Manchester Uni for medicine - don’t want her to take a gap year!

[Cluelessatthisstuff]

DD didn’t get into her first choice - Oxford. Insurance was Manchester which is a very good RG university and I believe has the biggest medical department in UK. Daughter wants to resit a subject in the hope of getting an A* but I’m really uneasy about this, namely because all of her friends are going away for uni so she’ll be at home, alone and working part time in Costa coffee. I just don’t think she’ll be happy.

Does anyone have any experience with Manchester uni? Doesn’t have to be medicine specifically but anything that could help my DD? Thanks

When DD was looking at medicine last year most of the universities stated that they would only accept resits for extenuating circumstances.

Manchester graduate (twice over!) here. Echo what previous posters have said - it really doesn’t matter which med school you go to, med school is med school - and Manchester is such a great place to start off an academic career if that’s what your DD wants. It is a renowned research hub with incredible support and resources which have won awards and are used with envy by other universities. The intercalation options are plentiful too and broader than most med schools. Your DD is so lucky! Hope she has a fab time there.

My DD also missed Oxford this year and is going to Manchester instead (not medicine). I sympathise enormously, it was a difficult day on Thursday, mostly because of the sheer disappointment and frustration after working so hard and waiting so long for the outcome. It's tough and sad that despite achieving really good results, you can't feel immediately happy about it. However, she has swiftly come around to the change and we've searched for and found many positives. Much as others have said, she thinks the overall student experience will be better, less pressurised and, to be honest, if she could have chosen between the two courses simply on paper without anything else coming into play, she would have chosen Manchester. I'm a strong believer that all things happen for a reason, we don't always understand it at first, but in time we will. Good luck, I hope your DD takes a little bit of time and manages to make the right decision for her.

She doesn’t have to take a whole year to do a resit, there should be fast track resits in the November/January.

If she just wanted to bump her grade up, she could do that, then spend the rest of the year learning a language/working abroad and start at Manchester the following Autumn.

How would student finance be affected if she did both - went to Manchester and did a year of medicine there, and also retook and reapplied to Oxford at the same time? She'd have a very good head start/evidence of reading around the subject! She might also find that after she has made friends and settled in she doesn't want to change anymore.

A friends daughter is now going into her 3rd year of medicine at Manchester. It’s a fabulous uni and Manchester is a fabulous city

Medical students have much more limited opportunities for part time work during term time and shorter holidays after the first couple of years. They also have to be smarter in appearance than stereotypical "student" when on placements in hospitals etc so have higher clothing / footwear costs.

So a year out, in and of itself, probably isn't a bad idea, if she's going to use it to earn money to use over her course and/or do travel she won't have the opportunity to do later.

But in her case, going to Manchester now is a much better idea if she's spoken to Oxford and they've said 'no' [some 20 years ago now, a friend of mine who is now a GP, missed her offer at Oxford by a grade and they accepted her anyway]. Oxford isn't, IME, good for self-esteem/confidence and it's in the more expensive south of the country. [I read law at Oxford].

"there should be fast track resits in the November/January."

I believe that option is no longer available.

Short retake courses exist, but they’re January to June now.

Agree with many of the PPs.
DS1 was always going to take a yr out, so not as invested, but had his heart set on Imperial for med. He missed entry reqs (two points off an A* in (Edexcel ) maths.We’ve put in for a remark but
he was initially gutted and, exactly the same as yr DD, insisted he wanted to retake maths in his yr out.
He’s now simmered down and is happily researching other schools, saying he wants to practice rather than research.
Hang tight, don’t let her give up Manchester but help her come to terms with losing her Oxford place.
It’s a ridiculously stressfull process and, once practising, it really doesn’t matter what school you went to.

My experience is way out of date so ignore this if not relevant. But I got an offer from Oxford and then didn't quite get the grades they asked for and they said even if I spent the year re-sitting they couldn't offer a place because I didn't get it first time.

That might be out of date/just me/non-medical degree but I'd call the college she applied to directly and talk to them maybe?

I'd be very wary of pushing her to take up a place she's unsure about. Oxford's a big dream to miss out on for some and it needs to be her who decides what to do next so she doesn't resent anyone or have a false start somewhere that doesn't feel right.

Have imperial changed the med entry reqs aface?

www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/courses/school-of-medicine/medicine/#entry-requirements suggests a star in maths is not required? (though may be required in bio or chem? (NB I'm not a med school expert, so not sure why I even looked, so may have missed something obvious!)

More generally but relevant to op, I think the pp who are saying give dd a bit of time to come to terms with it do have something. Everything every one has said about 'take manchester' rings absolutely true and is very good advice, but I think it can be a crushing blow not to get your firm, and is also quite a blow not to make an Oxford offer. (Although, as many other pp have said, there are drawbacks to O/b!). The way admissions are set up for English and Welsh students (conditional offers, requirements for A *s which didn't even exist 10 yrs ago, no AS levels so everything riding on a few hours of exams at the end of 2 years etc) I think are likely to heighten this sort of disappointment, but that is another debate!

It's very tempting to hope dc will adjust immediately and be delighted with their insurance (and anyone should be delighted with Manchester for medicine!) but the current system, and the fixation with O/b, do make it very hard for those who go to huge lengths to get O/b offers, are celebrated for it, and then miss at the last hurdle. They need time to be sad about it - 4 days is not that long.

I smiled at the PP who said “vanity retake” because that’s exactly what this scenario is - and I say that kindly. It’s a crushing blow when you’re used to academic excellence, and not getting that A* must feel like failure even though it clearly isn’t. And she’s obviously had her heart set on Oxford too, so it’s doubly upsetting.

But as other people have said, if she really wants to become a doctor then she needn’t dwell too long on not getting into Oxford.

