Medicine 2018 part 3

[SomersetS]

Hope you all find this - didn't realise I took 999! Whoops.

Duh! MN = MumsNet. Told you I'd feel stupid!

Movednorth I am sure the waiting lists will start moving quickly after final decision day for firm choices, which are you waiting for? My DD still not made her decision - I will give her a gentle nudge this weekend...

Having started this whole process wishing DD had chosen something like Geography, I have changed my view, even with the stress of it all. If your DD is keen and has been through months of the application process and gets the grades, encourage her to give it another go - the thought of UKCAT/BMAT again is an annoying extra hurdle but without the other pressures maybe not so bad. Also she may look at different choices and fall in love with a different medical school. Also, you may remember me mentioning that I know one current student now applying for first junior doctor posts who had no offers this time 5 years ago - clearing came good for her. Keep positive, don't rush her.
Swing, sounds like your DD would be a perfect A&E doctor!

Going to sit out in this beautiful sunshine for 15 mins with a cup of tea.. Sorry not working today, apologies to those who are...

Hi, my daughter has offers from Edinburgh, Bristol and Birmingham. Does anyone have experience of requesting a deferred entry to accommodate a gap year? She has been having terrible problems with acne, may have to start accutane after A levels are done and is nervous starting on this medication either just before or concurrently with starting uni, hundred of miles from home.

2B1Gmum, DD is on Cardiff waiting list. Edinburgh don't have a list as such, but have said they will contact near misses if spaces come up - and they do have a record for doing so (sometimes in May). We are not allowing ourselves to be toooooo optimistic... It would be such an amazing thing if it happened. Funny comment the other day from DD: "If I do 3 years of BioMed and then postgrad medicine I will be so OLD when I start the medicine. I won't be interested in going out and socialising any more." No hope for the rest of us then!

Yes Jon Bristol were extremely ready to defer last year for a girlfriend of one of my DSs - it was just a very short phone call.

My son has an offer for Medicine from both UCL and Birmingham University. Both need A*AA. He is inclined towards Birmingham but we prefer UCL. Looking for your views based on your experience with older children in previous years

Jon1970 my DD did accutane in Year 12. No big problems, bit worse before it got better & very dry skin, lips etc but none of the side effects we (or rather I) dreaded. DD just wanted to have clearer skin at any cost. I was unsure. She was convinced & it was her decision medically.
Only "student" issue really is alcohol I think (& regular pregnancy tests but DD didn't have a boyfriend).
It has changed her confidence & self-esteem massively for Year 13.
Regret can't help with deferred entry as DD doesn't want a gap year.

UCL no contest.

My son has an offer for Medicine from both UCL and Birmingham University. Both need A*AA. He is inclined towards Birmingham but we prefer UCL. Looking for your views based on your experience with older children in previous years.

I don't understand what you mean by "we prefer UCL". You're not going: your son is. What is your preference based on?

This is my first time posting, but have enjoyed reading everyone's individual experience of this difficult process.
I wanted to share my own Ds experience, he is currently on a gap year having had no interviews last year. Although with 20,000 high achieving students applying for 5,500 places, we always knew competition was going to be incredibly tough. My Ds was the first year of taking A levels exams at the end of year 13 and achieved AABa. In hindsight he would probably have been better concentrating on 3 A levels and not taking a 4th to AS (although he achieved an a in this subject). His B was in Chemistry, although he found Biology more difficult! This year he has reapplied to those medical schools that will take a resit. He has been offered a place to study medicine at his first choice university and this is conditional on his grade increasing in chemistry.
The gap year has flown by and for those Dc who have no offers, I would say stick with the application process. Get the grades and reapply next year. With three A grades in hand you have the time to really consider where you would like to study and prepare for interview.

Its my first time of posting here.
Naturelover3: Was keen to know which Medical schools accept A levels resits?

Our preference is based on the reputation of the university. Obviously it has a reputation for a reason. His preference is based on the sporting facilities available. Do you know anything about the universities or do you just believe that its for the candidate to decide. Candidates are only 18 with little experience. They need to make an informed decision. That is why I am seeking more information from people who have a personal experience

In reply to tests on which medical school accepts resits. Hull/York, East Anglia, Brighton, Lancaster, Plymouth and Liverpool. Keele will also look at resit candidates but only when the A* has been achieved. In the future there may be other medical schools. Others may consider you if you have mitigating circumstances. My son didn’t.
Most medical schools that look at resit candidates will only do so if you drop by one grade in one subject.

