New Mum-of-Medicine 2016 Applicant Thread

[Needmoresleep]

It looks as if it will be a long year. I would welcome company, and as importantly, advice from those who have been through it before.

You are entitled to your opinion GGG. If you don't like league table discussions then post something else more interesting yourself or better still start a new thread stating 'No League Tables'.Why deprive others who may like LT?

Does anybody like League Tables?

How very bizarre.

Anyway back to the subject in hand- are people looking at many more open days? Dd is going to one next weekend and that's it for us.

Err, I think I'll pass on that thanks Peteneras!

Where is he going to for the open day Northern?
I rather enjoyed the trips to far flung places with my ds last year. It seems a long time ago now - he's off to start his course very soon... Good luck to your ds.

I've actually got a dd not a ds and she's going to look at Liverpool with dh

I didn't go there - but did make it to Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle amongst other places...

That's one of the few places I didn't go!

Gah, my first post disappeared then reappeared...

Sheffield and Newcastle have also been visited by us

I really liked Newcastle - but ds not so keen.

We have seen UEA, Leicester, HYMS (the York bit), Southampton, Nottingham and Keele. None of us really liked the look of Keele on Saturday so DS needs to drop one other.
Not sure what Hull is like so I'm not sure if that will influence his decision on HYMS.
Hard choices

Oh dear, I feel as if I sparked off the heated debate on league tables. I did not mean to. Because DD is making her choices without visiting, we were trying to drill down on some of the component figures within the rankings, and the Kings satisfaction levels stood out. She is happy to discount some of this as "London", noting that her brother is very happy at LSE despite it being right at the bottom for student satisfaction in the recent Sunday Times tables. The explanations were useful. Like many London students she is perfectly happy to stay in London, but from the two visits she has made she realises she wants a balance. Something reasonably academic as she is quite a good scientist, but somewhere with a broader University life. Medicine offers a huge range of careers, so it has to be "horses for courses".

So far then we have Kings and Birmingham. Quite a lot of others rule themselves out naturally (BMAT, PBL, relying heavily on UKCAT scores, plus places she has not heard of...sorry Keele, but it is probably too big a leap for a city girl.) I like the sound of St Andrews with London clinical (the scheme is reasonably new so should stay) whereas she likes the sound of Nottingham and QUB, possibly Sheffield or Cardiff. The advantage is that not having visited she is not emotionally invested, and so rejection should be easier, and she can simply reapply to others, hopefully with a higher UKCAT and with BMAT.

One point I noticed whilst reading through the St Andrews prospectus is a boast that all their graduates were employed on graduation, written in a way that suggested this was becoming far from automatic. I assume this is true. There are now so many other ways to train, and I assume EU legislation will not allow priority to be given to graduates of British Universities, over, say, medics trained in Romania, Ireland or Malta. Then you have students who have gone further afield, perhaps Malaysia, Sudan or the Caribbean, who might be just as good. She has already been warned that getting the place is the easy bit.

”Oh dear, I feel as if I sparked off the heated debate on league tables. I did not mean to.”

We know I know you did not mean to OP but you have every right to initiate and talk about League Tables which to all intents and purposes is critical at this very stage of your DD’s application in considering which med school(s) to apply to. It is unfortunate that there are some selfish and conceited posters here who took it upon themselves that you do not reap the benefits from what League Tables may be able to tell you. But I’m glad you are able to read the LT with an open mind. LT’s tell you a lot of things but they do not tell you everything. They tell you which med school is at the top of the tree but they don’t tell you their training hospital is inadequate and put in special measures.

Your DD seems very sensible to me. I can tell she’s done a lot of homework and is heading in the right direction with those schools in mind. Clinical in London is without a shadow of a doubt the ultimate training and preparation in becoming a world-class doctor. Your DD’s KCL choice is an excellent one. A close family member of mine is a consultant/examiner at KCL as well as examiner for one or two other schools in and outside London. He tells me KCL’s standard is superb!

Choosing a medical school, therefore, is one thing but training to be a doctor in world-class teaching hospitals is another thing! It is not a co-incidence where these great hospitals are all located.

Addenbrookes won't be the last hospital in special measures and London hospitals are arguably more likely than many to be susceptible to the problems of poor staffing and heavy patient load. Two years ago the CQC gave the Cambridge Hospitals trust, which includes Addenbrookes, the lowest risk rating - meaning it was of least concern. Now it's in special measures. The problems it has need fixing but it's still a hospital delivering good care to many, most, of the patients who attend and a world class place to train. Deciding where to apply is a complex decision and shouldn't be made either on the basis of CQC hospital ratings or on a belief that London has the best hospitals.

Anyway - who has a dc doing EPQ? How are they finding it? Dd is enjoying the research for hers.

