparing for a medicine interview without a formal published description of its format.
1. What is the single idea about your motivation you would want to come across clearly, whatever format the interview takes?
2. How has your motivation for medicine been tested in your life so far?
3. What would make you question your choice of career, and how would you respond to that doubt?
Follow-up: If you were offered a place at UCLan but no other medical school, would your motivation for medicine change?
Medicine requires commitment to many years of training before full independent practice.
1. What keeps you motivated for a goal that is still several years away?
2. How would you measure your own progress along the way?
3. What would you do if progress felt slower than expected?
Follow-up: A careers adviser suggests nursing or paramedic practice as a quicker route into healthcare. How would you respond?
Many applicants say they want to help people, which interviewers hear very often.
1. What makes your reason for applying different from a generic answer about helping people?
2. What specific evidence from your own experience supports this?
3. How would you explain your motivation to someone who has never met you?
Follow-up: Suppose you discovered during year one that you disliked the scientific side of medicine. What would you do?
Medicine is often described as both a vocation and a long technical training.
1. Which of these two ideas feels closer to your own reason for applying?
2. Can you give an example from your own life that supports this?
3. Why might the balance between vocation and technical training matter to patients?
Follow-up: A friend says doctors are 'just well-paid scientists'. How would you respond?
UCLan offers an MBBS course that leads to registration as a doctor, like other UK medical schools.
1. What first drew your attention to UCLan specifically when researching medical schools?
2. How confident are you that medicine, rather than a related healthcare career, is the right choice for you?
3. What would reassure you that you had made the right decision, once you started the course?
Follow-up: If a friend who knows you well said they were surprised by your choice of medicine, how would you respond?
UCLan is a newer provider of medical education compared with some long-established medical schools.
1. What opportunities might come from studying at a medical school with a shorter history of training doctors?
2. What responsibilities might students have in helping to shape its reputation?
3. What have you found out about how UCLan structures its MBBS course?
Follow-up: A classmate says they worry their degree will be seen as 'less established'. How would you respond to them?
You are researching UCLan ahead of applying or interviewing, and its formal admissions page gives limited detail about the interview stage itself.
1. How did you go about researching a university when published information on one part of the process was limited?
2. What other sources did you use to build a fuller picture of the course?
3. What would you still want to clarify directly with the university before accepting an offer?
Follow-up: If you found conflicting information between the official admissions page and student stories, how would you decide what to trust?
UCLan is based in Preston, in a region with its own particular health needs.
1. What do you know about the health challenges facing communities in this region?
2. Why might training in this region be good preparation for a career in medicine?
3. What would you want to learn in your first year about the local population you may serve?
Follow-up: How would you respond if you discovered that patients in this region had notably different health needs from where you grew up?
You have been invited to interview at UCLan and at another medical school around the same time.
1. What specific features of UCLan would you mention if asked to compare it with another medical school?
2. How did you research these features?
3. What would be the biggest personal adjustment for you in studying in this location?
Follow-up: If you were offered places at both schools, what single piece of information would most influence your decision?
Student stories on UCLan's website describe their own experience of the admissions process, rather than formal university guidance.
1. How useful do you think personal accounts from current students are when researching a university?
2. What are the limits of relying on this kind of informal information?
3. How would you balance informal accounts against official guidance when making your own decisions?
Follow-up: A student story mentions something that contradicts what you were told by admissions staff. How would you handle that?
Think about a period of work experience, paid work, or volunteering you have completed.
1. Describe a specific moment where you saw a healthcare professional demonstrate good practice.
2. What made this a good example, in your own words?
3. How has this shaped your expectations of medical training?
Follow-up: What would you have done if you had observed the opposite, a moment of poor practice?
Many applicants will have carried out virtual or in-person work experience before applying.
1. What was the most useful thing you learned from your work experience that you could not have learned from reading?
2. How did this experience change your understanding of teamwork in healthcare?
3. What limitations does work experience have in preparing you for medical school?
Follow-up: If your work experience placement was cancelled at short notice, what steps would you take instead?
During a period of observation in a healthcare setting, you noticed a difference between how two professionals communicated with the same patient.
1. What differences in communication style did you notice?
2. Why might communication style matter as much as clinical knowledge?
3. What did this teach you about your own communication style?
Follow-up: How would you check whether your own communication style was working well with a patient?
