Medmentor Review: A Fantastic Site for Medical School Applicants
If you are applying to a UK medical school, then Medmentor is a great resource for you. They have a large team of medical students who produce UCAT, BMAT, interview and A-Level related content that is invaluable for medical school applicants.
Content
Quick Summary
Here is an overall review of what I like about Medmentor.
Information
From the blog to the newsletter, the information that Medmentor provide is top-class
Social
Medmentor have a presence on all major social media platforms, allowing you easy access to their team
Design
A beautiful and well-organised design where most of the information can be found with ease
Overall
Medmentor should be top of the list of websites for students applying to medical school. Everything from the design to the information screams quality, and it is obvious many hours of planning have gone into making it. However, it is targetted at UK applicants so may not be suited for other countries.
Disclaimer: I have not been paid to make this article. However, one of the co-founders is a close friend. I have tried my best to be as unbiased as possible.
What is Medmentor?
You may not have heard much about Medmentor, but you sure will in the coming years.
Who Are They?
Medmentor is a new company that started in mid/late 2020 which aims to have all the things a medical school applicant could need in one place.
Although it sounds ambitious, they are off to a stellar start.
They provide many things that I have not seen in any website marketed for the same cohort, and their 15+ team of medical students prove that they are committed to having a lasting impact in this space.
Unfortunately, they mostly cater to UK applicants. Although they aim to expand out into other countries, considering how most of the team are from London medical schools, it is unlikely they will be focusing on other countries any time soon.
It isn’t just a website though. They have their foot in YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and more, and have many exciting things planned for the future.
What Do They Provide?
Here is a list of the key things that the company offers.
- Superhub – A collection of resources from across the internet
- Blog – Unique blog posts written by a variety of authors
- Clinic – Weekly Q&As live-streamed on YouTube
- Navigator – A collection of events and courses that medical students can participate in
- Application tracker – Information on what Year 12 and 13 students should be doing every month (found on the homepage)
- Newsletter – A weekly newsletter that provides tips and resources
- NHS Hot Topics – A constantly updated list of health-related news stories
- Social Media – The best medical student Instagrammers and influencers
Cost
At the moment, Medmentor doesn’t charge for anything.
All of the information and services they provide are offered free of charge. However, this may change at any point and I will update this article when possible to reflect those changes.
Let’s now look at one of the main selling points of the site: Superhub.
Superhub
The superhub is a page on the Medmentor website which lists the best resources that medical school applicants should use.
Explaining the Superhub
Although they market it as a “supercharged digital mentor”, in reality, it is just a collection of resources that you can find online.
They explicitly say that it is not a directory of information. They don’t just put anything and everything on the list.
Rather, they have sifted through the mountains of information and selected the best resources; thereby saving you a lot of time.
A Good Idea With Good Execution
Although it’s probably not the most original idea in the world (I tried a similar thing with Revising Rubies a while back), it has been executed well.
The colour coding system which they implement is fantastic and well-thought-out, helping you quickly filter through their list.
A great feature that many people will love is the comment section underneath (most of) the links. They summarise what the resource contains, as well as stating its pros and cons (or “considerations” as they like to call it).
It would be nice to have these pros and cons for all the resource links, but, understandably, they are still working on it (note that Medmentor is less than a year old at the time of writing).
Another wish would be an improvement in the overall layout of the page. It can sometimes be a challenge to scan all the links at once. The implementation of a search feature would help considerably.
Superhub Summary
It might be slightly ironic, but here is a list of the pros and cons (considerations?) of Medmentor’s superhub:
Clinic
The weekly live-streams provided by Medmentor are a great way to ask questions to experienced medical students.
What is the Clinic?
The “clinics” are question and answer live streams which are typically held by Tafsir, a 6th-year UCL medical student.
They are a great way for applicants to ask questions to experienced medics.
Held at 6 pm every Saturday, you can access them via several social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. During the sessions, people can ask a wide variety of questions that can be anything medical school related.
Quality Information At No Cost
Tafsir is a fantastic communicator with loads of experience in this field.
His bio is impressive and you can see his knowledge on display while discussing topics with viewers. Considering how it’s essentially a 1-hour mentor session for free, you can’t ask for more.
However, as this is a review, I should mention some negatives.
The production quality could be improved and I would love to see more structured livestreams where a presentation can be given on any particular topic.
It would also be nice for applicants to join the livestream in some form or another.
However, apart from these small things, I am sure people will find great value from the Medmentor clinics.
Clinics Pros and Cons
Blog and NHS Hot Topics
Both the blog and Hot Topics provide ways for visitors to access original content produced by the Medmentor team and allow applicants insight into current health stories.
The Point of a Blog?
Before I started Revising Rubies, I never really understood the point of a websites blog. They seemed redundant and something that people were unlikely to look at.
After a year and a half of blogging, I have realised that blogs are things that are supposed to get people through the door.
People find websites after stumbling across their article which answered a specific question they Googled. Then, the point is to capture as many people as possible into becoming regular visitors to the site.
It seems that Medmentor is onto a similar idea.
A Good Variety
Here is where you can truly see the large number of people involved in Medmentor.
Their blog is produced by different medical students every week, with a total of 6 bloggers currently working writing for them!
This ensures you see posts from several creators who each have different experiences of the application process.
It also allows them to stay consistent with their blogging (unlike yours truly ????).
Hot Topics
Their Hot Topics (aka “Newsfeed”), is a way to stay up-to-date on all the latest health-related headlines around the world.
Although I wouldn’t entirely rely on it for interview preparation, it is certainly a way to cover the biggest topics currently going on.
Blog/Hot Topics Pros and Cons
Newsletter
Their newsletter gives weekly updates on all the latest Medmentor information.
If you aren’t someone to keep on coming back to a website that isn’t YouTube (and let’s face it, your not the only one), then the Medmentor newsletter is a great way of getting all the most important information every week.
The newsletter is quite long, but here are a couple of screenshots to give you an idea of what it looks like.
Here are some of the other things that they write in their blog which you may find of interest.
- Weekly Clinics
- Application tracker
- Blog posts
- Book of the week
- Podcast of the week
- Navigator – Events of the week
- Superhub – Resources of the week
- Quote of the week
A lot of the stuff is already present of the website.
The things which are exclusive to the newsletter are the book, podcast and quote of the week.
However, even if you aren’t going to read every word of the newsletter, I would say it’s well worth subscribing to.
Newsletter Pros and Cons
Future Potential
Medmentor has loads of potential for the future, and I hope that it becomes the leading force in medical school application that it is trying to be.
Although Medmentor is still trying to grow its business, it is extraordinary the value that is on offer here.
There is simply no way an individual could do the number of things that Medmentor offers (one of the reasons why the Revising Rubies version of the Superhub failed miserably).
Check out their website here is you haven’t already.
Share this article with your friends and colleagues!
If you would rather look at some other articles I have produced, then check these ones I have hand-picked for you:
- How Do Top Medical Students Study?
- Is Medical School as Difficult As Everyone Says?
- Do Doctors Remember Everything From Medical School?
- Medical Specialities for a Work-Life Balance – Best and Worst
Have a wonderful day!
