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.

All the universities are different. When dd applied, she didn't hear until December for January interviews.

The UKCAT ones can be earlier. Bristol last year seemed to hand out interviews to those above thier threshold as they went along. I don't think she got an invitation until after Christmas. But she heard from Birmingham very early, soon after the autumn half term. Unfortunately her choices held their SEN interviews right at the end of the cycle so she waited and waited and then had three interviews within a week in March (the same week as she had to hand in three pieces of A level coursework).

There will be The Student Room discussion on interviews and offers. DD wisely stayed well away but I could not resist checking to see if there was movement.

Yes I believe some ukcat unis have sent out interview offers. The bmat reliant unis are presumably waiting for bmat results at the end of November. It seems a long wait for results and can be a fraught time.

In his days, my DS received an interview offer from a UKCAT uni almost as soon as he'd pressed the UCAS 'Submit' button - for an interview date that had already passed a couple of days.

The UKCAT results do not get sent over to UCAS until the first week in November, so they have not had them for long yet. The universities that usually offer early interviews as the ones that do not use UKCAT such as Bristol.

My DD allowed last year and if her experience is anything to go by, it will be a couple of more weeks until the interview offers from UKCAT universities come out in big numbers and early/mid December at the earliest to hear from BMAT ones.

Good luck - it is a nerve wracking process even before the interviews start!

”The UKCAT results do not get sent over to UCAS until the first week in November . . .”

That may, or may not, be so. Candidates who sit the UKCAT test are given their scores at the end of the test even before they leave their test premises. Why The UKCAT results do not get sent over to UCAS until the first week in November is incomprehensible to me.

”The universities that usually offer early interviews as the ones that do not use UKCAT such as Bristol.”

Not necessarily so. Some UKCAT schools, although requiring UKCAT as part of their entry requirement, do not consider UKCAT scores the be all and the end all.

Quote from one such school:

The UKCAT

”Please note: all applicants are required to sit the United Kingdom Clinical Aptitude Test (UKCAT) prior to applying to the MBBS degree. Please refer to the UKCAT website for details on registration at www.ukcat.ac.uk."

”When considering those students which will be shortlisted for interview the selectors consider the following; GCSE (or equivalent performance), predicted or achieved A-level grades (or equivalent), the personal statement, the reference and the score in the UKCAT.”

Do not confuse getting an interview offer from an actual offer of a place!

Another quote:

Courses: Medicine (A100, A101, A102); Dentistry (A202, A205, A206)
UKCAT score requirement: No minimum score set

”. . . (the school) . . does not have a minimum UKCAT score requirement, and the UKCAT is only one of the things taken into consideration when inviting applicants for interviews. If you have a low UKCAT score but an excellent academic record to-date, you may be asked to come for an interview despite your low scores. The opposite is also true — if your academic record is poor but you scored very high on your UKCAT, you may still be invited to an interview.”

Therefore, if an applicant has a tremendous “academic record to-date” his/her UKCAT results is, so to speak, “academic” (no pun intended). The UKCAT scores will be either a foregone conclusion or totally disregarded. Immediate interview offer is therefore, possible.

Fwiw, DS had 12 A I/GCSE and a predicted 4A at A-level. He also aced his UKCAT.

I didn't realise they interviewed the SEN applicants at the end . Can I ask which universities your daughter had an interview for ?

As far as I am aware, last year none of the medical schools that use UKCAT as any part of their scoring system offered interviews before UCAS had the UKCAT results, which was iirc at the end of the first week in November.

However, it is very easy to see when things start to move at the universities that your dc have applied to by keeping an eye on the relevant threads on the student room.

Different universities take different approaches, e.g. Birmingham drip feed their interviews out but other universities send out interviews in large batches.

Peteneras, do you mean to sound so patronising? As if any parent whose child has got this far through the process is likely to confuse an interview with an offer

For those waiting it is a tricky time but I wish you and your dc's the best of luck.

I think you're wrong Soapy (about UKCAT not sending results until November. DS has friends with interview invitations received last week or the week before at Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle. (All UKCAT unis)

Interestingly, the 3 lads - ds and mates all applied to the same unis (with only one different choice), all had very similar UKCAT scores, similar grades and similar work experience. Each have been offered an interview at a different uni. I'd love to know how exactly the unis do their sifting.

Haffdonga, having just checked the results were available this year 'during the first week in November' so yes, interview offers would have started to be sent out over the last ten days or so.

The relevant information in on this link.

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

Just realised last week and the week before was November I take it all back Soapy. Lucky ds is more on the ball

As a doctor I'm interested in this thread. Are your DC all still keen to go to medical school now the new contract is being pushed through? I'm seeing lots of medical students about to qualify who are planning on not even taking up FY1 posts and moving on to different things- this would have been virtually unheard of a few years ago. It surprises me that so many people are still applying to med school, can I ask are they fully aware of what lies ahead or is it so far in the future that it doesn't seem 'real' to them and medical school therefore remains prestigious?

Juggling, there have always been a proportion of medical students who have ducked out of careers as doctors. A friend in her fifties says she was the only one of her friendship group who actually practiced medicine for more than a short time.

I don't know why MN posters continually suggest that medicine is a wrong career choice. I know several doctors who enjoy their work and feel they are making a difference. And know plenty in other careers who really are not happy. Even if things are not perfect there are lots of positives like job security and a decent salary. DD is interning in a small family owned business during her gap year, and the hours her boss works has been a real eye opener. Ditto the carer workers she got to know during a summer of volunteering faced low wages, poor managerial support and long hours.

That is okay Haffdonga

As to you other question about how universities select - goodness only knows!