You have spent time observing a multidisciplinary team, such as in a hospital ward or GP practice.
1. Describe one example of effective collaboration you observed.
2. What roles were involved, and how did they depend on each other?
3. What did you learn about the limits of a doctor's role within that team?
Follow-up: If you saw two team members disagree in front of a patient, what would you expect good practice to look like?
Reflect on an experience, inside or outside healthcare, where things did not go as planned.
1. What was the situation and what went wrong?
2. What specific insight into resilience or problem solving did you gain?
3. How did this experience inform the way you now plan for setbacks?
Follow-up: If a similar setback happened again next month, what would you do differently?
Self-awareness and honesty about limitations are valued qualities in medicine.
1. What do you consider your biggest area for improvement as a future medical student?
2. Give an example of when this has affected you.
3. What specific steps are you taking to address it before starting university?
Follow-up: How would you feel if a tutor identified this same weakness publicly during a teaching session?
Doctors are expected to maintain high standards even under pressure.
1. Describe a time you had to keep high standards while under time pressure.
2. What helped you maintain those standards?
3. What would you do if you found you could not maintain them?
Follow-up: If a supervisor asked you to cut corners to save time, how would you respond?
Reflect on a piece of feedback, positive or negative, that significantly changed how you approached a task.
1. What was the feedback and how did you receive it at the time?
2. What did you change as a result?
3. Why is being open to feedback important in medical training?
Follow-up: How would you respond to feedback you believed was unfair?
Imagine you are a first-year medical student and a classmate frequently makes comments that make you uncomfortable, though not directed personally at you.
1. How would you decide whether and how to raise this?
2. Who might you involve, and in what order?
3. Why does raising such concerns matter for the culture of a medical school?
Follow-up: The classmate says you are 'overreacting'. How would you respond?
Entry to a demanding course like medicine often requires sustained effort over a long period.
1. Describe a time you had to sustain motivation over months rather than days.
2. What specific habits or routines helped you keep going?
3. Why might this quality be important for surviving the demands of a medical degree?
Follow-up: If those habits stopped working partway through your course, what would you try next?
You are part of a sixth-form project team producing a presentation for younger pupils about healthy lifestyles. One member keeps missing meetings.
1. What steps would you take to address this?
2. How would you balance fairness to the absent member with fairness to the rest of the group?
3. What does this situation teach you about managing teams in medicine?
Follow-up: The member says they have been struggling with a family issue. How does this change your approach?
Imagine you are leading a small group project and two members strongly disagree about the best approach.
1. How would you facilitate a resolution?
2. What principles would guide your decision if no agreement is reached?
3. Why is this kind of mediation relevant to working in a clinical team?
Follow-up: One member tells you privately that they think you favoured the other person. How would you respond?
You are asked to be the spokesperson for a group project, although you were not the strongest contributor to the content.
1. How would you prepare to represent the group fairly?
2. How would you make sure credit is shared appropriately?
3. What qualities make someone a good representative rather than just a confident speaker?
Follow-up: After your presentation, a teacher praises you individually. How would you respond?
You are coordinating a small team for a charity fundraising event and a key supplier lets you down the day before.
1. What would your immediate priorities be?
2. How would you communicate the problem to your team?
3. What qualities help a leader stay effective under sudden pressure?
Follow-up: A team member suggests cancelling the whole event rather than adapting it. How do you respond?
You are asked to explain, in plain language and without medical jargon, what a vaccine does to the body.
1. Give your explanation as you would to a worried parent.
2. What questions might this parent reasonably ask next?
3. Why is plain language important in a doctor's communication?
Follow-up: The parent says they read online that vaccines are not properly tested. How would you continue the conversation?
A school pupil visiting an open day asks you why doctors sometimes seem rushed with patients.
1. How would you answer honestly but sensitively?
2. What wider pressures on the NHS might you mention?
3. How would you reassure the pupil that quality of care still matters?
Follow-up: The pupil asks if this means they should avoid becoming a doctor. What would you say?
You need to explain to an anxious patient, in plain terms, why they are being referred for a blood test.
