Anyone applying for Medicine or Dentistry?!

[mummywithquestions]

Anyone started preparing their application yet? It seems a bit earlier than it was when I first went to uni but my son is already well underway with his personal statement and UKCAT/BMAT preparation.

Just wanted to speak to other mothers to share the stresses of UCAS and chat about upcoming interviews etc!

[BeckAndCall]

At the risk of wandering into a private argument, peternas and molio are not comparing like with like..... oxford and Cambridge medical schools have a different style from the other medical schools - much less hands on and patient contact for the pre clin years. So they are looking for different types of students.... Its not at all unusual for a student to get accepted by Cambridge but to simultaneously be rejected by Birmingham, Leeds etc... (based on my sample of 2 schools over the last 5 years...)

[Molio]

BeckandCall it's not an argument, rather a soliloquy on peteneras's part :) I have no interest in any argument at all or indeed in any comparison of different med schools. I purely offered two small bits of advice about the aspects of admissions that I'm familiar with. One, that Cambridge has twice as many applicants as Oxford for the same number of places and two, that some schools have a tendency to take on more students than they can train through to the end.

I do think it very, very unfair if a school has a policy which leaves highly able students adrift after two years, but I don't think it follows in any way that schools such as Oxford and Cambridge who make offers less freely and who have a negligible fail rate have less able students. That's very skewed logic! In the same way one can't say Oxford and Cambridge must be less good schools than Birmingham. Leeds etc because some applicants successful at Oxford and Cambridge were rejected by Birmingham, Leeds etc. Some of those schools know an Oxbridge dead cert when they see it and will choose not to waste a place. You're quite right about the different schools Beck, they are different and the difference is evident when you look at the career paths Oxbridge medics tend to follow compared to other schools, so clearly they look for different things - far less Oxbridge medics become GPs, they tend to possess other skills, also much needed by the medical world, obviously. I'm perplexed at the aggression which some of these threads engender. People are supposed to be offering advice to the next generation, not competing about whether one school is 'better' (usually associated with where their own child got a place, or didn't). As you point out, the schools are different because there are different needs to be met.

[peteneras]

”I have no interest in any argument at all or indeed in any comparison of different med schools. . . I'm perplexed at the aggression which some of these threads engender. People are supposed to be offering advice to the next generation, not competing about whether one school is 'better'”

Quite frankly Molio, I find this terribly disingenuous. All throughout the thread I see nothing but stealth claims by you that Oxbridge is the be all and the end all (to you) and yet you claim you’re not competing whether one school is ‘better’.

Well, listen to this:

”All medics at both universities [Oxbridge] are of an exceptionally high standard”
Which goes to say medics at all other universities are dummies with low standard. May I remind you of the two ‘dummy’ candidates rejected by Birmingham but were quickly snapped up by Oxbridge?

”They [Oxbridge] certainly don't appear to be cavalier in who they accept or don't, and invest a lot of resources in the process”.
This is nothing short of an affront to the rest of the medical schools who would appear to be cavalier in their selection processes and for not investing much resources.

”Oxford and Cambridge have far higher entry standards in terms of raw grades, both use the rigorous BMAT and both have interview sessions which extend for far longer than either KCL and Birmingham, in which both academic ability and suitability for a medical career are scrutinised fully”

The rigorous BMAT? It is strange that almost 90% of all UK medical schools don’t believe in it but opted for the more appropriate UKCAT instead. Surely the UKCAT is a more superior tool to gauge the academic ability and suitability of a potential medic that even traditional BMAT schools like Imperial College and even Oxford are adopting it for their graduate entrants!

I also think it is outrages to accuse some schools to treat some highly able students as ‘cannon fodder’. You have taken on yourself to assume that these schools have deliberately taken on more students on ‘false pretences’ then they could actually cope. There is no evidence whatsoever. As far as I can see, these students failed to reach a certain standard (high) set by the school(s) in their exams and are therefore excluded.

