Medicine Applications 2017

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As UKCAT season is in full swing and I can't find a thread anywhere else I thought I'd start this off. This is for parents of children looking to apply for Medicine at University with courses starting in 2017. UCAS application is only a couple of months away. It is hard to watch our kids put themselves through so much to work in the hardest profession imaginable and I thought it might be useful to start some sort of discussion here.

Interestingly DD found her interviewers, she had three interviews, tended not to have her PS. PS was used in scoring but the interview was standalone, perhaps to avoid bias.

Thank you all. So obviously I'm not missing a secret website with all the answers that everyone else knows about!

It's tricky this year because one of the sections has changed and wasn't scored, so scores don't compare directly with previous years.

The chart chuckle gives looks to be an update of the old Student Room one, which I found really useful. Though obviously you then need to check against the University website.

A year ago I really knew nothing, and the UCAS application seemed to be a pretty high mountain to climb. It is worth doing the research, and then once the form is in, it's in.

Other fallbacks might include looking at the two medical schools in clearing (SGUL and Plymouth), Belfast which has relatively low applicant ratios, and perhaps St Andrews with clinical in England ( which is unpopular with Scottish students who don't want to pay fees.) Or one of the less well known BMAT Universities. Howver fit is most important.

There is also Buckingham if you can afford to pay.

Yes, thanks Chuckle. That's really helpful.

Needmoresleep and I shared the same learning curve when our respective DC applied, in that I also knew nothing at the outset and as a family we had no doctors who could give advice. I'd just add to what she's already said that it's worth looking to the future too, to see which med schools tend to have a high hit rate with preferred options for F1 jobs, since there's life after training. There seems to be a mantra that 'a doctor is a doctor' but it's a bit less black and white than that. No link to useful stats, merely hearsay - sorry! On that basis though some of the schools which are panned on MN for being insufficiently 'hands on' in the training stage do also seem to get the largest number of their students through to their highest choice, so worth bearing in mind. My DS is in his fifth year so I'm moving up the curve!

Also, though this proves very little other than different med schools operate differently (surprise!) my own DS had three interviews too but at different places (I think) from Needmoresleep's DD and all three had his personal statement and asked questions about it.

Did anyone visit Southampton yesterday.

I did with DD1 a couple of months ago.

hi all, (sorry I am new to the site and apologise if I get any abbreviations wrong!) dd is hoping to apply for medicine, has just done her ukcat and somehow managed to achieve 767 + band 1 in SJT. she doesn't want to do BMAT so would really appreciate if someone could tell us which unis in england (scotland is a bit far) use UKCAT very heavily e.g. ranking to decide who is interviewed?
we have looked through admissions but understand unis can be slightly sneaky, saying they have a 'minimum requirement' (as sheffield does) then only considering higher scores. also which use sjt? thank you! x

Off the top of my head, Newcastle and Nottingham also use high UKCAT to sift applicants, think Plymouth & Exeter also

That's a very good score btw

I agree, great result on the UKCAT

You need to look at each universities website and check their entry requirements , some also explain how they select applicants for interview

Here's a link someone posted up thread - how the UKCAT is used by consortium universities

www.ukcat.ac.uk/App_Media/uploads/pdf/How%20the%20UKCAT%20is%20used%202014.pdf

Don't get excited about SGUL having places in clearing this year, the starting point was 2500 UKCAT raw score. They played a clever game!
Good luck to applicants for 2017, it's a hard process, fiercely competitive but if your DC want it and they are academically able they will get there!

To add to my earlier post and Goodbye Strangers, I don't know how you would find out sucess in achieveing FY1 posts, though it would be good to know. However last year (on the first thread) someone posted a useful link to Medical School failure rates, which influenced us partly because as a dyslexic DD knows her coping skills are likely to be stretched at the next step up. (And indeed University is a time when many dyslexics are first spotted as their coping skills stop working.)

Another thing to look for is intercalating subjects. Intercalation is not offered everywhere, and DD only picked it up when researching pre-interview, but it did give a flavour of a department's interests. From memory there were lots of public health options at Birmingham, so if you are interested in public health that would be somewhere to consider. And indeed the ability to intercalate might also be a factor when narrowing down choices.

