Medical School Pondering

[kaykay72]

Hi all,

I’ve been reading a bit of the epically long medical school application thread, you all seem so knowledgable about the unis and the process, that I wondered if you could give me some thoughts on our situation please?

D has wanted to be a surgeon for as long as I can remember, used to aspire to go to Cambridge but wavers in that now. Strong academic and sporting record. Developed an illness in the run up to her GCSEs, sat exams (pre diagnosis but on diagnosis was told illness had been present around 6 months before exams, came out with 6A, 3A, 2B. Ended up missing year 12 due to treatment and extended hospital admission, but has fought like a warrior and restarted year 12 with next cohort. School have already said that she’ll have a medical attachment to her UCAS form to explain gap and the opinion that she underperformed at gcse due to illness. First half of year 12 going well, medical situation all good. Has part time job, is currently predicted A, A*, A - and school don’t give predicted grade for further maths at this point. Is back at her sport, working her way back up (she was a national level competitor), completing a diploma in this which carries UCAS points (equivalent to a B grade A level) and has just passed a coaching qualification as she coaches a bit at her club. Trying to fit in some WE/voluntary work but difficult to access and fit in with study/work/training. Has booked (and self funded) an overseas medical work shadowing trip later in the year.

She’s starting to shortlist unis for 2019 - she’s looking for places that do dissection rather than prosection, would prefer a campus uni (has a non medic family member at Nottingham, where they also cater well for her sport) and does not like the idea of too high a proportion of PBL

I’ve got little idea of how the various scoring systems work or which unis might suit or consider her - or whether Cambridge is still a reasonable goal for her (although she’s not sure their course is what she’s looking for). Can anyone offer any advice or opinions?

Thank you 😊

She’s pondering at the moment whether to drop further maths as many unis don’t consider the fourth A level, and using the time freed up by this to try to lift her grades to A A, A* or at least really focus on hitting her predicted grades and to give her more daytime hours for voluntary work. The school are not desperately keen as she’s a strong mathematician, but it might be better for her application

Sport, too, Sluj.
Think Sir Roger only donned a pair of proper spikes in his first year as a medical undergraduate.
He trained for half an hour a day - something that would be inconceivable now.

I'm certainly not doing him down but medical degrees nowadays are typically 9 to 5 (or more) on four days a week , 9 to 1 on Wednesdays, long placements away from your base and 100% attendance required. How do you comply with the training required to compete in the modern sporting arena?
My intention was to suggest that now might be the time to start dropping off the sport. As it happens I do think medical degrees have changed as have the junior doctor years. At least I hope so in the 65 intervening years

Plenty of people manage to play sport to a high level as well as graduate from medical school. Take Jamie Roberts (welsh rugby international) as an example! Long hours are the norm but it's nowhere near as hectic as when you're actually a doctor - and I know lots of doctors that continue to play high level sport. I did an Ironman whilst I was doing my surgical training.

Giving up further maths would be a better idea! Concentrate on getting the best 3 a level grades you can.

It's probably easier to be sporty on a campus, come to think of it. Running tracks, pools and sports halls - all on your doorstep.
But you have to get there first!
I think Sir Roger would have been appalled at the state of some of our study bound teenagers. How they're being forced to spend hours and hours indoors "out working" other pupils in the pursuit of grades. He believed in roundedness.

Goodbyestranger

Well I think the point I'm wondering about is whether things have in fact changed or not. I'm surprised that you haven't come into contact with those at the top of the profession now, who would have trained in the eighties and nineties on the whole, given what you say about your current position. Those trained in the fifties would now be late to mid eighties and it doesn't sound as though you're incredibly old or out of touch.

I am fairly old, I guess. So when I was starting out as a researcher the star professors - mostly in their forties, some slightly older - would have been undergraduates in the early sixties.

My current contacts are with people involved in education rather than medical science. There really doesn't seem to be the same kind of consideration given to where they studied as there was among researchers. But, again, I've worked in the two different areas in different decades. I don't meet "top" academics in my current role, whereas I often did in my previous one. I do come into contact with heads of medical schools and occasionally with medical directors of hospital trusts, but I don't think these are the kinds of people you'd describe as being at the top of the profession. For what it's worth, none of them seems to have any particular regard for Oxbridge (I don't know anyone senior at Oxford or Cambridge, obviously). One fairly senior person I know was at Oxford. His son is now at medical school and never really thought about applying to Oxford because there wasn't any particular reason to. His dad wanted him to go to one of the newer (post-2002) medical schools, but he didn't do that in the end.

