Clinical medicine at Magdalen

Magdalen offers College places to between four and six first-year clinical medical students each year. Application by the deadline of 4th January in the intended year of admission is essential. For further information see the Medical Sciences Division web pages on clinical study.

The College is usually able to accommodate new graduates for the first two years of their course. For clinical medicine students, however, it has been agreed to offer accommodation in the first and third years of their course instead, an arrangement which dovetails more readily with medical electives. Clinical medicine students who are not in Oxford during their elective period and/or during their district hospital placement may be able to obtain rent relief on their college accommodation.

Magdalen offers assistance towards an elective period in the form of a travel grant normally to the value of £350 (in addition to a general travel fund of up to £1,050 per student), but has no earmarked scholarships.

The College has many traditional associations with medicine and the biological sciences. Sir Charles Sherrington was Professor of Physiology at Magdalen, and the Sherrington Society meets to discuss medical topics. Sherrington’s fellow Nobel Prize-winners Sir John Eccles and Sir Peter Medawar were Tutors at Magdalen, and Lord Florey was a student here. The Regius Professor of Medicine, Sir John Bell, was for a long time a fellow at Magdalen as Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine and his successor, Sir Peter Ratcliffe, the fifth Magdalen member to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, remains a Magdalen Fellow and Oxford Professor as well as undertaking his half-time role as Clinical Research Director for the Crick Institute.

The College has one of the best science libraries in Oxford, where books required for the clinical medical course are kept.