I agree about not reading too much into SGUL in clearing. They seem to operate a relatively low academic bar for applications and we have come across a number of nice straightforward local students who have gained places there and who will make good straightforward doctors. But by not prioritising academics as heavily as places like Barts, they will be vulnerable to people missing their grades. (Indeed we know someone.) I assume they have decided that there is a big pool of good applicants who did not get anywhere, but who did not think of applying to a relatively low profile school like SGUL, and that these might do better than students who failed to get the 3As required. DD wanted something bigger and busier, but she did some shadowing there and has met lots of people who say good things. It is far enough out that you can be in London but not face the problems of living in the centre.

In case anyone would like to know, preliminary UKCAT 2016 scores for 2017 entry are available now on the UKCAT site. Go right down to the bottom of this page. The results here are obviously only interim as they don't post the final results until early October, I think, which seems a bit late in the day, so these are useful for those finalizing UCAS forms at the moment and neeing to know roughly where their UKCAT score places them.

www.ukcat.ac.uk/about-the-test/applications/

Thanks so much for posting that link . My child sits the test tomorrow so finger crossed

Good luck to everyone still revising

Good luck to your youngster, Kr1stina

Thank you, I'm so worried I feel sick # neuroticmother

She, on the other hand, is cool as a cucumber. She takes it all in her stride and doesn't get particularly nervous . Which is presumably why she might be able to do the job and I'd be useless

My daughter decided at the last minute not to hang around and do the optional pilot section of the UKCAT, so rang me much earlier than I had expected. She was very relieved at her score, which wasn't stratospheric, but better than she had anticipated, but her emotional voice, coupled with her coming out early, led me to believe that she had found it so hard that she had walked out. There was a rather hysterical moment in which I was trying to tell her not to worry, she could resist next year, and her telling me that it was OK. My blood pressure must have been off the chart while we sorted it all out. It is horrid for us parents!

That's sounds so stressful , although I'm relived that it's not just me !!!! MN seems to be full of super cool parents who say things like

" oh I never saw their personal statement , the school deals with all of that"

and " my child is still deciding where or not to sit the UKCAT , if so He will just do a little revision the night before . That's what his brother did and he got 830"

Though I suspect that some of them are not worried because their kids have plenty other options - grandpas trust fund and mommies little business in belgravia .

Or because their kids don't actually care that much, so it's no big deal if they fail to get an interview .

I don't know anyone like this is RL, but MN seems to be full of them or full of something

My DD is in school this morning so we are off at lunchtime for the test . Although she appears cool , she must be a little nervous as she wants me to go with her, which is unusual ( she can get to the test centre herself )

And I'll know not to panic if she phones me half an hour early !!!

Like you, we are not expecting stratospheric but she knows the number to hit for her two top choices . They don't have a cut off but we have the average score of interviewees from last year and I've used that to work out the equivalent for this year .

I have an older child now in the second year reading history and he really pretty well did the whole applications thing himself, took himself off to open days, made his own choices without much discussion with us, etc. but frankly he would have got a history place somewhere or other because there isn't the same competition.

Medicine is much more complicated as every university seems to have its own way of weighting qualifications and I think a second eye helping to check things is useful. There is a lot of small print on websites about how they select.

Krist!na,

"Though I suspect that some of them are not worried because their kids have plenty other options - grandpas trust fund and mommies little business in belgravia ." this does not sound like a typical medic profile. Trustafarians tend to prefer not to get their hands dirty so aim for the City. My observation is that aside from a few super-mature kids who are happy to do their own research on The Student Room, parents don't get involved because they don't realise how important it is that their DC make sensible choices on the UCAS form. The size of the industry aroud medical school applications suggests that plenty more take it very seriously.

The shocking one is a local girl who narrowly missed her medical school offer this summer, so is being sent to Pakistan to get married, as it not worth her being educated further. Now that IS pressure.

Poor, poor girl.