IB or A Levels, tentatively thinking of medicine

[thedoofus]

Hello!

I've read through previous similar topics, but this hasn't come up for a while, so thought no harm in asking again .

DD is in Y11. Predicted 8s/9s in everything, solid all-rounder. Generally a high achiever, both academically and in other areas (head girl, lead in school play, peer mentor etc etc). She enjoys all her subjects and is self-motivated. Tentatively thinking of medicine, and hoping to do some work experience soon to explore that further. If she does A Levels, they'll be Sciences - probably Biology, Chemistry, Maths, and possibly one other.

Sixth form college also offers the IB, which I think sounds brilliant (I would have LOVED it when I did A Levels), and would mean she could keep up English and French (the French she especially enjoys and is good at). But consensus does seem to be that it's more work/pressure and I'm interested in people's experiences of that.

DD currently has a part-time job, and while we could finance her not having one, it seems like good experience to continue to work through 6th form. We haven't looked into getting into medical school very extensively, but I guess I'm concerned that the extra work with IB might leave less time to pad out her extra-curricular stuff like work/work experience etc. Also, obviously, I want her to have time to enjoy life. She manages herself and her time well at the moment, but I know how much pressure kids can put themselves under (especially high-achieving girls maybe!) and I think it's important to have time for the rest of life too.

Of course it's her decision to make, but I'd love to hear any thoughts/experiences people have for my own interest.

at that age it should be education before employment.

looks like ib would be a good fit for her otherwise. a diverse education should imo be encouraged.

Look into whether she can use the service element of the IB to do work experience e.g. care home volunteering, school for children with special needs etc. Important part of being a doctor is showing empathy for others in those kinds of circumstances. She can also use the extended essay task to write about something interesting in the medical field eg. Medical Ethics etc. I would ask the school how many IB students have gone on to study medicine and where exactly. Highers would be Chemistry, Biology, Maths (clarify which type of IB Maths is better for Medicine because there are 2, Subsidiary subjects would be French, English and a social science (I think). Some kids get away with doing psychology somehow if there is an exemption.

I did it IB and would highly recommend. It's a big workload but still plenty of time for socialising, I had a Saturday job too, most of us did.

There is much more course work in IB in general than A levels. On average 20 per cent per subject. Personally I think for an high achieving outgoing child that is better than pretty much all riding on a few final exams.

Thank you - these are really helpful thoughts. Your point about volunteering/extended essay/making the IB course work for her with a view to medicine (if that is what she ends up wanting to do) is especially useful @Cosyblankethottea . I totally agree that at this stage it's important to follow your educational interests rather than focus too much on a career, but I think doing any of those things would be beneficial anyway. (I worked in a care home during my university holidays - though my work now is unrelated to it, it was definitely useful life experience.)

IB is more work. Many successful medicine applicants have A levels. So IB isn’t necessary. Does she want to do
it. I think it suits very able all rounders.

Also look at medical schools and what they want. @thedoofus If you post in HE you will get very detailed responses on medical schools and variations! Some like relevant work experience and others less so. My DDs friend did St Johns Ambulance (Bristol University) so make a judgement on academic/life balance. There’s also s
the BMAT tests and numerous interviews to consider as well as academics. So in my view, only do IB if you are super clever and really can fit everything in. The universities treat the qualifications equally.

Also EPQ shows English ability. Most medical applicants have great GCSEs so English should be there. What you would have done is irrelevant.

Thanks @TizerorFizz , more food for thought and some useful advice about medicine applications (my own experience of it is limited to an ill-fated relationship with a medical student in my first year at university!).

She's some way off making a decision yet - college open evening and IB open evening aren't until January.

I'm definitely forming the impression that IB is more work and only suitable for high-achieving all-rounders. But DD definitely fits into that category, so I guess it'll just come down to what she likes the sound of the most, and how hard she wants to work. I'm so impressed with her organisation and work ethic so far, but there's a long way to go.

