Oxbridge Medicine with 6A*& 4A-For GCSEs, Is it still possible?

Yellowstone, I didn't read medicine there. Just interviewing at the same time so remember the medicine candidates horror!

Very sorry to hijack, OP, but beanlet - your dismissive, patronising comment about private school children is ignorant, ill-informed and unbelievably offensive.

Do hope you have 'fucked right off' - don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.

Agree strongly with Theas on the need for applicants have a good Plan B and to be able to reconcile themselves to that swiftly if things don't work out.

And beanlet the plural of louse is lice (not lices).

beanlet that's pretty immature. If you set yourself up as a high quality source of info then at least get it right. And if you don't, then at least have the grace not to insult either me just because I queried what you said or the achievements of very clever, hardworking, super-nice kids that you don't know. All the kids I'm talking about were state educated, so yeah, maybe an apology?

Quite amusing though since OP's DD is privately educated so are you implying she's below average? Clearly you are. Well that definitely wouldn't work for Oxbridge. Mixed messages there.

OP, the current Oxford system feeds the GSCE grades into a computer, adjusts them according to school, adds in the BMAT score and sends out a list of invites for interview. With cases on the cusp an actual human being looks at their form to see if there are any outstanding features which would warrant an interview.

Cambridge does it differently. beanlet's advice is fine for Cambridge but not for Oxford and it is useful to distinguish the two universities when the procedure can make a real difference as it might well do for your DD.

beanlet, in case you haven't yet fucked right off, you're also talking bullshit about how many kids get 11A's. If every above average kid going to private school got 11A then the national figures would look very different. Check them out and do the maths before you do down every private school kid with less than 11 A*'s. You can't generalise from SPGS or similar because each and every kid at schools like that are way, way above average to begin with.

I hope that you're not a tutor yourself because you seem pretty unopen to challenge.

No direct advice re Oxbridge medicine but recent Oxbridge experience with eldest and her mates.

Generally if applying to Oxbridge resilience is the biggest biggest key to surviving the proscess happily. Don't make it your only ever plan you bank on - even just secretly - have a second route you have also researched and love.all dd1 mates are high fliers- As at AS being the norm. Many not even interviewed, dd fell at interview (found out a few days before Xmas) but aced her A levels ( 3 A* 1A). A couple had offers and missed grades 1 chap awaiting re Mark (2ums under) but no guarantee they'll have him even if this is ok.....

Dd happy to be off to Nottingham and was resilient enough to be able to still have a great Xmas but several mates were devastated and gad no real " bsvk up" plan as they were so focussed on Oxbridge.

Me? I'd look widely at medical courses and think what she wants from medicine - academia or early patient contact and clinically relevant learning and skills ASAP - know which route I chose many years ago when it was radical and new, and I know which route I'd choose again.

Surely it would depend what subjects the A's were in? Chemistry would be a no, but art or dance? Probably not a barrier.

Read my post properly Yellowstone. I didn't say GCSEs don't count. I said they wouldn't turn away a candidate with OP's DD's very specific set of 6A* and 4A.

My DH's specialty is medicine, to be precise, so somewhat better informed than you, methinks. And Cambridge, but he also studied and worked at Oxford. I was trying not to out myself, and now I will have to namechange, so thanks a bunch.

FFS get some glasses and wind your neck in.

Hitherto Oxford most definitely, definitely hasn't required raw UMS module scores for AS's, so I think he must have been Cambridge?

That's part of the reason my three girls applied to Oxford....

and be Medicine specific etc.

Oi hang on beanlet, was he Cambridge? I think it was made very clear I was distinguishing in order to help OP.

If he was Oxford, then as I was, please ask him to clarify and Medicine specific and very precise. Thanks.

notevenamousie I love the simplicity of the idea that fewer people applying than to other universities mean that it's easier to get in. Durham for Law, for example, always has way more applicants than Oxford, it's called blanket applying. Most of the Oxford and Cambridge hopefuls also apply there. This is standard for competitive subjects at top unis. It's about quality not quantity and looking at the extraordinarily talented students I've seen rejected in recent cycles for Medicine from both Oxford and Cambridge (the latest who has just got 4 A2 A*'s), God help anyone who thinks it's got easier. Perhaps applicants are being more realistic precisely because they are better informed about the intensity of the competition.

beanlet OK your DH was Senior Tutor until recently but please explain how he can say GCSEs don't count in the formula used to select candidates for interview for Medicine when the Admissions Tutors for Medicine say that the whittling down is managed centrally and is numerical, based on a combination of GCSE and BMAT scores? Are those tutors putting out misinformation? Perhaps your DH glanced up from a weighty academic tome when you asked how to reply to someone on MN and just gave you the criteria that his own specialty would employ. Or perhaps he was thinking about criteria after interview? Those would of course be irrelevant for a student not invited to interview in the first place. Please could you check again because students need a consistent line if they've only four choices. It matters.