1. What would you say, step by step?
2. How would you check the patient had understood?
3. Why does clear communication matter at this early stage of care?
Follow-up: The patient says they are frightened of needles. How would you respond?
A colleague asks you to explain a complex idea from one of your A-level subjects in under a minute.
1. Choose an idea and explain it simply.
2. What techniques did you use to simplify it?
3. Why is the ability to simplify complex ideas useful in medicine?
Follow-up: The colleague says they still do not understand. What would you try next?
A patient tells you they do not want their family to know about a serious diagnosis, even though the family has asked staff directly for information.
1. What should guide your decision about what to tell the family?
2. What tension exists here between patient confidentiality and family concern?
3. Who could you involve to help resolve this situation?
Follow-up: The family says they will take legal action if they are not told. Does this change your approach?
A teenage patient asks a doctor not to tell their parents about a health issue they have come in about.
1. What factors should the doctor consider before deciding how to respond?
2. Why might the age of the patient affect the decision?
3. What role does confidentiality play in encouraging young people to seek help?
Follow-up: The teenager says they will stop seeking any medical help if their parents are told. What would you consider then?
NHS resources are limited and sometimes difficult decisions have to be made about who receives a particular treatment first.
1. What factors do you think should be considered when prioritising patients?
2. Why might this be more difficult than simply treating patients in the order they arrive?
3. What principles might help keep such decisions fair?
Follow-up: If a patient becomes angry about being lower on a priority list, how would you respond to them?
A patient refuses a treatment that doctors believe would clearly benefit them.
1. What is the doctor's responsibility once a competent adult has refused treatment?
2. Why is patient autonomy an important principle in medicine?
3. What would you do if you personally disagreed with the patient's decision?
Follow-up: What would change if the patient refusing treatment were a child rather than an adult?
The NHS has faced significant pressure on emergency departments in recent years.
1. What do you understand to be some of the reasons behind this pressure?
2. What approaches have been tried to address it?
3. What role might doctors play in managing this pressure day to day?
Follow-up: A patient complains to you directly about a long wait. How would you respond in the moment?
Many areas of the UK, including parts of the North West, face difficulty recruiting and retaining GPs.
1. What do you think might cause this kind of shortage?
2. What effect might it have on patients living in affected areas?
3. What measures could help address GP shortages in a region like this?
Follow-up: A patient says they have not been able to get a GP appointment for weeks. How would you respond to their frustration?
Health inequalities mean that people in different parts of the same country can have very different life expectancies.
1. What factors do you think contribute to health inequality?
2. Why might this be particularly relevant to medical schools training doctors in specific regions?
3. What could a future doctor personally do to help address health inequality?
Follow-up: A colleague says tackling health inequality is a job for politicians, not doctors. How would you respond?
The NHS increasingly relies on technology, such as online booking systems and remote consultations.
1. What benefits do you see in these changes?
2. What groups of patients might be disadvantaged by them?
3. How could a doctor help make sure no patient is left behind by digital changes?
Follow-up: An elderly patient tells you they cannot use the online system at all. What would you suggest?
A new over-the-counter medicine is approved after passing through several stages of testing.
1. What do you understand about why medicines go through multiple testing phases before approval?
2. Why might a treatment that works well in a trial behave differently in everyday use?
3. What role might doctors play in reporting problems with medicines after approval?
Follow-up: A patient tells you they do not trust 'newly approved' medicines. How would you respond?
Science taught at school is often presented as settled fact, but scientific understanding frequently changes over time.
1. Can you think of an example where scientific understanding has changed?
2. Why is it important for a doctor to accept that medical knowledge can change?
3. How would you keep your own knowledge up to date throughout a career?
Follow-up: How would you explain to a patient that medical advice they received years ago has since changed?
You are asked to explain a basic biological process, such as how the immune system responds to infection, to a non-scientist.
1. Give your explanation in plain language.
2. What parts of the process are hardest to simplify, and why?
3. Why does understanding this process matter for everyday medical practice?
Follow-up: How would you explain the same process to a school pupil with no biology background at all?
Medical research sometimes produces results that contradict earlier studies.
1. Why might two studies on the same topic produce different results?
2. How should a doctor decide which evidence to trust?
3. Why is this relevant to how doctors explain evolving evidence to patients?
Follow-up: A patient shows you a news article about a study that contradicts your advice. How would you respond?