Oh you're a charmer Peteneras, you really are.
If your 'selfish and conceited' description is aimed at me I do feel that is bloody rude the teensiest bit harsh.

GiddyGoat, my s&c description is aimed at whoever that has cause to believe it is s(he) I am aiming at. They decide for themselves. If truth be known, I didn’t have you in mind. So there you go again, reading too much into my writings. . .

”Two years ago the CQC gave the Cambridge Hospitals trust, which includes Addenbrookes, the lowest risk rating - meaning it was of least concern. Now it's in special measures.”

Which tells me something is drastically wrong with the core of the Cambridge University Hospitals Trust, if what you say is true, for its hospitals to have descended into this level in just 24 months! Indeed, the CQC chief inspector of hospitals has said senior management had “lost their grip on some of the basics”. I cannot imagine a more damning report than this.

A lesson ought to be learnt from this episode in the medical profession. For all you budding medics, please remember getting into med school is indeed the easy bit. The next five or six years at med school is the gruelling bit. There is no place for complacency. I know of individuals being kicked out of med school in their final year. More commonly, many left in the first couple of years - either of their own accord or being asked to.

personally I wouldn't bother about league tables. They can change quite a bit and the things medical schools are scored on may or may not be relevant to how well they will teach your child. But for any potential medic the most important issue is where can I get a place.

Once you've produced a list of places that like your mix of academics, UKCAT and personal statement qualities then you can worry about things like PBL or not, single interview or multiple, prosection or dissection, city or campus, quality of nightlife, sporting facilities and anything else that takes your fancy. The failure rates and resit rates for each medical school are very difficult to obtain but would be very interesting.

Drop out rates for medical schools are traditionally related to grades, hence medical schools liking candidates with a lot of good grades. They tend to be quite low now - here are figures for Birmingham, which sometimes gets a bad press on mumsnet www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/238360/response/595698/attach/2/2014.12.12%20ltr%20response.pdf

But you can fail your final year www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2554618/Medical-student-took-university-court-failing-six-year-degree-one-mark-faces-90-000-legal-bill-losing-court-battle.html

As for Addenbrooke's - it has serious financial problems and low staffing levels. Patients are less likely to die there, be harmed, or catch a hospital-acquired infection than at almost any other trust in the country but either it's funding is off or its financial management is poor. Until this year Cambridge medical students had the option to go elsewhere for their clinical training and many have done so. New students no longer have that choice.

Good hospitals don't always mean good training. ( Try asking a London medical student how many students are trying to clerk a patient in some hospitals.)

My thread ...my rules....everyone be nice!

Though actually I tend to agree with Alreadytaken. All our DC have different strengths, weaknesses and preferences. Its about finding a good fit. Wayback when dyslexic DD was trying for competitive London secondary schools, she sat 7 entrance exams. She got the two we thought would suit her best, but none of the others. (700th on the wait list for Tiffin!) She only needed one. In retrospect the schools highest up the league tables would have been completely unsuitable.

We are hoping it will be the same with medical schools. She decides what she likes the look of, and they decide whether they like the look of her. Hopefully there will be a match. And she only needs one.

what we should be warning potential medics about is this www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-hospitals-pushing-young-medics-to-brink-of-burnout-by-relying-on-them-to-work-extra-hours-10333064.html

And another failed final year student looked to the courts for a recourse.

Ditto, on both counts Batters!
DD has yet to take her UKCAT so that may well rule in/ out some of her shortlist. She is also struggling with her PS. She is trying to get it down to the word limit but her teacher advised her not to bother with a closing statement as they rarely add anything and use up valuable word count.
I wasn't too sure that sounded right but am staying out of it (hence being on here instead!).

Hi Batters and LessStress! Glad to see someone has found their way through the tumbleweed blowing around this thread!

I've looked back at ds's PS - his last (short) para was a very concise summary of why he believed he was a good fit to study medicine - not a repeat of what went before but drawing it all together. I (personally) do think you need something that sounds a bit like a conclusion or a rounding up... but not sure that PS is hugely important in a lot of applications. It is worth looking very carefully at the selection criteria for each of your choices and making sure you follow any guidance given on website / open days as to what each requires - including any advice on what should be in a PS. I think Bristol?? and maybe Sheffield?? allot quite a few marks for the PS - others don't even read it prior to shortlisting for interview...

Good luck!

I think DD is on draft 5. I am staying well away. It's not something she was ever likely to find easy. However her tutor at school seems fully engaged.

Two of DDs choices give quite a lot of guidance on what they want to see in a PS and how they are scored. The others don't. She is making sure she covers everything they are looking for.

I can't wait for the button to be pressed. It will remove one more layer of stress from our house.

And good luck with the UKCAT Lessstress' DD.