Yellowstone, fair enough about the "in my day" bit of advice, but I have shortlisted/ interviewed recently for medicine though not at Oxbridge so maybe discount the fact they are looking for a human being! The medical schools I have worked for were. The ratios of applicants for places have been the lowest in the country for Oxbridge for nearly 20 years so that bit still applies - for medicine, it is easier to get into Oxbridge than almost anywhere else in the country in terms of the numbers applying for places. But definitely ask on the Open Days - if you ask straight out, they will answer. Would she consider doing another degree first? Another route to consider. (Though she'd do a BSc anyway at Oxbridge but it can be a very good route in for lots of reasons)

My DH was Senior Tutor and Admissions Tutor at an Oxbridge college very recently, and is also a scientist. He says no, they won't turn their noses up at your DD's GCSE results. They will reject her if she does not take Chemistry ALevel, and they will look at the raw UMS scores for her AS levels - they count for a lot, as does a high score on the BMAT.

But don't worry about her GCSE's.

HTH

I don't think oxbridge are interested in well-rounded individuals , but in having a great passion and ability for the subject!

Agreeing with Yellowstone - am ex-Oxford, though not medicine, and had a lot of medic friends when I was there. Go to the Open Days, do your research on the website etc, don't worry about the extra-curricular stuff, unless it's specifically about deciding whether medicine is actually the career for her - and definitely have your daughter consider very carefully whether a particular university is the right place for her to read medicine. Some of my Oxford postgrad medic friends originally from other institutions/countries were quite critical of the way in which it is taught at undergraduate level at Oxford, and it's entirely possible that another university might suit her much better.

Agree too about the level of randomness and luck that starts to kick in with Oxbridge and other 'prestige' medical programmes after a certain point - you can have astonishing exam results and give an excellent interview and still not be accepted, just because so many candidates are now that good. It was the thing a lot of people didn't get in that Laura Spence case at Magdalen a few years back - she was an excellent candidate, but other people were better, in the eyes of the admissions tutors.

Not sure that any of you trying to be positive have seen seriously stellar kids with 11 A turned down year on year. I have and all of them have had very strong grounds to be confident, but nevertheless got the thumbs down. It probably helps OP more to be realistic and to have up to date info. The fact that kids with 11A's have been turned down doesn't mean that those with fewer don't get in, but by definition they'll have done better on the BMAT. And the BMAT is no walk in the park. We're also talking about a pupil from a private school, so her GCSE scores won't be adjusted upwards.

Tactically your DD's best bet is to look at the up to date information given out officially by the two universities in question and to look at the different weights placed by each on the different factors. They're looking for the same sort of people (who might be a slightly different group from those sought by most other universitites), but they find them through different approaches.

Given the weight placed on GCSE's at Oxford for Medicine to get to the interview stage, Cambridge seems the better way to go.

I agree that your DD's results are objectively extremely good, it's just that Medicine and esp. at Oxbridge, Imperial etc. is now exceptionally scary. It's important with only four choices on the UCAS form to get it right and not to be lulled into a false sense of security by people who are trying to be nice.

The system has clearly changed. When you read medicine there DeWe, Oxford clearly didn't have the system of selecting candidates for medicine on the basis of GCSE scores (as adjusted by contextual data) combined with the BMAT scores. It appears to be quite a strict mathematical decision making process and is centrally administered. What subjects you get at A* won't matter at that initial stage though presumably it might when the tutors look at everything in the round after interview.

The statistics charts show up to date figures for how many interviewees there are for each place and what percentage of applicants are invited for interview in the first place.

Probably - the number of applicants per place is less at Oxbridge compared to pretty much everywhere else for medical school (because the course is still very theoretical and therefore not so popular, plus the number of local places for the clinical years is very low). Tend not to get an interview in anywhere that has a more modern course if you put it down though.
She needs some serious people stuff to put down - to show that she doesn't live in a middle class priveleged bubble.
And many congratulations!!

Do encourage her to look at the different ways medicine is taught at different universities, & to think seriously about what would suit her.

Probably depends on what the A/As were in. If the science and maths were all A then I suspect the others won't matter. If none of them are then I'd have thought you may want to deflect interest away from medicine, but I may be wrong there.

Extra curriculum stuff doesn't matter for Oxbridge, didn't when I went (90s), doesn't now. It's a bit of luck whether you happen to hit the right college as your first choice, and if you click with the tutors. You do come across the odd person who has written an orchestral piece being performed at the Albert Hall, but they're unusual, most people have the usual amount of outside interests and find a few new ones while they're there.

In my year of applications for medicine at my college there were 30 candidates for interview (after exam had removed a fair few) for only two places as the organ scholar was medicine and he'd already been awarded a place and there was someone who'd been accepted the previous year for a deferred place.
The next year I think there was half that number for the usual 4 places (again after exam), when my brother applied his college there were 11 people for 4 places and there wasn't the exam then so much better odds.

Honestly, look at the websites, talk to those there, attend Open Days and don't be persuaded by anything you hear on MN unless you trust its source.

Unless her BMAT is utterly outstanding, she's at risk of not getting an interview at Oxford I'd say. With fab AS results she may be better trying Cambridge.