Year 9 Subject Choices & Studying Medicine ??

[RockinHippy]

Its a bit more complicated than normal as bar EOTAS tutors, our DD has missed 18 months of school due to ill health. She goes back to school to join year 9 in September, which she is both really looking forward to, but is naturally very nervous too.

She is a worry wort by nature & is already stressing about the year 9 subject choices, as she rightly feels that she has missed so much scool, yet she has a big decision to make & little experience of many the subject choices, so I'm hoping for some pointers for her please.

She has her heart set on studying medicine, has done since she was about 8 we still hope she will go for a less stressful career choice-- rarely she mentions if she can't be a doctor, forensic science looks interesting, so unless she changes her mind, it looks likely that she will chose to go for a science career.

She is very bright, loves school & learns easily, despite being very ill has managed to more than keep up with her Maths, Science & English lessons, passing a mock GCSE in Maths as a confidence booster. So having spoken with her school, who are great, we are very hopeful that the time missed wont have too huge an impact on her schooling in the long term.

What could help her, especially with putting her mind at rest as far as GCSE subject choices go, would be knowing what subjects are best to take if you want to study medicine?

Does the choice of University make a difference, (we have a good one locally that she is keen to go to) or are there basic core GCSEs that are needed to get in ?

Also are languages needed, this is a topic she is hoping to drop in favour of concentrating on what she needs, as she is going to be way behind & doesn't enjoy languages anyway, she finds them more stressful to do well in as its not her strength. She is a bit obsessed with staying in top study groups for everything as the kids in those groups are more learning focussed & so less disruptions, so she has really piled the pressure on herself even more so with languages in the past. She can do it if she needs it, but hoping she doesn't to save her some stress as its going to be a tough time for her anyway ??

Both DH & I had careers in the Arts, so we dont really have a clue

TIA

UKCAT

Approximately 60% of medical applicants each year get NO offers from their four applications (I know that a couple of courses were in Clearing this year but this is the exception rather than the rule). She needs to realise that she will have to spread her wings a little and apply to more than one place, or she's really not maximising her chances of getting in. This is especially important with a BMAT university as that is taken after applications are submitted, so if she does badly she's scuppered her chances.

Thank you SockQueen

Thats useful info, though we will cross that bridge when we come to it as its a long way off yet. At the moment she is adamant that is the only Uni she wants to go to, as she doesn't want to live anywhere else but here in our City. She may well change her mind by then, so who knows, but if not, she is incredibly determined when she sets her mind on something, so we've learnt to trust her judgement - she has even said that she will hold out for a year & find work instead & trybagain if she fails to get in first time

Sock Queen both DS and a very good school friend of his with whom he still lives (in his fifth year) only did the BMAT, not the UKCAT. He got three out of four offers and she got four out of four offers. It's perfectly mainstream to do that.

It's definitely not what TSR (or I!) recommend. The BMAT is a blind gamble - most people taking it are extremely bright and every year people who thought it would be fine don't do as well as they thought they would and have thus screwed up multiple options. At least with UKCAT you know what score you have and so can apply to your strengths/avoid unis placing a lot of emphasis on it accordingly. I think that there are now no UK unis which don't use one or the other (there were when your DS was applying if he did so 5 years ago) so a lot of people will end up doing both.

SockQueen - TSR indeed!

Of course the BMAT isn't a 'blind gamble' I mean ok you don't have the results in hand when you apply but that's the case with a lot of pre-tests for unis - my DDs didn't know their LNAT score when they applied for law for example, same with my DC who took Oxford aptitude tests. You maybe need to get this into perspective. The DC in question will know their GCSE grades and can make judgments on where to apply accordingly, with a nod to their extra curricular strengths and work experience etc. If as you say their strategy was a 'blind gamble' then the gods must have been very kind to give two DC from the same school multiple offers in the same year.

Frankly, either there has been some divine intervention or they were very lucky. Getting all 4 offers is very unusual, even with excellent grades. I can't see how applying to multiple places, hoping your performance in an unseen exam you've never experienced before will be up to scratch, is anything other than a gamble compared with doing that for one or two and applying to others where you know your profile fits better. The Oxford aptitude tests carry similar risks, but screwing up those would only mean missing out on one university, not potentially all of them. I don't know about the LNAT I'm afraid.

TSR is one of the most popular resources for applicants and is written and maintained by medical students and qualified doctors. Don't scoff quite so easily.

Well the girl with four offers did have excellent grades and excellent aptitude to be a doctor as did DS. But another school colleague with equal grades (ie all A*) didn't do well on the UKCAT and the BMAT unis seemed to take that into account for her so she ended up at a London uni she didn't really want to go to. You may know your UKCAT score but if it's not great then that might affect the BMAT schools, so it's a double negative whammy.

Also SockQueen, obviously my DS and his extremely successful friend are also medical students and still think taking only the BMAT is fine, if you're a competent student. So they have some credibility too.

Is BMAT really so bad

I had a good look at the spec for it earlier & its an hour & a half of multiple choice questions & a 30 minute essay - it looks like a pretty straight forward entrance test ? Theres also lots of old practice tests & even companies offering tuition to get students through it

Its way off, but bar the stressed state she always gets herself into for exams, I could see that this would actually suit DD as despite how ill she makes herself worrying, she actually always does well in tests. The only bit that worried me was the length of writing time as DD needs to use a keyboard for longer stretches of writing, or her hands hurt, but I'm guessing as its a disability, they would have to accommodate that.

Am I understanding what you are saying correctly - does this one BMAT exam, sat for entry at one Uni, then get used for all of the other BMAT Unis applied for ? If so that actually sounds better to me - less pre exam stress!