The following is an illustrative figure. A GP practice sees 45 patients a day. Records show 12 patients wait under 10 minutes, 23 wait between 10 and 20 minutes, and 10 wait over 20 minutes.
1. What percentage of patients wait over 20 minutes?
2. What further information would help you judge whether this waiting pattern is a problem?
3. Suggest one practical change the practice could test to reduce long waits.
Follow-up: If the practice could only change one thing, what would you recommend and why?
The following is an illustrative figure. Over five years, a region's hospital admissions rose from 50,000 to 62,000 per year, while the number of hospital beds rose from 500 to 520.
1. Calculate the percentage increase in admissions and in bed numbers over the five years.
2. What might this mismatch mean for staff and patients?
3. What other data would help explain the reasons behind the rise in admissions?
Follow-up: If most of the rise in admissions came from one age group, what might this suggest about possible solutions?
You are given a logical puzzle: three patients are waiting to be seen, and you are told only that patient A must be seen before patient B, and patient C must be seen last.
1. List the possible orders in which the patients could be seen.
2. Explain your reasoning process.
3. Why might the ability to reason through constraints like this be useful in medicine?
Follow-up: A fourth patient arrives who must be seen before A. How does this change the possible orders?
The following is an illustrative figure. A screening test correctly identifies 92 out of 100 people who have a condition, but also incorrectly flags 12 out of 100 people who do not have it.
1. In a group of 1,000 people where 45 actually have the condition, roughly how many would you expect the test to flag in total?
2. What problem does this illustrate about screening tests in a low-prevalence population?
3. Why is this relevant to decisions about offering a test widely?
Follow-up: How would you explain this result to a worried person who has just tested positive?
The following is an illustrative figure. A university medical course admits 120 students a year, and historically 8 students per year leave the course before graduating.
1. What percentage of students leave the course before graduating, based on these figures?
2. What factors might contribute to students leaving a demanding course like medicine?
3. What kind of support might help reduce this number?
Follow-up: If the drop-out rate doubled next year, what questions would you want answered before drawing conclusions?
Think of a time you changed your opinion about something significant after new information or an experience.
1. What was your original view and what changed it?
2. How did you handle the process of changing your mind?
3. Why is this kind of flexibility useful for a doctor?
Follow-up: How would you respond if changing your mind meant admitting you had previously given someone incorrect advice?
Reflect on the process of preparing your UCAS application and getting ready for an interview whose exact format has not been clearly published.
1. How did you prepare for uncertainty about what the interview would involve?
2. What has this process taught you about your own strengths?
3. What has it taught you about areas you still need to develop?
Follow-up: If you were not offered a place this year, what would you take forward from this experience?
Consider a time you received disappointing results or an outcome that did not match your effort.
1. How did you respond at the time?
2. What did you learn about managing disappointment?
3. How might this learning help you cope with setbacks during medical training?
Follow-up: How would you distinguish between a setback you should push through and one that signals you need to change your approach?
Reflect on a time you had to make decisions or prepare for something despite incomplete information, similar to preparing for an interview with limited published detail.
1. What approach did you take to cope with the uncertainty?
2. What did you learn about managing situations where not all the facts are available?
3. How is this relevant to working as a doctor, where full information is not always available?
Follow-up: If you had prepared for the wrong format entirely, how would you adapt on the day?
Think about what you have learned about yourself through the whole process of applying to medical school so far.
1. What has surprised you most about yourself during this process?
2. What has it taught you about how you handle pressure?
3. How will you continue this kind of self-reflection once you start your course?
Follow-up: If a tutor on day one asked you to summarise what you learned about yourself from applying to medicine, what would you say?
UCLan uses this format for medicine: Multi station MMI. Interviews are held in person.
Interview timing for UCLan: December to April. Always check the university's own admissions pages for this year's dates.
UCLan assesses: Communication, Values, Ethical reasoning, Motivation.
No. They are 50 original MedicHut practice questions, written to match UCLan's published interview format. Universities do not share their real questions, so your interview may differ.
Yes. Every question is free to practise, with no sign-up needed. You can make a free account to save your notes.
UCLan medical school guide: entry requirements and interview advice
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