Academic Foundation Programme
Should you apply to the Academic Foundation Programme (AFP)?
The AFP has always been seen as the route for the more research driven medics. But actually, I’d argue it needs to be thought of more as education and research rather than just research. There are a lot of programmes now that just focus on improving medical education, which feels a lot more accessible and appealing, at least to me anyway.
The AFP differs from the FP on one main account. The AFP contains 5 clinical blocks and 1 academic block over the 2 years, whilst the FP contains all 6 clinical blocks. So, the AFP sets out specific time for you to focus just on academic work. The advantage is that you have allocated and dedicated time to focus on research or education with the AFP. But, even if you are not on this programme but are on the FP, you can still successfully get involved with research and education. There’s nothing stopping you from pursuing research or education in your own time. Arguably, it gives you greater flexibility to do whatever and whenever to fit your schedule. In fact, a friend of mine knows that she wants to do research, but actively chose not to do the AFP, because she valued building up clinical experiences, which the AFP offers less of due to 1 less clinical block that the FP.
So, in a nutshell, the AFP advantage is allocated time for research and education. Another advantage is the “CV Clout”, which may help later down the line for your job applications or applications for other academic roles. The disadvantages are less clinical training and also less money during the academic block. So, should you apply?
If you have any interest in pursuing an academic career in research or education, the I highly recommend applying. Even just to get a bit of interview experience and familiarity at the very least.
Applying to the Academic Foundation Programme (AFP)
The process of applying involves some additional steps to the normal FP application. You can apply to a maximum of any 2 deaneries for the AFP. This involves filling out a generic form like for the FP, but there’s an additional element of white space questions (WSQs), opportunity to add more publications, add presentations and prizes; more on this later.
The white space questions (WSQs) are like the personal statement, but more structured with more specific questions at times. So, applying to the AFP does take more effort and does involve crafting good answers to these questions. Typically, there are around 5 questions to answer (around 200 words max for each). The questions, lengths, and importance varies from deanery to deanery. Also, not all deaneries have WSQs. For example, London DO NOT have any WSQs. Ok, so next let’s have a look at how it’s scored.
The Points System for Academic Foundation Programme (AFP)
If you are looking to apply to the Academic Foundation Programme (AFP) then the points work exactly like the FP but there are these additional elements added on:
Publications: Up to 10 publications (2 points each).
Presentations: Up to 10 presentations/posters (1 point each).
Awards/Prizes/Scholarships: Up to 5 awards/prizes (1 point each) are recognised.
These values are true for London AFP as of 2019-2020, but the values are more mysterious for other deaneries. For London AFPs, the sneaky rule is that only decile 1-3 and people with more than 10 points from publications, presentations and prizes are picked for interview.
So, to summarise, publications, presentations and prizes translate to meaningful points for applications both foundation and even higher up. For example, for the surgical training pathway, presentations and publications make up 5 points out of a possible 35, with other categories including audit, teaching, commitment to specialty, clinical experience.