I have one DC who is second year med student and another DC applying this year. You can apply with IB but 3 A Levels is absolutely fine. Most schools who understand the process will dissuade from more than three A Levels as there really is no added value to your application. EPQ can be valuable for certain med schools as if you get an A star or A, you can get a reduced offer. My DS says it was useful for research experience before uni too as many aspiring medics will end up with non-essay based A Level subjects. For any Medicine degree the application involves a lot besides A Levels - volunteering, shadowing, UCAT, BMAT and then you can have four different interviews in four different med schools around the country. There is a 2023 Medicine Thread on here which you may find useful for a glimpse into the future.

Thanks @opoponax, that thread looks interesting - will have more of a read of it when I'm not meant to be working! Good luck to your younger DC with their application this year.

I had no idea until a couple of weeks ago that Medicine applications were such a complicated and distinct process (I knew it was hard to get a place, but that was it). If DD does go down that route, she/we obviously need to do a lot of information-gathering and preparation in Y12.

@thedoofus
I think I’m right in saying that some universities do a round robin of interviews too so it’s not just one interview. Obviously this makes prep more onerous.

If schools are saying 3 A levels for medicine, (and my local grammars do too) why would you do IB which is known to be more work when you have other aspects of the med school application to consider?

Medicine isn't usually a good choice if you're only tentatively considering it. You tend to have to be passionately committed to it.

Do you think so, even at age 15 @nocoolnamesleft.

I'm sure other people know more about this, but my understanding is that less than half the people who apply to do medicine will get a place to study it. I think it'd be unwise to do anything more than tentatively consider it almost a whole two years before it's time to apply for the courses. (But this may say more about me than about prospective medical applicants, and why I'd have been fundamentally unsuited to it - the tentative is my word rather than hers!)

I think some of the tentativeness may also come from that general female reluctance to take up space. (As an aside, DD is doing Further Maths GCSE - of the 20 kids who've chosen to do it, just 2 of them are girls.) And from the knowledge that she has far more to find out about it (e.g, work experience, taster days, talking to people about their jobs) before she is able to make an informed decision.

I did IB. My housemates at university all did A-levels. IB is significantly more work with the extra requirements as well as the 6 subjects, but I think I was much more prepared for university level work, something all of my friends who did IB agreed with. However, DH who is a doctor (through a graduate entry programme) always felt he would have been better off doing A-levels as his IB grade wasn't enough to get him into medical school, he feels if he'd been able to focus on sciences more exclusively he might have got in straight from school. He was (probably sensibly) advised by sixth form tutors to only take standard level maths (mathematical studies if it is still called that) as we were told higher level maths is one of the hardest IB subjects and significantly harder than A level Maths. I found HL Maths very full on despite being an A*, near 100% in exams, maths student at GCSE.

A couple of friends had part time jobs during IB, but most didn't. It's quite full on. And they prefer the "service" hours to be more of a regular commitment (e.g. volunteering at a care home, scout/guide young leader etc) than ad hoc hours which might be more difficult with a job to fit in too

Tentative is good at fifteen. There is a lot to think about with regard to whether it is the right career for you and it is only with a bit of maturity, finding out what a medical career is really like and a good degree of self-analysis that it can grow legs. Each medical school interviews their selected candidates on site so, if you are successful in securing the max of four interviews, this can mean four overnight trips to medical schools around the UK (with all the prep) at an important stage in your A Level courses. Interviews were virtual during the pandemic but are now moving back to face to face. Many are MMI style which involves a lot of role playing of real life scenarios although some are panel interviews. This is the last stage of their selection process and the clock resets to zero, irrespective of how academic you are and how high your clinical entrance exam score was. At that stage it is a given that you are bright enough (although you still need to make the grades in your A levels) and it is all about whether you have the right make-up to become a good doctor. Last year was particularly difficult and UCAS figures say that fewer than 16% of applications to study medicine and dentistry resulted in an offer last year. In 2021 they quote it as 20.4%.

@thedoofus
16% successful applications for medicine and dentistry in 2022. It’s nowhere near 50%.

I think potential students need to think if this career is for them in y10/11. By y12 it’s too late. It’s necessary to do long term planning!!

