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 :-)

A note on providers of coaching for the UKCAT for those who are uncertain or struggling to meet the costs: Schools generally say it is unnecessary, however most parents tend towards providing every easement. We gave DCs the choice of a course or the money. Course taker (medicportal) comes in at average of well over 750 band 1, so one would have thought that surely would swing it with next DC? Next one up takes the money and uses free samples online, comes in at average well over 800 band 1. Perhaps DCs are better able to judge whether they will find their confidence before or after a course? Would that remove one source of unhelpful stress?

Our course-taker chose medicportal. We know some medify tutors and they're perfectly good enough for the job. Kaplan also has good reviews. Perhaps they are all very similar? There are many UKCAT and BMAT books as well.

There is a test every year, if it were to go pear-shaped, a break before med school is no bad thing. Skills from working and money earned will be worth much more acquired before the course than later.

@Kaykay72 - very impressed with Sheffield. Good mix of town centre campus, leafy & hilly city, but easy to get out to the Peak District. Full body dissection is a plus, PBL incorporated as 'Integrated Learning Activities', early clinical exposure.

The lecture from the admissions tutor was the best one we've heard so far - practical and realistic, some funny stories. They're strong on UKCAT, work experience. But emphasise each stage is a hurdle - scoring well above it doesn't necessarily buy you anything - except when it comes too the UKCAT, when they will use it to rank candidates who meet all other requirements.

Accommodation seems very good, costs certainly better than Bristol! It's in our top 3. Very impressed.

Skilltan, I looked into King's low student satisfaction score three years back when DD was applying. At that point it was awful, and the plausible explanation then was that it had been impacted by the merger of Guys, Kings and Thomas' medical schools. With students studying for 5/6 years and satisfaction surveys reflecting past experience I guess teething problems will take a long time to work through.

It is also worth emphasising that it is horses for courses. DD would have been happy to go to Kings - had they offered her a place. (She thinks she bombed one of the MMI interviews - it happens. The rest went well.) DS studied in London, not medicine, somewhere which has traditionally comes bottom of student satisfaction charts, yet he had a world class education, a great social life (he is not a clubber and benefitted from the fact that because students are scattered, societies etc are based on campus) and some first rate support. He would be the first to admit that what suited him does not suit everyone. DD in contrast struggled during her first year being in halls dominated by people who did not have to get up for 9.00am lectures and placements. Many medics seem to have self-selected and will be sharing with other medics in their second year, and sticking to medic societies. DD had wanted the wider University experience so plays University sport and is building a mix of friends. Her University offers a good mix of inner-city and rural placements, allows intercalation elsewhere (she may yet return to Kings!) plus has research strength in areas she is interested in, and is somewhere she is already happy to call home.

Medicine offers a huge range of careers. Kings has a lot of research, so if academic medicine is your thing, and you like the rest of the offer, then I would not worry about student satisfaction rates. If your aim is to be a rural GP you might look elsewhere.

My second piece of advice is to treat the application as a two year process. If you dont get in, think carefully about why (we came across a few who realised that rejection was a blessing in disguise as they were probably more suited to either medical related fields, or to something completely different), and then reapply with a year's extra maturity, experience, and knowlege of the application process.

I heard that some of the low ratings were down to students not wanting the Kent placements in years 4/5. We live in Kent, my d is saying after 3/4 years in London, to live at home would be nice - and cheaper! She’s already talking about renting her brothers rooms (at least one will be empty) out to course mates!

@weaverspin Thanks for the info on Sheffield, I think they have another open day in September, it sounds like we should get up there 😊. I also heard that their communication with applicants during the process is one of the best. We had problems with QUB on this, getting sent round in circles or ignored trying to get a question answered

Kaykay, I would be surprised. DD found herself in practically her second week having to get up ay 6.30 am so she could catch a once hourly bus from the city centre to a rural placement. And before the start of the second year they are all spending a month doing placements at different hospitals across the region. Kings students have it easy in comparison. It has caused us to decide to help her have driving lessons and buy a car. An unexpected cost which goes some way in reducing the gap between London costs and living costs elsewhere.

@kaykay72 .....my DD did the QR on UKCAT too (2 days prior....ahem) and had an utter meltdown! Wanted to postpone. Anyway, she didn't. Went and did it this AM, got 750.....overwhelmed. Thinking of not doing BMAT at all now as not keen on Oxbridge and BSMS anyway. Big relief. Good luck to those still practising .,,,,DD did around 2 weeks prep of 6 hours per day.

