Student-led widening access schemes

Medicine is among the most competitive degrees in the UK. Successfully gaining admission into medical school requires students to demonstrate a variety of academic and nonacademic skills in addition to experience and insights into the profession. However, gaining relevant experience within medicine may not be equally available to all students. The 2012 report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission stated that in terms of widening access and improving social mobility “medicine lags behind other professions”. As president and vice president of Imperial College School of Medicine’s student-led widening access society, we can provide an insight into the role of medical students in leading widening participation programs within a large medical school. In this article, we discuss our organizational structure, our core activities and our collaboration with the university’s outreach program.