Last year was a truly horrendous year and hopefully things are moving more back to a more normal situation now although it is always very competitive. Your DD still has time for volunteering. You need to be sixteen to get into hospitals anyway. My DD wasn't sixteen until right before the start of Year 12. St John Ambulance can be a good place to start to get some early medical exposure, first aid training etc. They have a good cadet programme. Volunteering early in any caring capacity is always a good thing too. Not just as tick box but to see if you really are suited to a medical career as it is definitely not all glitzy. Hospital work shadowing and experience programmes are great for an insight into what medics do but the volunteering is what really carries weight. The med schools themselves provide good virtual work experience too so it doesn't always have to be about having connections with people in hospitals. Some local NHS trusts run programmes open to local DC although these have been quite interrupted by Covid. Looking in, it does feel like a lot to juggle alongside A levels but, if it is right for a DC, they will love all the volunteering and work experience and it will really draw them in. If they don't like it, well that's no bad thing either, as best to find out that medicine isn't your thing sooner rather than later. It's bit sobering to think that DC are deciding to put themselves forward and then medical schools are effectively recruiting them into their long term careers when they are still only seventeen. Doctors are extremely expensive to train and the process needs to be robust to recruit the right people.

I decided to be a doctor when I was 5. Most of my medical friends had decided to become doctors before they hit their teens. At medical school there were some people who had just gone for it because they had good grades and someone had suggested it: they had a much higher drop out rate than the ones with a vocation. Because it's bloody hard.

It is true that my DC have both wanted to be doctors for as long as I can remember. Their wooden playhouse was requisitioned as a teddy/doll hospital and it stayed that way until it was outgrown. My DD was only interested in dolls if she could break them and then 'cure' them. I have no idea where it came from as we are not medics but it was all they ever wanted to do. Some of my DS's friends, who started med school at the same time as him, seemed to come to the idea later on and were actively weighing it up against other careers. I encouraged that approach with mine but I got nowhere as they wouldn't even consider anything else. All these DC were academic enough to choose to do whatever they wanted and other options were more glitzy with better pay prospects and work life balance than medicine. Surely anyone who makes the decision to go into medicine has to have vocation, whether it comes early or later, or why would they choose such a difficult path. Great grades can take you many places.

Ok I will disagree about the vocation part (plenty go into it for more vague reasons, to please parents, meet cultural expectations or even just to earn money), and also the part about needing to decide age 15.

Plenty of people decide in year 12, some in year 13 after the exam results are back!(they are the ones currently getting a lot of the places with their achieved A levels).

For IB, sorry I don't know enough to say.

@ArcticSkewer DC may go into it for the reasons you list but whether they stick it is another matter altogether. If Year 13s are deciding to apply for that cycle once once they have their exam results, they are going to have to prepare for and fit in a last minute UCAT clinical entrance exam before the deadline of the end of September as well as a load of compressed volunteering before their interviews later in the same year. I don't think those candidates are going to be credible competition for places unless they delay their application for a year and do things properly. The candidates who are getting places grades in hand are much more likely to be the ones who weren't successful first time and are applying a second time. It is generally considered a two-year application process.

@opoponax
Doctors are the best paid of all grads. No one gets shit pay and no job! Their pension pots are so high they retire early to avoid taxation on their pensions. They can work for 30 years then back off and work part time. Hard for a bit but not for life.

All universities prioritise differently. For some, having great achieved A levels is the most important. For others, it's all about ucat (and there's time to swot for that after A levels). For yet others, it's all about the work experience (which you can get 4 solid months of before interview).
Year 13s do just fine right now if they decide to apply after their A level results are back in, for the following year.
Sure, medicine is difficult to get onto, but starting in year 10 or 11, and burning with vocational zeal since primary school is really not the only path to success.
And plenty really do go into it for money or prestige or to please family.

I would not recommend medicine, and all I see around me are people earning far more than what nhs doctors are paid. So I find it hard to believe ‘doctors are the best paid of all grads’. That’s just not true

www.oneeducation.org.uk/highest-paying-jobs/

Whether it's worth going into is another matter. No doctor I know says they would recommend it, but their children often seem to be going the same way, and it is a profession that recruits from within its own ranks (many applicants have parents who are doctors).

Hopefully op's daughter will get a chance to think about it over the next year or so, and speak to a number of people before making a decision.