Hi, my DS is applying for medicine 2019. He is looking at Cambridge, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds. Like lots of your DCs, has decided against London due to cost and the commuter lifestyle, and not the West Country as we live in Bristol. He also wants traditional with full body dissection (makes me feel queasy!). He would have loved to apply to Edinburgh, but there is really no point if you do not have 8+ As. He was joint highest achieving boy in his school with 6As, 4As, but there are loads of private school kids with 9 As out there. Doing UKCAT in a couple of weeks, has just signed up for Medify which seems excellent, but I think he will only manage 10% of their 8,000 question bank! Does anybody have advice on preparing for BMAT? Unfortunately he can't do the early sitting as we will be on holiday, so has to apply for BMAT universities "blind".

Re Sheffield, I agree that their communication is outstanding - the Medicine Admissions Tutor joins the discussion on TSR and dispels myths with great efficiency as well as keeping people informed about the interview and offer timetable.

Slightly anxious about Leeds as they give a lot of marks for GCSEs, so DS has already lost 3 points for only having 6 A*s.

HI my DS is awaiting results for A Level he used BMAT Ninja which he found helpful as well as Medify for UKCAT

Thanks 3cats, will look into BMAT Ninja

There is a rumour that Leeds are going to change their process. That they will no longer score the PS and increase the number of interviews from 600 to 1000.
If true, this materially reduces the riskiness of an application for those with good academics in terms of getting an interview at least.
You are going to need some good stories for the interview as they do like non-academics.

As Sept approaches, I could prob boil our experience down to:

1. You need to maximise interviews. Med school entry is too uncertain to worry much about where you go, you need 4 interviews. The more interviews you do, the better you get.
2. We got the Medic Portal online video course for interviews. As a graduate interviewer I was fairly impressed with it. He then went for a MMI practice session for a morning which boosted confidence. It’s a bit grating to advocate something like this, as it is blatantly unfair, but there you go. If your kid is at school and 18 in the summer, they will be up against much more mature candidates. This all adds up to £250 and it’s enough.

Leeds are indeed changing their system. It is on the website (although they have not drawn attention to the fact that it has changed) and I checked with the admissions people that it will indeed be a purely academic assessment to get an interview. They will still use the personal statement during the interview process though.

Scary to think that this time next year we’ll be in the position of the mums on the 2018 medicine thread 😳 From what D has seen on the student room website, it appears that SGUL and Leicester have had clearing places for undergrad medicine, and several other unis haven’t been officially in clearing but have been offering interviews to students who they’d previously rejected but who got good grades.

D still trying to decide whether to sit the BMAT and apply for imperial, or to apply to four UKCAT medical schools where she looks most likely to be offered an interview with her stats, and not add to the year 13 stress. School want personal statements handed in during the second week of term which is going to come around very fast.

Hope you’re all having a good summer. Much excitement at planning for Reading Festival here 🙄

HostessTrolley how did D do in UKCAT? DS has his on Tuesday before getting ready for Reading!

.... and are you too late to sign up for September BMAT? DS has to do in October as we will be away 1st Sept, but it would be nice to have results before the application is finalised.

@monkey2001 - she unexpectedly got 720, band 1 which was far better than she expected. Which is why she has a quandary on the BMAT. As much as she liked imperial she’s thinking that if she applies strategically she could get a good number of interviews with her UKCAT, without the work/stress of the BMAT which she might not do as well on....

But then she thinks that if she doesn’t do the BMAT she might later regret not taking a shot at imperial, even though her top choices are Nottingham and kings. She’s going round in circles, but time to make a decision is ticking away x

Hi. I've come over from the 2018 thread and getting a bit teary reading all your posts. That was us last year, but it feels a long time ago now ! One bit of advice I'd give is that getting interviews is the key, so apply strategically. Don't waste a fab UKCAT by not applying to at least one Uni that it guarantees an interview at (Sheffield, Newcastle, Southampton for an idea).
And then it's the realisation that going to interviews means they miss lessons - for 3 of DDs she had to stay overnight as interview was early morning (they won't change times), so each time was 2 days of missed college, which adds up ! For the other she had to drive through snow to get there.

