Statistics reveal that medical students are far more likely to have been privately educated than they were five years ago.

The latest figures from 2008 show that despite attempts to widen the social mix of the profession, 67 per cent of applicants from private schools were accepted as medical students, while the proportion of state school applicants had dropped to 41 per cent.

The figures, uncovered by Pulse magazine, come less than a month after a cross-party government report argued that family wealth and a private education remain the key to well-paid professions.

GPs said medical school applicants were increasingly expected to demonstrate supporting activities that could stack the odds in favour of the privately educated.

Over the past five years, there has been an increase in the number of applicants for medicine from state schools, but the number accepted onto courses has risen far more slowly.

The figures concur with those from the Government’s Panel on Fair Access to the Professions report, which found just 4 per cent of medical students come from the lowest two socioeconomic groups.

The typical doctor of the future will grow up in a family that is better off than five in six families in the UK. Medical students are three times more likely to have gone to a private school than the student population as a whole, the report by UCAS states.