Applying for medicine - how important is d of e, really?

[Pumpkintopf]

Hoping for some advice from those of you whose DC's have gone off to be med students or anyone with experience of admissions-

I understand that top grade a levels are a prerequisite of course, plus UKCAT/BMAT scores, performance at interview and relevant work experience.

My question is, does anyone take the Duke of Edinburgh award into account, or perhaps more to the point would it be a disadvantage not to have achieved at least silver, working towards gold? Ds's school does not currently offer it so wondering how much I should encourage them to do so.

Sorry I know it sounds ridiculous but I know how competitive med school applications are and don't want him to miss out for the want of something that we could potentially fix.

Thanks very much.

[mimtza]

I suppose what I am wondering about in the whole WE discussion is to what extent it would be considered necessary in our case.
DS2 (who is Year 11 thinking of medicine), is 18 months younger that DS1, who due to a random genetic mutation has complex special needs, cannot walk or talk and has regular epileptic fits. DS2 has spent many, many hours as a young child in hospitals while his brother has been treated, and seen an almost constant stream of medical professional come through our door.
While I have tried to shield both of my younger DC from the heavy lifting that goes into caring for an extremely disabled, complex needs, life limited child, there is only so much one can do, and especially with the oldest of them (DS2), sometimes you just need that second pair of hands, especially now that DS1 needs two person rolling etc. We therefore did register both of my two younger DC, including DS2, as young carers (which is really handy, because, eg the disabled transport that takes DS1 to school were only prepared to let DS2 be the one to take him off the bus when we said he was a young carer).

So if what the medical schools are really interested in, ie hands on experience with care and medicine, well DS2 doesn't need to go anywhere else, it is all at home, and he has been shadowing medical professionals all his life. But if they are looking for prestigious things to put on a CV, well - he didn't exactly do anything except be born after his brother to earn the current set up.

That said, he spoke to a paediatric A&E consultant that in her spare time volunteers at one of the charities that support life limited children and their families, including DS1, and she was willing for DS2 to shadow her - not nepotism exactly, but you could argue a leg up arranged (unwittingly) by DS1 being who he is.
Of course he can go on at length in any interview about exactly the precise diagnosis of DS1 and his needs (and has been able to since he was in primary school, because siblings need some answers when the other kids, not to mention adults, ask questions).
Not sure, however, if all that would be good or bad for his personal statement (sigh, and I have worked so hard to have DS1 not dominate his life).

[mumsneedwine]

Maybe those years of shovelling horse poo helped DDs application more than I thought 😂

[goodbyestranger]

Maria the Oxford student will obviously have considered politics.

[alreadytaken]

The process does not favour those with 2 years WE and certainly not those who have box ticked. It favours those who can show they have some understanding of what they are getting into and can demonstrate the qualities they are going to need later. If you are not sufficiently determined and proactive to sort out work experience you probably are not going to find enough teaching when you are out on the wards and teaching is not being handed to you on a plate. You need to care about your patients but you also need to be able to detach yourself from them at times.

There are other things rarely talked about, like the ability to cope with the various bodily fluids you will encounter, the elderly and the mentally ill. Doing something that involves getting your hands dirty is probably a plus point. If you dont like people or dislike seeing them with their clothes off you'll have to choose from a limited number of specialties.

The young Oxford doctor desperate to get out could still switch specialty as it sounds like a&e is not for them. There are many specialties. There are also many other opportunities for Oxford graduates

[MarchingFrogs]

So while it might not get you the university place, it might be a fun thing to do.

DD is treating her upcoming World Challenge trip - almost entirely self-funded through her part time job - in a similar light. Three weeks or so with some friends, somewhere unfamiliar and interesting. No expectation that the good folk of Madagascar will be grateful for whatever project this particular bunch of Essex teenagers will be put to work on, but hoping that they will at least not mind them being there and doing it.

[ColdFingered]

Re the DofE, I don't know much about it, and this thread looks at it solely at its use in getting into university. However, looked at the other way round, if someone is doing a lot of volunteering etc anyway, they can use this to get their DofE with little extra effort on top of what they are doing anyway.