My DD was rejected outright by one university that on the face of it was less demanding on almost every count but got interviews and offers from the other three. It is still a mystery as to what the forth one did not like about her!

You can ask for feedback though, which was certainly interesting post interview to find out which decile you were placed in.

I know that some universities select like this - they only screen the PS and AR at first . Then they give an academic score for grades / predicted grades and add that to the UKCAT in a fixed proportion, then rank the candidates .

Then they invite the top x to interview . They know how many to interview to get the required number of students e.g. 300 interviews, 150 offers, 75 students. Of course these numbers are different for each university .

So there will be differences because :

1. They give different weighing to exam boards, grades, subjects and predicted vs achieved.
2. They use the UKCAT in different ways e.g. Some use SJ, others not , some have a cut off
3. They use the academic score and UKCAT in different proportions e.g. 60:40
4. They use contextual data at this stage
5. Each university has a different number of places
6. Each will make offers to a different proeprtion of interviewees
7. Each will have a different proportion of offers accepted

And that's just for universities that select exclusively by academics and UKCAT. Add in those who use other criteria at first , like Bristol who give very heavy weighting to PS or Manchester who require 2 weeks WS , and the picture becomes even more complex .

Soapy - it may be that the university your DD didn't get an offer from used a different system . Maybe she was applying with predicted grades and they give more weighting to applicants who already have the grades . Or they Put more emphasis on GCSE . Or on aspects of the PS or AR.

It's very hard to tell. And she did brilliantly to get 3 offers, lots of people are overjoyed to get one!

Oops I forgot another factor - most universities also take account of participation in pre entry programmes, depending on the number of days etc

And most get no offers at all. Although there are objective screening and selection tools the whole process is largely subjective particularly in in the latter stages. And the contextual data screening varies so much from uni to uni and is sometimes indecipherable. I'm mentoring 2 students applying for med. Both meeting contextual data requirements. Only 1 has been accepted onto the access scheme.

And for students with more self esteem and confidence the process can be quite damaging. Having said that I think it is a profession where only the strongest and best candidates success. But it is by no means a level playing field or a transparent one.

Yes sadly most candidates who are excellent never get offers. It is just far too competitive even/ especially with contextual data. And there does seem to be a large element of pot luck involved in the process but also with ukcat and bmat.

I agree, it seems to me that the vast majority of UK applicants are very good. All have great grades and are very motivated, have done work shadowing, community work, extra curricular etc. Yet only a small proportion will get places 😕

In answer to Rochelle's question DD was interviewed by KCL, Bristol and Birmingham. I don't know if any had other SEN dates, but it makes sense for there to be one at the end to ensure people called late to interview can be interviewed according to guidelines.

FWIW extra time in interviews did not seem to confer much advantage. There was some looking at statistics etc, but you either spotted what you were meant to spot, or you did not. There is however quite a lot of luck. In some places you only have to fail one station and you are out. This seems to have happened at KCL where DD thought she had done well bar one station where she struggled to hear one very softly spoken man. Despite this, I think she enjoyed the interview process. They were so late that her focus had shifted to mocks, coursework and A level revision, and she was already resigned to being part of the group who were not getting what they wanted, so were reapplying or reconsidering. The non medicine option she was interested in was happy to take applications through till June, so she had a Plan B.

These three, and DDs fourth option, score the PS, but provide plenty of guidance as to what they were looking for. So not so much luck, but that of having a good idea of what is required, and making sure you provide evidence that you meet all their requirements. Bristol is notorious for turning down applicants who are considered strong Oxbridge candidates. My guess is that it is difficult to produce a PS which both covers the academic interest Oxbridge is looking for and the broader stuff Bristol wants.

UKCAT in contrast seems more of a lottery. DD has very very slow processing speeds, and bombed things like CAT tests, grammar school 11+ (800th on the Tiffin wait list!), and then UKCAT. Extra time did not help, as she like other candidates, was brain dead after normal time, not least because for her tests like this require so much concentration. She had done so well academically, far better than was ever expected with a a 4xA*,A A level prediction, yet was ruled out of applying to a large number of medical schools because of her scores on a one-off UKCAT test.

I am so glad its over, and equally glad she is taking a year off. Feedback from friends suggests that Yr 13 is nothing compared to the work load for first year medicine, particularly perhaps at the top ranked, very academic schools.

JugglingAllTheBollocks

DS is in his final year and has a few friends who aren't bothering with F1 etc. One is going to work in finance but I don't know about the others. He thinks a lot of students are attracted to the prestige of being a Doctor and to the challenge of getting on the course etc rather than to actually being a Doctor.

Don’t know why you’re so touchy, soapybox, I was merely commenting on the fact that in his days i.e. my DS’s days, which is more than 6 years ago, and considering that the UKCAT season begins in early July, final UKCAT scores were given to individuals immediately after the test. The results were conveyed directly to unis by Pearson Vue without any further input by the candidate; either before November or in November is anybody’s guess.

A candidate taking the UKCAT in early July would be sitting on his results for up to 4 months without the unis knowing anything about it. Does it make sense? Like I said, it’s pretty incomprehensible to me.

Doctors at teaching hospitals (admission tutors) are ridiculously busy people. Every now and again a free timeslot may arise and they would like to utilise this opportunity by calling a candidate for interview. Like I said, it’s only an interview, not an offer . . .

From the UKCAT link that you yourself provided which was updated 24/10/16 (and heaven knows how many times have this been updated in the last 6 years):

When do Universities receive my results?

"Once we have details of your chosen Universities we communicate your test result directly to them, usually† during the first week of November. We do not specify the date as each university may access the data at different stages during their admissions process. "

† not set in stone

And Haffdonga, the last couple of days or so two weeks ago were still in October.