Medicine 2019

[kaykay72]

Hi,

Does anyone here have a DC applying for medicine to start in 2019? It would be nice to meet others as we embark on uni visits, predicted grades, UKCAT etc

We’re in Kent, d is planning to visit kings, UCL, Nottingham, Sheffield and Newcastle at the moment. She really wanted to go look at Belfast but they want three A’s plus an A at AS level but won’t accept her additional qualification in place of this (despite it having a higher UCAS tarriff). We went to an open afternoon at BSMS which she liked more than she thought she would, so is pondering the BMAT.

I have two older kids (well, adults now), one of whom has just finished his masters, the other just completed his first year elsewhere, but medical applications are just so complicated in comparison to their experiences at this stage.

Hope to hear from others in the same boat :-)

DS came home very cross as he realised on his way what he had done wrong in a couple of the section 2 questions. He thought the section 1 was very bad for time pressure, but was very pleased with the choice of essays – he did one about whether science could explain life. So not great, but could have been worse.

DD found some of the problem solving difficult. Also ran out of time and had to quickly guess some answers and skipped a few questions.
Fortunately she is a skilled essay writer and was happy with that section, hopefully that will help boost her score. Seems such a long wait for the results.
Good luck to all of your DC for their results and applications.

Last year most applicants thought they did terrible too. There were posts after posts on tsr about how it was the end of their chances of an interview at the BMAT choices. In the end, I think the average was a bit lower than the previous year but many did much better than they'd thought. The essay mark is what often made the difference so no despairing.

Ah, the wait is shorter than the one next summer 😂

D is fed up but pleased to be able to get back to just normal A level work and job and life. She continued to get weird swings in the paractise tests when she was preparing though, was either low 5’s or in the 7’s, not anything in between.

I saw on TSR that Sheffield received the UKCAT scores yesterday - we had thought that the marks went out to the universities on the 7th as that’s what the schedule on the Sheffield admissions website said. Hopefully news from Sheffield might distract from the BMAT wait

Hi, so pleased to have found this thread!
My DD has applied for Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield and St Andrew's (strong UKCat, average - my medic standards - predictions and GCSEs). She's applied for deferred entry except for St A, which makes the whole thing even more challenging, I think, as she won't get an offer if she's anywhere near borderline.
Doing IB rather than A levels, and there is a relentless amount of coursework at the moment. Not enough sleep and mood pretty tempestuous. No time for interview prep, so hopefully she won't get any before Christmas!
Any other IBer parents here?

hoodiemum - Sheffield interviews are end of Nov/beginning Dec...

Thanks for that info, Monkey. Yikes - better start doing something about it then, even if it's just discussing questions from an exam prep book in the car. IB is so fab in so many ways, but time pressure is a nightmare at this stage of the course. Still, I guess it'll be good to get at least one interview out of the way early.

interview prep book, I mean...

Nottingham interviews were December if I remember right. And St George's too. Have fingers crossed for you all.

hoodiemum - you take me back to the good old IB days! DD is now in 4th year at med school but the IB is sooo tough, and meeting offers can be really difficult. We were told that doing the IB tended to make it "easier" to get offers, but much tougher to meet them! The understanding of the IB is still not great in this country. On a positive note DD felt it made the transition into studying at med school much easier as she had had to be so organised for the IB, and was very used to having lots of different topics filling the brain!

Have the Sheffield applicants been keeping an eye on TSR? Saint Julian posted that they received the UKCAT results on Thursday. It looks like they might start sending interview invitations out next week, should all be sent out by 16th Nov. I expect he will post the cut-off soon, it was published 10th Nov last year. Interviews 26th Nov to 14th Dec. In case you have not put the numbers together, they are interviewing 1,150 home students and 150 overseas and making 800 offers, which is a pretty encouraging interview/offer ratio. All feeling very real!
See www.sheffield.ac.uk/medicine/prospective_ug/applying/whathappens

Hi Medicmomma,
Glad it all worked out for your daughter. Where is she studying? Good to hear she's found the IB useful over the long term, despite the pain. I have to say, my DD has no regrets so far, but boy is it a killer!
The impression we're getting is that at some places the offers are more manageable than they used to be, esp 'contextual' ones, now that unis have seen how well the IBers do once they get there. Bristol website suggests it might be 32 points for lower-performing schools, which I believe my DD's is (due to A level results - IB results there are great). That would be a dream, although she'd still have to get the high science grades, which are certainly not in the bag. The flip side is places like Manchester that want 3 As at A level but 7 6 6 for IB, which doesn't seem very fair.
Got to get interviews first, of course, and do well at those. The actual exams still seem a distant hurdle...

Monkey - thanks for sharing. Bracing ourselves for news soon, then.

Bristol has a huge widening participation list - it is the only one I have seen DS's school on, but he does not want to apply to Bristol as we live there!

Bristol's huge 'widening participation' list does seem a bit unfair on the kids at genuinely challenging schools, doesn't it? One 6th form college we know - one of the top state school performers in our county (home counties) - is on there. Can't help thinking it would be fairer with a sliding scale from the top public schools down to the places with

Hi hoodiemum, good luck to your daughter with all there is to come! At least one positive with the IB is the early exams, early finish and early results, but I bet that seems a long way off!
My daughter got early interviews and offers from both Birmingham and Leicester - both of whom used to interview their perceived "best" candidates according to their particular criteria first, so I would say the IB certainly helped with gaining those early interviews. It was lovely to celebrate Xmas that year with two offers under her belt! She did have a punt at the BMAT and apply to Oxford - results weren't the best so that went out the window! She felt that not continuing to study the 3 sciences did put her at a slight disadvantage for the test, but wasn't too disappointed!
In the end she chose Leicester as a better fit for her (which I agreed with, despite partly wanting her to go to Birmingham, as I graduated there many moons ago!!). She has loved her time there and has had great experiences and opportunities: if anyone has any questions about Leicester ask away!!

Re Bristol Widening Participation, when I was a student about 100 years ago, Bristol had a reputation for being full of posh people - maybe they are still trying to move away from that.

Yikes. St Andrew's interview end of Nov...

Woo hoo!

Monkey, yes, you're right about Bristol's posh reputation. Still one of the highest private school intakes, and on the open day I was stunned at the lack of diversity in terms of accents. (The medicine talk was the only time of the day that people seemed a bit more representative.) It's really good that Bristol is trying hard to change that, but I still think its widening participation policy swings too far. My DD has two graduate parents –nagging– encouraging her, a medsoc at school with an incredibly supportive teacher, everyone in her classes aspiring to get into good unis, budget to pay for extra revision/tutoring classes when needed, etc etc, which give her huge advantages compared to applicants who genuinely deserve the widening participation help. Not that she wouldn't be delighted with a lower offer, of course, but I think she'd feel a bit of a fraud too.

Yay! We have an interview at Bristol. I have a very happy daughter at home right now 

Gosh its all happening very fast..great to hear that people getting interviews when it sometimes feels that could be impossible given the stats and numbers of all the applicants. Keeping our fingers and everything crossed for even 1 interview here..Ds a bit worried as ukcat wasnt the highest at 645 but she has applied strategically..mostly!great to have this thread for info and just to voice the odd thought on the whole epic process!

I'll ask her. I just had a squealy phone call!

Via email from Bristol

Email from St A's too. Lots of body parts crossed for everyone else's DCs.