DD is doing gold DofE through her (state) school. (I'm not sure whether she mentioned it at all on her PS.) But the only extra things she had to do has been camping, which she really enjoyed and was the main reason she did it, and a compulsory residential, which she is doing as her post-A-levels holiday (and is the main expense).

So while it might not get you the university place, it might be a fun thing to do.

[ProfessorLayton1]

I agree about the box ticking exercise. In most cases parents make sure that their children have sorted all the WE , care home experience etc., even before the children reach AS levels..
Compare that with my daughter who decided to do medicine fairly late in the process and have not had much experience when compared with the other children - of course the medical admission process is going to favour someone who had 2 year WE compared with my Dd who did not as It has been pointed out!
She had to go through all the possible career options and had to come to the conclusion of medicine as a career for her in the end . It was quite an agonising and painful process especially if you have a child who is good at lot of things!
She has made an informed choice and knows what to expect so hopefully would not be disappointed as a result of this!

[MariaNovella]

HarryTheSteppenwolf - while I find your sentiments concerning the desirable character traits for future medics laudable, I am reminded of a young (late 20s) A&E doctor I met last summer at a family birthday party. She had graduated from Oxford and was living in London, fulfilling her long held dream to look after the vulnerable as a doctor and also by volunteering in a bakery that supported the rehabilitation of highly disadvantaged young people into economic life and society. She was eloquent, personable, selfless and exceptionally intelligent. She hated medicine as a career with a vengeance, however, and was desperate to get out. She felt that she had been misled and that good doctors needed very different character traits to her own: to be tough, to be ambitious, to not care too much about anything but the short term job of getting people back on their feet and out of the hospital door as quickly and cheaply as possible. She believed her character traits would be better suited to addressing structural problems in society.

[Pumpkintopf]

Mumsneedwine

[mumsneedwine]

Mine liked watching Greys Anatomy 😁. She's still waiting for another Medic to whisk her into a cupboard for a quick snog though.

[missminimum]

I think the main thing, as well as the UKAT result, is a passion for the job, a realistic view of the demands of the course and the career. Shadowing doctors is good but making best use of this chance by asking questions of doctors and patients is very important. They need to demonstrate they have a realistic view of the life of a doctor. Interests outside of academic study are also valued, something that shows their character and they are interesting and enthusiastic. My son was young in his year and not 18 until he sat his A levels. He struggled to get health related work experience due to his age, but did get a week shadowing drs through a scheme at our local hospital. I work in the NHS but he refused any input from me, he said it was important that he could show he had no help with his application, this included us having no involvement with his PS. He had interesting hobbies, enjoyed outdoor pursuits, showed he could handle responsibilty through being a prefect and helping at Cubs. He was obsessed with everything medical related and could demonstrate his knowledge and understanding of the role. In order to withstand the pressure of the course and the job, they have to be some what obsessed and very enthusiatic, to meet the demands of what is to come. He did not do Dof E.

[Pumpkintopf]

Interesting and valuable perspectives, thank you all.

[CowJumping]

Box-ticking is rife among people who feel entitled to a place at medical school, and it is the thing I - as an admissions tutor and interviewer - hate more than any other. If someone is only volunteering so that she/he can apply to medical school, then she/he is exactly the sort of person we don't want to apply

Yo've put really well what I was trying to say upthread.

I know that in interviews I can tell if an applicants has done something as a box-tick, rather than learned from experience.

[mumsneedwine]

Harry I think what you say sounds so sensible. DD's work experience just gave her an idea of what medicine involves and wasn't really important in her application. Holding down a real job and volunteering because she wanted to seemed so much more important to medical schools.

[HarryTheSteppenwolf]

@mumsneedwine - I agree. In the medical school where I work, a longish-term engagement with Riding for the Disabled would be worth infinitely more than any amount of shadowing, as long as the student is capable of expressing what personal characteristics she/he demonstrated through it (and how) and what she/he learned from the experience. To be honest, we would completely ignore 3 days in a hospital and a week in a GP's surgery, however hard someone had tried to get it. It's just not what we're interested in. It can be valuable to the student to get a feel for what kind of environment she/he will end up working in, but it doesn't tell anyone anything about whether she/he would be any good at it.