This thing about Oxford and Cambridge medics lacking inter personal skills is really trite (obviously I realise it's a fairly widespread mantra on MN) and annoys me. Our own GP surgery has three Oxbridge trained GPs and all are exceptionally good with people. I doubt that's unique. Some of the other GPs there are dire. My DSs peers at Oxford are also extremely personable, almost without exception. I really don't buy this stuff about scientific skills and interpersonal skills being mutually exclusive.

They're not mutually exclusive. I've known lots of very academically able medical students who are also lovely people (or at least capable of appearing so to the extent that it's going to make no difference to a patient whether it's genuine). I've also known quite a lot who are delightful but really struggle academically, and a few who are academic high-flyers but have very little patience with people. These subpopulations exist everywhere but there are some places where the delightful strugglers form a larger proportion of the total and others where the impatient flyers form a larger proportion.

I may well be drawing conclusions from the legal profession but the top of that profession is certainly still dominated by a small number of universities and I would expect that the medical profession is in fact too. Surely someone can find a link!

It really depends on what you're defining as "the top of the profession". The medical director of the NHS (Sir Bruce Keogh) studied at Charing Cross. The chief medical officer (Dame Sally Davies) studied at Manchester. The president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (Prof Derek Alderson) studied at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The president of the Royal College of Physicians (Prof Jane Dacre) studied at University College London. I don't know what you want to make of that.

“I may well be drawing conclusions from the legal profession but the top of that profession is certainly still dominated by a small number of universities and I would expect that the medical profession is in fact too. Surely someone can find a link!”

I applied to medical school in the mid nineties. Interestingly this was a time when London medical schools were less well regarded. Their typical offer was BBB compared to AAB/ABB outside of London.

Getting back to the point - I completely agree with Welsh Weasel and find Goodbyestranger’s comment above almost touchingly naive. Success in medicine, whatever that means, really does not come down to what medical school you went to. I work in a well regarded London teaching hospital and have a number of colleagues who are national and international experts in their fields - haven’t a clue where they studied. No one cares.

If there is a link between Oxbridge and success in medicine, I expect it is because a candidate who was driven to apply to Oxbridge is ambitious and destined to do well wherever they studied.

If your ambition in medicine is to be a pioneer and do ground breaking research- the key to this is to get involved from early in your training in audits, quality improvement, research and teaching (of course in addition to being a sound doctor and passing all your competencies). This is what will get you a decent training rotation, and land you in a department where research is encouraged.

Furthermore unlike law - medicine is not completely ‘London-centric’. There are hospitals with excellent academic reputations across the UK. No need to apply for a London medical school for this reason.

It's not naive Twodogs but it is admittedly broad brush and I accept that one can't draw absolute parallels between professions. The idea that everyone is absolutely equal once they emerge from clinical school is possibly the naive idea round here. Also the fact that you don't know where your colleagues studied doesn't add much to anything :) The fact that no-one cares is also besides the point, since it's not about caring or banging on about where you studied, it's about where people from certain schools tend to end up. I find it difficult to believe that the top rated universities take in the students with the highest qualifications - and, as you say, ambitions - and then teach them so inadequately or boringly that they lose their edge and fall down in career terms to the lowest common denominator. That would be quite funny actually but I've already pointed out that if the same were to happen in a secondary setting then Ofsted and left leaning politicians would be on to the school like a ton of bricks, whereas Oxford and Cambridge and certain London medical schools keep a tight grip in the rankings.

Also thank you for your long answer Skiiltan.

It is naive because you really don’t have any idea of how medicine works. When you land on the ward as an F1 you will be treated the same as any other new doctor. It is what you do for on then on that matters. This is what will count on your CV and get you the decent training post and thus exposure to research opportunities.

I suppose what I am saying is that if you are going to do well in medicine you will do well wherever you go. Attending a top ranking med school won’t necessarily give you that leg up that it might in other fields. The selection and interview process as explained in earlier threads simply does not allow for it.
Choose a course and a town you like.

Twodogs I'm well able to understand what you're saying about 'how medicine works'. It isn't difficult as a concept after all and it isn't shrouded in any particular mystique. But I think all you're really saying is that career is based on individual merit, rather than understanding that the question I asked was which students tend to bag the top or interesting jobs, on the whole. You've already said you don't know the background of your own colleagues so I'm not sure you're in a position to answer! Possibly you're making assumptions (as indeed am I :)).

I doubt the information you are after is going to be easily accessible. Beyond F1 posts I think it would be hard for universities to keep track of what their 200+ graduates each year end up doing. Then there is of course the question of what defines success in medicine.

All I can say is what I have said before

I'm not after any information really, I was merely taking issue with the idea that there's a strikingly similar career trajectory for medics regardless of where they studied, because there's highly unlikely to be.

Success is always subjective Twodogs; medics have no particular monopoly on that.