@Ranm - Sorry, my previous message was a bit abrupt.

There are lots of reasons why a student might prefer one medical school over another, and we try to encourage them to think carefully about which course best suits their style of learning, what kind of environment they're going to be happiest in, what the balance is between time spent in different settings (e.g. GP vs district general hospital vs large teaching hospital vs tertiary referral centre) and how this would suit them, and so on. The two things that just about every medicine admissions tutor tells prospective students not to consider are the reputation of the university and parental preference.

Your son might particularly want to live on a university campus in his first year. He might not want to do an intercalated degree, which would be compulsory at UCL. He might prefer a slightly less "traditional" teaching format (although the difference between UCL and Birmingham isn't huge in this respect). He might want more early patient contact (10 days a year at Birmingham in years 1 & 2). He might have concerns about how far out of London some of the clinical placements at UCL are (e.g. Hertfordshire, although some Birmingham students will go out as far as Worcester). On the other hand, you might want him to think about where he'll live after first year. I had the misfortune of growing up in Birmingham. While it's an awful lot better now than it was in those days, he still needs to make a longer-term judgement about living in Birmingham vs living in London.

There are a couple of reasons for the reputation of the university - which is based almost entirely on research output - being less important for medicine degree programmes. First, the students will spend a relatively small proportion of their time in the university and being taught by university academic staff. If anything, it's the quality - or, maybe more importantly, the intensity - of the experience in hospitals & GP practices that defines the relative value of a medicine course. Secondly, all medical graduates have to meet the same learning outcomes - defined and monitored by the General Medical Council - regardless of where they study. For students entering medical school now there will be a national medical licensing exam, imposing even more standardization. There are very few situations in a student's subsequent medical career where the specific medical school at which he/she studied is of any significance.

Skiiltan, good post effectively describing why DD applied to Birmingham and not UCL. 'Reputation' is one thing. However course content is probably a better basis for a decision. Plus all the intangibles around where you would prefer to spend 5 years. DD did not take up her Birmingham offer as she preferred the city her other offer was in, as well as their intercalation options. But horses for courses. She wanted to be at an established university in a city that was not London where medics would be part of normal student life and a good variety of placements.

I dont know, but was told that in medicine there can be advantage in being towards the top of the cohort in one place rather than towards the bottom in somewhere with a 'better reputation'.

My daughter is a first year at Birmingham Ranm. She has found it very intense in comparison with what friends at other medical schools such as Cardiff have told her of their courses. She had a bit of a meltdown in October, mainly exhaustion, I think, but has done well in exams. Once they finish exams in May, the summer term is much more relaxed and there are no more lectures until September.

There are lots of sports and other activities. It’s huge and lots of societies cover not just medics but nursing, etc, within the medical school, so it almost seems like a university within a university. She loves Birmingham, which has been transformed in many ways.

Some of the GP placements are a fair way away, but she has been promised nearer ones next year.

Lecturers and other academic staff vary widely in their ability to communicate and she’s nearly given up on some of them, but material is available online and elsewhere. This may be a communication preference and a case of having been spoilt before: she had fantastic A level teachers.

I’m afraid the bad news is that A level stress carries on. She’s having a long Easter break to revise for first-year exams, and it’s just like last year was! 😲 Some of her response may be owing to being a perfectionist who can’t cope with the fact she’s never going to know 100% of anatomy perfectly, but she will have to learn to deal with this. Older students have been lovely and supportive and she has made great friends.

It’s a full-on course for the first two years but i get the feeling that they get a lot of the academic content covered in these early years. Overall, it has been great.

tests I think the medic portal has some info. that may answer your question, so worth a look. I am certain Liverpool do and HYMS, I think UEA - in common with a few others, might increase the grade requirement from an A to and A star for a resit.

Ranm I think Skiltan has given a very thorough and useful reply, Don't take too much notice of league tables, but if you do the student satisfaction score is as important as overall ranking. A medicine degree is a medicine degree, I am told when applying for junior doctor roles the hospitals see your medical exam scores etc. but not where you studied. Having some downtime in an environment that appeals, in your DS case with sport - will surely help and is really important for some. My DD knows my favourite of her choices, but I haven't made a point of pushing her in that direction - I don't want her telling me she is unhappy because I chose not her. She still hasn't firmed either!