My dad is currently in a care home. In the three months he has been there not a single volunteer of any age has passed through the door. I am therefore unimpressed by anyone who says they haven't been able to find a care home that wants/needs volunteers. I recognize that some might be wary about taking on under-eighteens, but someone who has demonstrated responsibility in other areas should be able to convince them, as long as they are volunteering because they genuinely want to help, not because they need to tick a box.

A few hospital trusts have been stung in the past by prospective medical students applying for work experience, going through induction & training programmes that cost quite a lot to put on, and then vanishing as soon as they feel they have enough hours for their medical school application. Box-ticking is rife among people who feel entitled to a place at medical school, and it is the thing I - as an admissions tutor and interviewer - hate more than any other. If someone is only volunteering so that she/he can apply to medical school, then she/he is exactly the sort of person we don't want to apply. They should be doing it initially to test whether caring for, understanding & helping other people is really what they want to do. If it is, they should carry on with it as they should recognize they are making a difference to people's lives. If it isn't, and they want to give up, they should also give up on applying for medicine. The very best applicants were already volunteering with vulnerable people before they decided they wanted to be doctors.

Regarding jobs, they are often an indicator of commitment and ability to do what you're told (an often under-valued characteristic). But they can also often provide opportunities to demonstrate tact, patience and fortitude when dealing with unreasonable, angry, drunk, otherwise intoxicated or frankly insane clients/customers (or managers). If you stick at a job long enough to be entrusted with some responsibility you are also likely to get a chance to demonstrate initiative.

[Pumpkintopf]

Interesting points re pt work and w/exp.

[ProfessorLayton1]

I am speaking from personal experience - even if your kids have slightest of intention to do medicine start arranging for WE, care homes etc., after their GCSE results.
We did not arrange anything but the local university has a good WE programme so we were just lucky. Dd did not even want to take the application form for WE and texted me saying that there is no point in applying as she is not interested in Medicine . I said to take the form and will discuss about it when I got home as I was busy at work.. fast forward few months she changed her mind and submitted her application in at the last date. BTW, we both are hospital consultants and I did say that we can take her to our hospital but she refused it - saying that it is nepotism and would like to do what she is able to do herself!!

Care home wise- we really struggled as she was not 18, she rang and went to a lot of our local care homes but lot of them were unhelpful. She has to have her CRB checked again ( she had one for her PT work) when a care home eventually accepted her.
She has a P/T work but we did not realise that it carries a lot of weight in the interview..

[mumsneedwine]

Hi Hostess, we had the same issues. Hospitals only offered to local students and we fell into a black hole. DD did manage 3 days at St Peters which is in Chertsey if you're near. They are a training hospital for Imperial and take anyone who applies - placements should be out now and fill up very fast. And she managed a week at a GP surgery through emailing every one in a massive area. That's all she had. But she volunteered with kids and horses (together) from aged 11 and stacked shelves at Waitrose. So it's not quantity that gets offers ! I think that part time job counted for a lot.

[HostessTrolley]

The careers person at my d’s sixth form is a lovely person but doesn’t have links or contacts - the one that she did have, a GP, didn’t reply despite a letter, a phone call, and popping in to ask. Neighbouring health trusts would only take students who are resident in their own area, not from out of area. The local trust has a co ordinator for work experience placements who asked for a form to be filled in, which d did, along with a covering letter. She chased it up a couple of weeks after she submitted it and every 2-3 weeks after that be either email or phone. It took 9.5 months from sending in the form to actually getting a date to go in. Even then, it was only because she had a conversation about her education plans with a customer at her p/t job which was overheard by another customer who happened to be a doctor at the hospital. He asked her about work experience, and hearing of her difficulties told her to call the co-ordinator on Monday with his name and she could spend some time with his team.

GP surgeries either just said a straight ‘no’ or asked her to send/leave a CV, which was then ignored, she was following them up with a polite phone call a couple of weeks later and getting fobbed off.

