To ask the amount of effort needed to get into the medical profession

Don't really need all that. 3 As and a decent (2700h UCAT ) will easily get you 4 interviews. Strategy when applying is the plan - lowest UCAT that has offer so far this year at my school is 2560.

However be aware of the state of medicine as many doctors facing unemployment this year. Yes, you heard that right. While the NHS suffers hideous waits and endless waiting lists, we also let our trained doctors be unemployed 🤷‍♀️

Medic Mentor is overpriced nonsense.
Both my daughters are doing Med. Get 3 or 4 A's (preferably A*) at A Level, to include Chem and Bio. Score as close (or over) 3000 in the UCAT. Write a decent personal statement and be nice at the interview. That's pretty much it. With good predicted grades and a 3000-ish score in UCAT, you'll be called to interview at all four joints. Not getting an offer from at least two means you showed up naked to the interview and started shouting in Swahili. It's just about academics. That's all it takes to get a slot. The rest is just conversation.
Don't waste your money on MM.

Tom Swarbrick on LBC also discussing doctors prospects right now.

The effort is manageable if you really want to do it. I wouldn’t write the op’s daughter off just because she hasn’t properly looked into it yet. Everyone starts somewhere.

@JustRoseDreamer , I agree with @Stompythedinosaur if your daughter lacks the motivation to find out the answers to the questions you’re asking she’s highly unlikely to gain a place to study medicine. Competition for places is tough and just having excellent grades won’t impress the med schools, everyone has excellent grades. Med school is tough and long. Competition for junior doctor jobs is tough and the pay is crap. Exams are cripplingly expensive and ongoing. The hours are hideous and often antisocial. Please get your DD to do some research. Good luck!

Not all med students are the very top performing but they do have to be clever and dedicated. My DS’s friends who are at med school did not achieve AAA at A level, that is why they chose the biomed route. This Morning’s dr Zoe also said she took this route due to not achieving the right A level results.

My niece is a doctor, and it was the right choice for her - but as interested observer, I was staggered by how long the process of becoming "fully fledged" is.
I was a teacher, and all too aware of the hard word entailed in getting into medical school academically and with the voluntary work experience needed. I also knew that gaining a medical degree is no easy ride, but had little idea of how many years following that would entail yet more study and examinations, and sometimes arbitrary moves to other parts of the country.
She would be well advised to follow up some of the links given by PP's, and as they rightly said, it has to be her doing the research.

@Turmerictolly I really hope the doctors make people listen as otherwise the NHS is finished and privatised companies will win.

It always amazes me that the people who denigrate doctors are v vocal- until they need one. The PA experiment seems to be back firing very quickly. And consultants who have supported it, to the detriment of their own trainees, are taking some flak. As they should.

Let our doctors work and train, as they always have. Pay them, stop making them rotate so much, treat them well and they will stay.

The LBC phone in was a real eye opener- parents of med students plus young doctors themselves detailing their experiences. It's good that poor working conditions in the Uk are now being exposed but, sadly, the reputation of the profession is becoming tarnished. It definitely doesn't bode well for the future of all of us as you say.

Dc considered it for a few months but his heart wasn't in it. I'm glad really he didn't go for it as it's a huge amount of effort with no guarantees at any stage.

@Usernamen can you define a 'crème de la crème' student for me. Do you just mean academically, so people who can get A stars in exams ? As a teacher I have many of those students, but I also have many who I think will be more successful in their chosen fields, as they shine in other ways.

My most successful ever student is now a v v v v rich plumber. Useless at exams but the hardest working person I've ever met, with innate intelligence and people skills.

So what is success I suppose. To me it's being happy in yourself and in your chosen career. Money is nice but not everything. Exams are great, but not everything (& I'm a teacher 😊).

And those 'high flyers' with a loo top grades might not have the other skills required for medicine. You won't get in these days with just good grades.

This is what I am saying and was the case when I left school in the 2000s.

It’s not that students who study Medicine aren’t bright - goodness knows you need to be intelligent to get through all those exams - it’s that the brightest, crème de la creme of students in any school (and we all know who they are) are not opting for medical school the way they might have done in the 1970s, and are instead studying pure Sciences, Economics, Law, History, PPE etc. at top universities and getting onto the elite graduate schemes.

@Turmerictolly doctors are angry as their pay has declined by 35% over the last 10 years (in real terms). £15.33 an hour is not a great starting salary after 5/6 years of Uni. It's not a job for everyone and many of the bright students will be looking and thinking, no. If no longer has the cache to say I'm a doctor for them, or their parents.
Conditions are rubbish, government seem to hate them for some reason. Not just Australia who are poaching them (although Aus and NZ have been very proactive in recruiting young British doctors). It's scary stuff as these are the consultants of the future - we won't have any in a few years if this continues.

BUT, all students who get into medicine are v bright. Not sure what 'the brightest' means. Best grades ? Depends on subject, teaching time, life outside school, class size etc.

That's interesting re; top students avoiding medicine and seems to be true in my dc school. The really academic high fliers (around 30 out of a cohort of 200 - all 9's at GCSE and predicted mostly 4 A stars) have, mostly, opted for Maths, law and computer sciences at Oxbridge and other top uni's. Very few in this group opting for Medicine but a couple going for dentistry.

There are far more in the next cohort down for Medicine, still very bright kids though but it's interesting how aspirations are changing.