Thanks Naturelover3 and 2B1Gmum. Useful to know these.

I dont know, but was told that in medicine there can be advantage in being towards the top of the cohort in one place rather than towards the bottom in somewhere with a 'better reputation'.

I mention this half-jokingly to high-achieving international students but I probably need to be careful what I put in print.

When medical students apply for their first foundation-year job, the metrics they are selected on are principally (a) performance in the national situational judgement test, taken in final year of medical school, and (b) ranking within their graduating cohort at their medical school, based on quintiles (i.e. top 20%, next 20%, down to bottom 20%, at the end of the penultimate year). There are a few additional points available for things such as having an additional degree (e.g. from intercalating), having publications in non-student journals, etc. This does mean that for an academically strong student there might be a small advantage in studying somewhere where the average level of academic performance might be a bit lower, thereby increasing one's chance of being in the top quintile. To be honest, in most places I think it would be a huge gamble to bank on the rest of the cohort being weak enough to guarantee you'll be in the top 20%: this simply doesn't happen, as there are outstandingly able students at every medical school. It might make Oxford/Cambridge/Imperial/UCL/Edinburgh a slightly riskier option, but for most students I don't think this would realistically be a significant consideration. In my own institution I would say there are some students in the top 20% who probably wouldn't be in the top 20% at one of the above, but I think there are also students above the bottom 20% of the above who would be in our bottom 20%, so the risks might be different for different groups.

What we don't know yet is whether the new medical licensing assessment (MLA, due to run for the first time in 2022) will contribute to rankings for foundation programmes. We've been told it won't but there are political influences at work, so it's not safe to make any assumptions. To be frank, we don't even know for certain what form the foundation programme will take once the MLA is introduced.

2B1Gmum - Don't take too much notice of league tables, but if you do the student satisfaction score is as important as overall ranking.

I would have broadly agreed with this before this year, although even then it would only be right at the bottom of the ranking that I would suggest taking much notice. Things will be different when the 2018 National Student Survey (NSS) results come out in August, as there have been several external factors influencing responses.

First, the NUS and individual students' unions have had an on-off threat of a boycott of the NSS going on, owing to its contribution to Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)* scores and the suggestion that institutions may be allowed to vary tuition fees on the basis of their TEF scores (i.e. that universities with higher NSS/TEF scores would be allowed to charge higher fees). Even without NUS interventions, some students will have deliberately given low scores in the NSS to prevent their institutions from charging higher fees.

Secondly, students have cottoned on to how seriously universities take the NSS and have started using it as a weapon. So, although the questions are explicitly about teaching, assessment/feedback and learning resources, students have given low scores because they are unhappy about car-parking, accommodation, vice-chancellor's salary, etc. As one student said to an academic colleague of mine in another department, "we are going to give you a kicking in the NSS because of the car-parking".

Like it! Off topic, but just as well LSE does not offer medicine. Students seem to see it as a badge of honour that they always come bottom. It show how tough and resilient they are to have got throigh it. So they complete the survey, collect their Amazon voucher and rubbish the University. Leaving it to Government to work out how to accommodate this in the ranking systems. DS loved his time there. Perfect for him. But I suspect despite this he followed tradition.

@Skiiltan - thanks for posting the information about job applications. It's good to know the process. I really had no idea that was how it was done. Sounds as bad as applying for medicine all over again!

I wonder how flexible Med Schools will be this year for those that don't achieve their grades. A few girls at my daughter's school managed to get in with AAB last year but I think that was due to the change in A level examinations. One girl even got into Veterinary Med with reduced grades at her insurance Uni but is now having problems with the course.

For a full inspection and report of medical schools you can always look at the from the GMC, although they won't be completely up to date it does include student views etc. I worked in publishing for a while for a company that did referred to this and CQC inspections of hospitals etc. Hence knowing where to look if more detailed info. would help, although tbh it can just confuse things. I will allow DD to go with her gut feeling about what suits her best and she feels very lucky to even have more than once choice.

sorry for all the typos above, must be the beautiful hot weather... The GMC reports are easily accessible and not too hard to read for those who are interested :

www.gmc-uk.org/education/reports-and-reviews/medical-school-reports