You can say what you said before but I'm not sure what that is :) (That you don't know where your colleagues went to med school?).

I thought I had deleted my last sentence before posting - wasn’t meant to be a profound statement!

I don’t think I have ever said that the career trajectory of Oxbridge graduates is the same as those who study elsewhere I think those who apply to Oxbridge are a self selecting group of students.

What I have taken issue with on this thread is the assertion that the OPs DD should only consider certain universities if she wants to be a high flying surgeon. From my experience having been through training, numerous job applications, a research fellowship and now working as a Consultant this really isn’t the case.

That's fair.

In my eyes a top flying post is an international leader as a clinician scientist (my career path) plus developing new treatments. For others it is leading a college or government advisor or developing a new unit or department or earning lots of money in private medicine (highest earners are still London centric but it is a bit of a hamster wheel there). However for many their aspirations are being a 'norma' doctor (GP, surgeon, whatever) that gets it right most of the time (the hardest job of a medic) and have a work life balance. Some of the most multitalented, personable Oxbridge medics I know are doing just that including in fact one as a GP in Devon who would have been a fantastic academic. Clinical acumen is a more nebulous skill to have than selected by academic credentials but Oxbridge medics can have it just as much as other medical schools. There are some very talented medics in all fields from all medical schools including those that trained in India, SA, etc. Often the best in the UK are from abroad.
If I were to generalise, Oxbridge medics are articulate, write well and have a good share of leadership charisma. Some are very clever indeed. Some are a touch eccentric. Others are rather self satisfied and arrogant in their bubble. They seem more likely to do PhDs especially if they stay in Oxbridge or London but don't necessarily stay in science. I don't have numbers for all that though.

Oxfordmedic- very well said. I have been reading the previous posts and was thinking exactly what you wrote!

I was not trained in this country and really don't see it as a disadvantage. Some of the really skilled doctors have trained abroad.
I personally know of an obstetrician who successfully delivered a baby when a pregnant women was brought in periarrest to A and E and saved both lives!
The obstetrician was trained in India and has worked in rural areas and has just seen it all!

Don't forget medical training takes years and your commitment/ priorities changes at different stages of your life. A lot of students who are high flying in school and universities can't sustain the same level of academic achievement for 20 plus years and end up being a normal doctor out of their own choice!

To follow up from ProfessorLayton1's comments and OP's DD desire to be a surgeon here is a link as an example of Great Ormond Street cardiothoracic surgical team. www.gosh.nhs.uk/medical-information/clinical-specialties/cardiothoracic-surgery-information-parents-and-visitors/meet-cardiothoracic-surgery-team
Many of them trained abroad.
Ditto the neurosurgeons (not posted the link)
BTW Oxbridge does not feature here.

Is the main reason that so many applicants do overseas shadowing becuz it's so hard to get WExp in the UK?

She’s pondering at the moment whether to drop further maths...The school are not desperately keen

That's fairly opposite to our school's attitude. Our 6th form strongly discourages any 4th a-level for MED applicants. DD has had to campaign for it -- we both agree that DD will be bored if she doesn't do the 4th. I had a long chat with the Head of Math to reassure him that it's a good choice for DD. She'll sit the regular math A-level end of yr12.

However, my DD is not passionate about any sport, she'll do the bare minimum sport. Doesn't have that competing for her time. Seems like hard choices have to be made for many.

Medschoolrat- Did you find out how the universities view maths A level if they do it Year 12 rather than year. You only need 3 A levels but if she is capable then it does not hurt to keep doing 4 A levels

I'd suggest coming over into the Medicine thread as there are a bunch of v knowledgable mums who can probably tell you the exact requirements for every medical school ! And as offers have started to come through we may be sane enough to talk about it now. Every Uni is v v different in their admissions criteria - once you've passed the basics some just use the UKCAT score (Southampton, Sheffield, Newcastle). Some use points for GCSE (Cardiff). Some need A* predicted grades (Exeter). Some actually read the PS and score it (Bristol). And some do a bit of each (Nottingham, Liverpool). Most stipulate they want exams sat in one sitting with the exception of Further maths when they will count an A level maths sat in Year 12. All interview, some using MMI and some panel/group.

It was described by the admissions director at Liverpool as a hurdle race and that's what it feels like. Got at least 6 As at GCSE. Get good UKCAT and/or BMAT. Write PS. Get interview. Ace interview. Wait 3 months for result of interview. Get grades.
They really have to want to do it as it takes over year 13 so good luck. We are coming out the other side with the last hurdle to clear.

Oh and don't stress about medical work experience - you don't need much. Some state they prefer a part time job and volunteering in a care setting. Does not have to be hospital based.