I hope she takes the Manchester place. Keep us updated OP

Manchester is brilliant and all the medics from St Andrews finish their degrees there too.

My cousin went to Manchester to do medicine and loved it. She is a GP and her wife (who she met there) is a fabulously successful surgeon. I think she should go for it

Medical education is extremely tightly regulated in the UK and Manchester is an excellent place to study medicine. Lots of incredible research going on and it's a real centre of scientific excellence. Manchester is also a brilliant place to be a student - it is absolutely geared up to the student life and student experience and has a lot of affordable student accommodation. And the public transport is great both within the city and between Manchester and other cities.

I smiled at the PP who said “vanity retake” because that’s exactly what this scenario is - and I say that kindly. It’s a crushing blow when you’re used to academic excellence

And going to university is interesting for these people because suddenly you are not the best, or the cleverest or the star. You are one of many. It's a horrible shock.

Manchester is great!

Does she have the option to accept the Manchester place but defer it for a year?

I found getting my head round where I would move to in just a few weeks far too much so I deferred my university place for a year after results day. It was the best decision ever, I got so much maturity from my jobs and travelling. Mainly from the jobs though, learning to work with all sorts of people and being exposed to more of the world.

It might give her time to adjust and get properly excited.

Will also give her the chance to work on that need to get "perfrct' results which so many of us probably relate to but which ultimately can make the real life job of any professional excruciatingly exhausting.

I can't speak for medicine but I applied many years ago to
Nottingham in my chosen discipline, it didn't do as well as I had hoped and I got rejected so I decided like your daughter to resit some subjects and apply the following year.
Whilst being interviewed the second time round I was asked straight out "We didn't accept you the first time round so what makes you think we will accept you again?" and they didn't. So I for one would not recommend waiting and reapplying. It was the biggest waste of a year really for me really as I went onto Birmingham and thoroughly enjoyed it:

Excellent hospitals to learn in, I think she should go, putting all her eggs in one basket in the hope she gets in next year for what? Prestigious University?

Medicine is Medicine in any uni, I agree with you @Cluelessatthisstuff

I am a Manchester medical school graduate. I was set on going to oxford and am so so so grateful I didn’t! I had a fantastic experience at university.

Previous posters are right- it doesn’t matter at all which medical school you went to! Foundation applications are blinded so it doesn’t matter which you went to at all- every graduate gets a job! If she fancies doing research there are lots of opportunities, you can intercalate, you do student selected components, she can apply to academic foundation tracks. I am not amazingly interested in research but I presented a project I did as a student at an international conference- you almost have to do some of that stuff wherever you got to keep up to date and progress. I also had a life, got drunk, grew up, and made my best friends there.

I might sound harsh but if she wants to be a doctor it would be the HEIGHT of stupidity to take a year out and re-sit. Why would a medical school want her over someone who got the grades first time? She would have to have more experience, volunteer work or value to bring- resitting an a-level and working a normal job aren’t going to cut it. She might well end up with no offers at all next year, it’s a serious risk. Don’t let her be naive- many medical schools will take her first set of grades and not consider the re sit at all.

She will fuck up many times. I got into Manchester but was so disappointed I got a B in Maths that I wanted to resit it. I rang my old examinations office to enquire and I’m so glad they told me to get a grip. I’ve failed exams since, both in medical school and professional exams. I’ve failed patients, even when I didn't mean to and I tried my best. Failing does not make me a bad doctor. I always get great feedback from my colleagues and patients; I treat others how I would want to be treated, work really hard and when I fail I pick myself back up and learn.

Success is not the absence of failure. She needs to learn that- this might not be the path she thought she would walk but it’s going to be scary and yet fantastic all the same.

Feel free to inbox me for any specific advice and I’m sure she will see me for some teaching at some point!

@TheNanny23 that’s a really nice post cheered me up.

‘Success is not the absence of failure’ is such a succinct way of putting across what unfortunately I think a lot of schools don’t quite manage to make teenagers understand.

Manchester is brilliant and all the medics from St Andrews finish their degrees there too

Only some of the students from St. Andrews go there, Manchester is one of six partner medical schools.

And the Ops daughter should know that Oxford, like most UK medical schools, only allows resits under exceptional circumstances. And I’m sure if there were any then it would have been mentioned in the OP.

Medical schools need students who can do well with a heavy workload. That’s not Working part time in costa and re sitting one A Level.

As everyone else said, she should accept the place she has and be very grateful.

She should definitely accept the place at Manchester! Like a PP said, all graduates get jobs, with blind Foundation applications, so it won’t matter in the long run.

What she will have to learn, and get used to is that she won’t always get perfect academic results. I find a lot of kids that end up at Oxbridge have a massive shock - they’ve always been the cleverest in their class, with the best results, and suddenly they’re surround by serious academic talent and they’re not the top of the class anymore. It’s a massive learning curve that they need to adjust to.

Oxford has no reason to need to accept resits. Your daughter is disappointed with her A, and she has a right to be, but she needs to get some perspective, pick herself up and concentrate on the long term.

If she’s beating herself up and wanting to strive for academic perfection at the risk of potentially losing the opportunity to study medicine, I’m not convinced that the academic pressure of Oxford will suit her for the next 5 years. She should think seriously about all of this.

And most importantly, let her read all the responses on this thread from current doctors, to hopefully put her mind at rest.

So lovely hearing everyone on this thread share their experiences and congratulate OP's daughter on her fantastic achievement.

I think the important thing is to shift her focus so that if people ask how her recent results went, her response is "really well thanks, I got a place at Manchester for Medicine!" rather than automatically thinking "I didn't get into Oxford."

Hope she's feeling better today