I have no qualms about this. For the future patients, it’s a matter of life and death!

And yet, many more have reached and exceeded the required standard and therefore passed! All exam scripts bear only the candidate’s number and not their name therefore, discounting any discrimination or favouritism on the examiner’s part.

On the contrary, if any school(s) had deliberately taken on more students than they could cope, then it’s Oxbridge. They have had to send students to London in the vital later stages of their training. Effectively, they are trained by London so Oxbridge is not the be all and end all!

By and large, whichever medical school you go to, you’d be learning your skills from the doctors, consultants, specialists and other medical professionals based in the (teaching) hospitals situated at your school. As to how good they are and no matter what others may argue, well, at the end of the day the test of the pudding is in the eating.

[Needmoresleep]

I have been reading with interest as DD wants to apply for medicine. No experience but some of arguments on this thread don't chime with what I have heard elsewhere.

1. DD does not want to apply to Oxbridge, even if she gets good enough AS grades. She wants to be a hands on Doctor, quite possibly a GP. She is not interested in research. She does not want to take six years to qualify when she could be finished in five. Like schools, I assume that the best course is not always the most academic, but the one which suits a student best.
   

1. We knew two sure-fire (if there is such a thing) Oxbridge medical candidates last year. Interestingly both changed their minds and decided to apply to Oxford, because Cambridge no longer offers the option of clinical training in London.
   

1. Advice DD was given by a leading medical researcher at a top London hospital is if your interest is in academic medicine and research, think carefully about whether you need to qualify as a doctor, or whether you can get to where you want to be through another route. Apparently there are plenty of very bright doctors who are itching to focus on research and who would have been better off following an academic bio-medical route.

[Molio]

peteneras you're imputing to me things which I haven't said or even implied and which I don't think. You seem very angry. There's a useful article in the September issue of the Student BMJ which you might like to read, about different med schools. BeckAndCall has it absolutely right: the various med schools have different strengths. Oxford and Cambridge tend to produce far more doctors going into research and specialties than elsewhere: their entrance assessment will be geared to selecting students appropriate for those things. I think there's no merit whatsoever quibbling about the UKCAT/ BMAT - after all some highly regarded schools don't use either :) Alreadytaken has pointed out that the Cambridge clinical school has been expanded to allow for all Cambridge students to stay on and train there. The Oxford school is currently slightly too small and the places get offered to most but not all, with the top students being offered the places and those who haven't done quite so well (a relatively small number) tend to go down to London. Of course Oxford and Cambridge students have also had the option of applying to the other place for the clinical years, an option which London students don't have. I'm not sure it's worth commenting on the issue about students being asked to leave because clearly if there are too many, the exam marking system will set the pass mark at an appropriate level to achieve the numbers required . I still think extreme caution should be the order of the day with any schools with a 'reputation'.

BeckAndCall's point is the only one of any moment though really: In 2013 there were 84,395 applications to preclinical medicine and only 7515 applicants were offered a place. Clearly appl;icants should identify the different character of med schools and play to their own strengths!

[NurseDoctor]

lougle sorry I know this is an old thread so circumstances may have changed! I am not on GEM so not sure how much help I can be but I am a qualified adult nurse (graduated 2009) currently in my second year of a 5 year medicine program. I found my nursing background was VERY helpful and received all 4 offers, so it can be done. I avoided GEM for a few reasons. The competitive nature (it is MUCH worse than 5 year... and that's saying something), I did not have a strong science background (I did humanities ALevels) and the intensity of the 4 year program. The funding is also not much better than the 5 year now as the support has slowly dropped. Financially I am not much worse off than the GEM students as I actually have time to work (4 months off for summer first year) and can therefore top my money up very easily. Final year is fully funded by the NHS anyway. My university also offer fee waiver support, and I therefore pay £6000 per year tuition fee as opposed to £9000. I get almost this much from student finance, so my working is additional money for bills etc. If I can help any more then just let me know

[DentalPrep]

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