Yes, BMAT and UKCAT are nationally administered tests, you sit them once in an admissions cycle and your results go to the universities you apply for.

I'm a disabled medical student, and very happy to talk about that side of things. Yes she is entitled to accomodations for both tests, including a laptop for the BMAT if she needs one for writing exams. I chose not to do the BMAT at all, but I sat the UKCATSEN which is +25% extra time. UKCAT worked well for me as I have a lot of anxiety and so I wanted to apply knowing every result I could possibly know about.

I had quite a broad range of GCSE's. My school only offered double science at the time. I wouldn't worry too much about subject choice at this stage, as long as she has the subjects she'll want to continue later. Otherwise play to strengths and interests - I was much better at exams than coursework so I did exam based subjects. I actually did Latin and I can't say I've ever found it helpful or recognised Latin medical terms because of it I don't regret taking it though, I did it purely because I wanted to take it.

Plenty of time to think about choice of university later, as admissions requirements change most years - it is worth putting plenty of thought into though, especially if you are disabled. For us disabled students in particular, it isn't necessarily the case that we should apply to any university we fit the profile for. Depends on the indivdual obviously. But I only applied to 3 medical schools. I had a 4th choice on the UCAS form until about 48 hours before submission, when I realised that the 4th one had to go because it was not doable for me - it was too far from home, too tricky to manage the journey, and therefore not compatible with my disability or mental health issues. You have to do what will get you into one medical school, but that doesn't mean you have to do what everybody else does. I didn't have the standard applicant profile, but I got the one offer I needed.

There are no certainties with the UKCAT either - yes you know your score in advance but you don't know what the cut-off for each uni will be. If you have a very high score you will probably be ok but if it's an average sort of score you have to try to second-guess what the places you want to apply to will accept.

My dd had an ok but not stellar score. The three unis she liked best used either BMAT or no assessment (at the time). She got interviews at all 4 of the places she applied to and offers from three.

She found BMAT suited her better than UKCAT - it was based on stuff she had been studying anyway, rather than trying to identify random patterns!

Hippy your DD is obviously young still but a medical career involves endless exams. It may be far too stressful an option for her unless she can move on from where she is now.

RockinHippy no, the BMAT isn't "so bad," it is just another aptitude test and obviously plenty of people will do well at it and get into the relevant universities (at the moment I think it's Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL, Leeds and BSMS that use it). The reason I say it's a risk to only apply to BMAT unis is because quite a few otherwise well-qualified applicants don't do so well in it each year, but they won't know this before they apply. And yes, the BMAT result would get sent to all the BMAT-using unis she applies to. Likewise if she sat the UKCAT - it would get sent to all the universities which use that as part of their selection process, so there's only a maximum of two exams on top of A-levels.

Your DD's disability does make a difference in what choices are sensible for her, but she is still very young so there's time to work out what will be appropriate given how her condition is by the time she gets to the point of application. It's worth bearing in mind (though don't overload her at the moment!) that there are no guarantees about where she'll be able to work once she graduates, and as others have said, medicine involves a lot of physical and mental stress, both in terms of the exams, but also long days on your feet, having to carry around and write in heavy sets of notes (though there is an outside chance that we might have mastered electronic records by the time she would be qualifying, I wouldn't get my hopes up too much!), doing CPR etc, not to mention the emotional demands of the job.

Goodbyestranger the BMAT unis do NOT use UKCAT scores as part of their selection - why would they, when they deliberately chose to use a different test? Your DS's friend was not rejected from her BMAT choices because of her UKCAT score. There is always an element of luck and subjectivity in medical admissions - I got rejected from one place where I met all the academic criteria, so I assume it must have been on the basis of my personal statement, but said statement + grades were good enough to get me an offer without interview from another university (they no longer do this), plus interviews and offers from another two, though at least one of those is less interested in the PS. I can only assume that the place that rejected me was looking for something different on the PS compared with the ones which accepted me - or I was just unlucky with them!

BMAT unis do not get a look-in at a candidate's UKCAT score and vice versa. A uni doesn't know what other unis a candidate has applied to - none of their business!

Not so completely sure that they don't, or at least didn't then, know the UKCAT score. But it's not a big deal. DS and his friend were both clear that they liked BMAT unis rather than UKCAT ones so simply went for them and were both obviously 'lucky'. Perfectly reasonable and it paid off. They were left with very good choices.

Goodbye is half right. Again it is about your strengths and matching those to the Universities you apply for. Several of DDs contemporaries were interested in the trad 6 year more academic courses which require BMAT. So were applying for Oxbrigde/UCL/Imperial. They would have advised they were taking a risk, but were bright and (mostly) it paid off. They would have taken UKCAT in the summer and a high score coupled with good GCSE/AS would have given them a good shot at a sensibly chosen (third)/fourth choice fall back.

But these were very academic candidates. DD is dyslexic but is practical and had bags of EC and work experience. She decided she would be happier on a five year course but one with scope to intercalate, and decided she would be happier somewhere where she had plenty of opportunity to mix with students studying other things and a chance to continue with sport.

The medical school she is going to stresses the importance of PS and has a reputation amongst more academic candidates of being quite tricky to get into.

OPs daughter is young. Again the trick at this stage is to keep doors open. Do a good range of academic GCSEs, but ones you can get high grades in. Make sure do you as well as possible in maths, English and science. Select sensible A levels probably including chemistry and biology. (And not PE...honestly!) Once she is 16 look for volunteering and shadowing opportunities. Take UKCAT, and do plenty of practice beforehand, and let that score guide the level of risk she takes with BMAT. . If she then decides staying at home is more important than getting into medical school, then apply to only one place. But I suspect she will be better off treating her local university as an aspirational choice and then adding three others who are looking for applicants with a profile similar to hers.