It’s really hard and quite a postcode lottery. Some of the London trusts in particular have great schemes for prospective medics/health professionals to get involved with work experience, shadowing, or volunteering but other trusts give the impression that they do the absolute minimum, but then complain of staff shortages in the media...

[anniehm]

Oh and they like people who have had jobs here, not fancy internships but hard graft - seriously working in McDonald's makes you stand out. There's fancier med schools than this one but m sure they are all looking for people who can work. The dean is a friend has as told us tales of the complaints from rejected applicants who seemed to think grade 8 flute should have won them a place!

[anniehm]

Health related voluntary work, eg volunteer porter at the hospital trumps d of e. Dh has sat on the panel and they take most of the extracurricular stuff as bragging and ignore because they are looking for those with a passion for medicine not having parents who can afford the right clubs or who know the right people.

[alreadytaken]

There is a good wiki on the Student Room about how to get work experience. With sufficient determination and persistence - skills they'll need later when seeking out training on the wards - students can normally get work experience. Every hospital does have schemes to provide this and there are many health professionals other than doctors who dont get asked often. I dont personally have much sympathy with the "it was too difficult" line. Most go abroad for their elective anyway. Mine was asked at one interview how they got their work experience, they had an answer the interviewer probably hadnt heard before :)

Nothing wrong with making one activity count twice, learning how to do that is also a useful skill.

BMAT schools are still recruiting doctors and in our experience they are just as likely to ask searching questions about whether you have the right skills. They were less likely to ask about how you'd get on in their more distant hospitals or whether you have minutely studied their course structure.

[ProfessorLayton1]

I can't understand why some will not help if they have contacts and can help!
Your child and your friend's child is not going to compete with each other for the last available place!!
Even so, it does not make sense to act in such a way!
Most universities have schemes where they sort out placements for local sixth form children.
Mine applied through this and she has to justify her place in writing.. But my understanding is that the hospitals bend backwards to accommodate these children!
Contact your local university education department to see what is available.

[MariaNovella]

It’s not DoE itself, but doing things that contribute to personal development.

DofE has created opportunities for young people to develop outside the school/classroom environment and that is a excellent thing. However, some schools have, to an extent, hijacked DofE and slightly overfacilitate it. My sister’s three children have all done pretty much carbon copy DofE activities facilitated by their school. Some DofE activities are also used as IB CAS activities ie pupils do one activity but count it towards two qualifications. None of these activities are bad or harmful but one can question the degree of personal development that occurs when activities are so tightly managed by school.

[Needmoresleep]

Perhaps it is worth looking at it from a different angle.

If you have a great UKCAT score or are expected to ace BMAT, you probably don't need to worry about what is in your PS statement, as you will probably be applying to Med schools that filter applicants by aptitude test results.

However for all those who sail through the process, there will be others who have to be very strategic. More applicants will get weak UKCAT results than those that get above, say, the 70th percentile. Which means that competition for those medical schools that factor in PS' can be very strong indeed. Which means that having a strong PS will be important.

The answer to OPs question is simple though.

1. Its not DoE itself, but doing things that contribute to personal development. Yes there will be doctor roles that dont require many social/communication skills, but most do.

1. Medical schools are normally pretty transparent about how they select. They will say how they use the PS. They will effectively say what they expect to see on it. KCL said, when DS was writing hers, were clear that they wanted applicants to be active within their community and a gave examples including being active within your religious community.

1. I suspect it is not what you do but what you learn from it. DD volunteered at disability sports sessions, mumsneedwine's daughter worked in a shop. Both worked with people of different ages, showed capacity for sustained effort and indeed both showed commerical skills. (DD did some fundraising at her school for her activity, which the school supported and which has continued in subsequent years.) As long as they both did something, and enjoyed what they did, I can't see that it matters what it was.

For what its worth, I dont think BMAT schools have a stronger preference for PS. My understanding is that some of the BMAT schools are looking for very strong scientists, but emphasise the need for applicants to show a wider skill set becvause this is what the profession needs.