I've just been listening to James O Brien on LBC this morning discussing why doctors are off to Australia. Situation sounds pretty awful in the uk but they're valued a lot more in Australia/NZ.

@Usernamen and you are entitled to think that. I disagree. Any student who can get AAA at A level is bright. Any student who can get a high enough score on the UCAT is very bright. And any student who can last the rigours of 5 years studying the amount and complexity of a medical degree is bright.

1 in 4 students who apply for medicine will get in. At all. Other degrees will have other options at other Universities that may be less competitive. Medicine is competitive at every Uni. And the application process is brutal - students are still waiting to hear from some Unis this year. And A levels start in a few weeks.

Other degrees require students to be bright too. It's not some kind of weird one up manship.

9-14 applicants a place when each student can apply to 4-5 universities really isn’t that competitive. You should look up the really competitive courses.

I’m aware medicine degrees aren’t graded the same way as other degrees (and pointed this out in my post), my point is I know someone who just scraped a pass and got a job no problem. Everyone knows who the brightest students are in their A level class or their children’s class and what those students pursue in terms of degree and career. In the 1970s when DM and DAunt were in medical school, the top students in any given school went into medicine. By the time I left school in the 2000s that wasn’t the case.

Agree with PP, you only need to be moderately intelligent but you do need other, softer skills.

And it's still v competitive - 9-14 applicants per place. Hurdles that need to be cleared :

GCSEs (7 7s is enough for most places)
Predicted grades (AAA at least for most places but a few don't look)
UCAT (a v tough test)
Interviews (need to apply strategically depending on the above as each Uni looks at different things to shortlist)
A level results

And then 5-6 years of hard work (& a lot of fun).

All students who study medicine are 'top' (& medical degrees are not graded so no thirds).

They have to have the grades to get in (7s at GCSE are enough and AAA at A level). But they also need the softer skills these days - resilience, patience, empathy, listening skills etc. So some of those purely academic students now won't get in.

But it's no longer guaranteed employment because the government has decided to reduce the number of training places for specialities whilst increasing the number of medical students. Foundation students starting in July found out their jobs yesterday and a large minority have TBA. They are being made to move to new areas many miles away from home if they want to be a doctor. No choice. No other employer.

Your DD really needs to want to do medicine. 11,000 doctors applied to be GPs but there are only 4,000 roles available (because we don't need GPs 🤬). Things may improve but students need to go in with their eyes open as to the realities. It's paid v v badly (£32,000 for F1, but this is for a 48 hour week so equates to £15.33 an hour). There is no guarantee of progression these day. Oh and shifts usually mean you work 60+ hours a week, nights, lates, weird times.

Hope that helps.

it probably isn't a bad thing that it isn't all just 'the top students' getting in these days - being academically super-gifted does not necessarily translate to being a good doctor. You really need to be moderately intelligent, hard-working and pretty socially competent rather than just great at maths and physics (for some reason they were never so much bothered that we did biology!).

Re getting a job after medical school - most people do get into foundation jobs but it does gets very much harder to get jobs in training programmes after that (and that doesn't necessarily mean it's just the idiots that get kicked off the official programmes - there are some really really good doctors who've struggled to get training posts).

What? It has among the highest graduate employment rates. I know someone who scraped through their degree, getting a Third if Medical degrees were graded in that way (they’re not) and became a junior doctor straight after graduating.

I agree with PP that the standard of student has definitely dropped. When DM went to med school in the 70s the very top students in any school would go into Medicine. When I left school in the 2000s the very top students studied Maths, Physics, Economics, Law and went on to work in Finance, Tech and City Law. I don’t know what the top students in the 2020s are going into, but I doubt it’s Medicine.

Not worth it. Nearly 100k debt and no guarantee of a job or training post.

My DS has 2 friends at med school both started off by doing bio med and then converted.

In terms of 'work experience' - my advice as a HCP would be to get a part time job in a relevant area, such as a carer in a residential home, volunteering with St John's Ambulance or in a hospital etc. Observing a work experience doesn't actually tell us anything about a candidate, apart from they got lucky in getting a placement. But turning up every week to volunteer/work shows a level of care and commitment

Everyone I went to school with who wanted to be a medic did make it. BUT, they all really really wanted it and were prepared to work incredibly hard for it, especially getting decent work experience together and pre-entry tests. I remember a bunch of them going on some info event days The only person who found the relevant work exp bit easy was a surgeons daughter - he does charitable surgery trips in Africa and she used to go along as it's their own charity- and it did get rubbed in a few faces when other people were desperately trying all angles tbh.

One of my good friends from that time is now a Dr and it took her years. Did work experience with a science/medical angle where possible and did lots of voluntary activities like St John's Ambulance, or community service volunteering with the elderly. Took 4 A Levels, 3 were science/maths and fourth was a language so heavy workload to ensure she got her straight As.

She didn't get in at 18 so did a biomedical sciences degree, didn't get in again so did a gap year where she worked as a HCA in a hospital and made it in on the 3rd go when a uni space opened up for her because someone else dropped out; she got off a waiting list - which meant she didn't need to train abroad which was the next plan. She was diagnosed with a chronic/lifelong illness during her course as well which I think added some time on to the 5 year course.

Post uni it has been easier as she picked a less popular geographical location so she got that and was able to settle down quite early on. She's pretty happy with where she's working and she's now practicing in a field she loves but it was probably a 9-10 year journey to even qualify!

This example is circuitous but it hopefully shows that you really do need dedication and passion to be a medic.