Unsure about my firm choice?

Like 5+ years ago we used to be completely PBL and it was undirected which everyone hated as you had no idea if you were learning enough or the right things so you had lots of gaps in your knowledge. That changed aorund when I arrived in 2015 to the rebranded Case Based Learning (CBL) where you got more direction. They set questions you need to prepare answers for relating to the case and then you and about 20 other students meet with 1-2 lectures/clinicians/teachers to go through it for a couple hours. You do this about once a week I would say. The learning comes when you have to prepare for these sessions.

This is all along side probably about 10-15 hours lectures a week plus a couple hours in HARC (anatomy teaching), a couple hours working on communication skills and clinical skills. If you hate lectures you can miss them and as long as you go to all the other stuff they will turn a blind eye. Personally I would prefer the old PBL style and would just work completely self directed using USMLE based resources.

Honestly rankings with medical schools doesn't really matter long term if you work as a clinician. In the eyes of your only possible employer as a junior doctor in the UK (the NHS) every GMC approved degree is worth the same. The academic big dog at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial etc gets the same base salary as the plebs like me. I think that's the other issue with picking you uni. UK premeds don't really know about what happens after you graduate and how speciality applications work or at least I didn't.

Like what benefit do you think you will gain with a more academically rigerous course or heavier workload? You are just working harder for the same thing I get at an chill course like Liverpool. I will admit however, if you want to work in industry or pharma or move to the US or go into management consulting your institution will matter but the vast majority of medics will not do that.

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