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.

[mumsneedwine]

And has the added advantage of earning them money for Uni (or a car). Working is good for you (although my DD currently on the tills at Waitrose might not agree). But she likes the cash 😁

[MariaNovella]

A job, earning money, can develop many qualities that may be used as the basis of part of a PS. It is most definitely worth thinking carefully about the picture one portrays of one’s family background when using extra and super curricular activities to support motivation for one’s chosen subject.

[alreadytaken]

In 4 pages I dont think anyone has mentioned that doing DofE may actually make your child more confident, more independent and better prepared to deal with team working and difficult situations - you know, the sort of thing it's designed to do.

If you have bought your child an expedition in South America or something similar or their residential was cookery classes then yes, you did to consider what image that presents. However the medics I know who did DofE were doing a lot of volunteering anyway, did an activity that they could possibly use to demonstrate how to cope with stress and a residential that showed their caring side, maybe working with the less able. You dont have to do all of bronze, silver and gold and as pointed out earlier some scout groups and some other groups offer DofE at low cost. At least some areas have groups independent of schools or the scouting movement who will put together groups for expeditions.

It's certainly not a disadvantage if you havent done it as it's just one way of demonstrating certain skills and abilities and there are other ways that are just as valuable. However people seem to be forgetting that it has value in itself, it's not just for filling out application forms.

[Libra]

DS1 had no interest whatsoever in Dof E.

His main interest was jazz and he was in the national jazz orchestra. Every medical school that interviewed him asked about the jazz - I think because it was unusual and made him stand out.

He is a SHO now, and just interviewed for a teaching fellowship in a medical school. First question was about the jazz (!)

He got the teaching fellowship by the way so could be teaching some of your children next year!!

[MedSchoolRat]

We don't do negative marking where kids from privileged backgrounds get downgraded wouldn't have enough applicants left if we did

I don't know what to do with information that someone went to American Medical School summer camp I heard this costs £5000 , or shadowed doctors for 2 weeks in Sri Lanka or visited orphanages in Tanzania. How will those experiences help them understand Gladys Ramsbottom who never left Derbyshire, living with hypertension & mild dementia? So I try to disregard foreign trips & just listen to the applicant in front of me answering the questions I put to them.

Like someone said, you can do DoE for like £20 with scouts or cadets. DoE is not a sign of privilege compared to the kids who mention South African Aids clinics.

[MariaNovella]

How will those experiences help them understand Gladys Ramsbottom who never left Derbyshire, living with hypertension & mild dementia?

They won’t, but my family’s recent experience of the NHS is that doctors (not other HCPs) regularly assume patients are insular and dim. It’s condescending in the extreme, and very far from the truth.

[HostessTrolley]

My d went abroad. She worked many hours in her minimum wage job to pay for the trip completely, including visas etc. She researched and planned it herself - she didn’t want to go anywhere where she would get ‘opportunities’ to do things that she wasn’t qualified to do at home, or would negatively impact patient care. She wanted to observe and learn about the culture of the country she visited, learn about the healthcare system and how it worked and fitted in, she wanted to compare and contrast things from her own patient experience and also look at things like communication skills. It was for her interest and learning. She found some things shocking, like the difference in patient expectations of how they were treated and spoken to, and a young pregnant mother who was being domestically abused. Things like aseptic technique and basic hygiene practices were eye opening. Overall she reflected on the nhs values etc and on her own motivation and understanding of what it is to be a doctor and what it is to help. And did a lot of cleaning!

She mentioned it in her ps but only in a very low key way, to illustrate one point. It was part of her journey but not a way of ‘buying a place’, and she didn’t go near a beach!

[ProfessorLayton1]

Regarding foreign placements - it is not always people with privilege have such exotic experience.
I am aware of children whose families are from different parts of the world and they tend to shadow the doctors while on summer holidays etc., as well as visiting their grand parents!
It is absolutely right that there should not be any extra weightage given to such experiences!!

[ProfessorLayton1]

Hostesstrolley- spot on about the value of NHS. I almost always hear this from kids who have seen other forms of healthcare in the rest of the world!

[MariaNovella]

It is absolutely right that there should not be any extra weightage given to such experiences

There should be no value attached to shadowing or work experience by virtue of the fact that it takes place in another country, but the perspective and insight that such experiences afford, if meaningfully analysed and expressed, can of themselves provide an indication of an individuals thinking skills in a setting where he/she can observe at first hand.

[HostessTrolley]

My d chose to do it off her own back because she was interested to see for herself and learn, the only help we gave her was to drop her off at the airport and to check that she’d be safe.

She had great difficulty getting shadowing in a medical setting in this country - it took 9-10 months to get two days of observation through the official channels in our local hospital. Several of her school friends have parents in the medical profession and easily got multiple weeks in with their parents friends/colleagues and were not willing to help the ‘competition’ even though they socialise together and are applying to different unis. So she made the most of her two days, drew on her own patient experience of doctors to really think about what she felt made a ‘good’ doctor from the patient perspective and then went to look at how doctors and healthcare work in a situation completely different and removed from her own to look at the differences and similarities.

She sees it as tackling the difficulties she faced in getting a formal placement in a more creative way than her friends who just got their mums to ask around at work. She worked bloody hard to pay for it, and came back with some very changed perspectives.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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...

[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.

[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..

[Pumpkintopf]

Interesting points re pt work and w/exp.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Pumpkintopf]

Interesting and valuable perspectives, thank you all.