DDs advise is chose the course you like the most if you are in the position to get a choice. Sounds like your kids know their mustard and have their spreadsheets ready 😁. Mine is off to Nottingham (I'm still getting used to saying this) and her reasoning was the facilities, the course structure, the extra degree in 3rd year and full body dissection. Me, well I loved Sheffield (on tsr the lovely Julian, head of admissions, is still giving help to clearing candidates).
Good luck to you all and if any of us can ever help please just ask. I found the 2018 thread such a support as it's hard to understand how tortuous the process is if not going through it. All DDs friends has offers by December. Her first one came through in February. Her last interview was mid March (postponed due to snow and then snowed again).

Oh and she is just a normal comprehensive school kid with no medics in the family. At interview she said just be you, they'll know if they like you. And be prepared to do anything - MMIs can be weird 😁.

"But then she thinks that if she doesn’t do the BMAT she might later regret not taking a shot at imperial, even though her top choices are Nottingham and kings."

In that case, the obvious solution is to apply to three UKCAT schools plus BMAT Imperial. Remembering DS's time many moons ago when he had a phenomenal UKCAT score but for strategic purposes amongst other things, we went for two UKCAT and two BMAT. Not a problem because he had interviews from both types of school.

Nottingham and King's are superb medical schools and you may also consider Edinburgh to complete the UCAS form. No need for interview at Edinburgh (for school-leavers) so don't have to miss school.

@HostessTrolley 720 is a great score. DS is hoping for 700, but modify currently around 680, so will have to involve some luck!

I agree with Peteneras, if your D has 3 universities where she can be reasonably confident of getting an interview, it is worth taking a bit of a risk on the 4th if it is "dream choice". It is a shame she missed the September BMAT deadline, but it looks to me like BMAT is much less arbitrary than UKCAT and that if you are good at maths and sciences, you should be fine.

Everyone who sits BMAT is good at maths and science - the only ones sitting it are trying to get into science subjects ! The essay bit can be tough and it's a hard exam. But then so is UKCAT in a different way.
Check stats of interview/offer ratio as most are less than half so maximise the interviews to ensure the offers.

But I'd totally agree to chose the courses you like. No point getting an offer to somewhere you're not going to be happy for 5 years.

Great UKCAT scores so far ! They are all doing amazingly well.

@monkey2001 - d was getting around 670-680 on the medify mocks, 700 was her dream score so she was really surprised with her mark on the day. Scoring in the high 800’s for QR really pulled the average up, although doing one of the UKCAT websites a couple of days before the test day and bombing the QR section caused no end of stress!

She’s going to apply for Kings, Sheffield and Nottingham, and is edging towards sitting the BMAT. Her thought is that if her BMAT score isn’t good enough, she should have a strong chance of interviews at the other three. Nottingham is great for her sport, boyfriend is in London, but she knows the amount of time she’ll have for either of those will be limited if she gets a place.

@peteneras she ideally wants to stay closer to home (South East) than Edinburgh, but it’s interesting that they don’t interview school leavers. Edinburgh is also something of a hub for her sport...

mumsneedwine I should have said that if she finds maths and science easy she should be fine. From what I have read, the people who struggle with BMAT are the ones whose natural inclination is towards arts, but maybe they are doing sciences because they really want to be go into medicine. My DS thinks it is much more straight forward than UKCAT.

HostessTrolley - re Edinburgh, you may or may not have looked at their admissions policy, but it is extremely inflexible. Your D's UKCAT is on the cusp on the top band for the last few years, so if she has at least 8 As and a strong PS, it is worth considering. We looked hard as DS really wanted to go there, but he has 6 As, so immediately looses 2 points in their system and allegedly you need around 37/40+ to get an offer. The "no interview" policy makes it very attractive as well as the traditional course and the fact that Edinburgh is a fantastic city with lots going on.

Admissions policy - www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/mbchb_handbook_2019_approved_0.pdf

Stats, inc UKCAT thresholds - www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/statistics_for_applications_to_medicine_2017_0.pdf

Monkey I'm sure he'll ace it 😁. I agree it's more straightforward than the vile thing that is UKCAT.

The BMAT is a bit of I find because so much can lay in the essay part. I died appreciated the impact of the difference between 1 full point to the overall result. Even .5 which means the two examiners not agreeing can make a real difference between meeting the threshold or not so I can understand what is meant by being good at essay writing for the sake of the BMAT.