Yusuf Ben-Tarifite

Yusuf Ben-Tarifite came up with the idea for his social enterprise, The Aspiring Medics, when he was applying to study clinical medicine at Oxford University in 2018.

As a first-generation university student who grew up in a low-income family, Yusuf appreciates the challenges and barriers young people face when applying to study medicine.

With no experience in website design or content creation but a huge amount of passion for widening access into medicine, he set out to create the online platform a week before his freshers’ week.

Since then, Yusuf has grown The Aspiring Medics into a leading platform for students looking to get into medicine. The website provides information for medical applicants on every step of the process and offers online courses, one-to-one tutoring, WhatsApp groups and webinars. In the last 12 months, it has welcomed over 100,000 visitors.

“I want to show students that regardless of where you start, if you’re motivated and can demonstrate the qualities of a doctor, you can get into medicine. In the next five years, I’ll be a junior doctor in the NHS and want to combine my skills of medicine and social entrepreneurship to address health and educational inequities. I would be honoured to be a role model for other young innovators, particularly those from low-income households,” he says.