3 A Levels for medicine when everyone else is doing 4

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DS is at a well-known grammar where 4 A levels is the norm for medicine applicants. He’s done his EPQ and is doing 3 sciences & maths A level. He wants to drop physics. School (strong on Oxbridge) say “because his peers are doing 4, his doing 3 will be seen as a less competitive application”. He’s getting good BMAT scores in practise but who knows on the day? He isn’t applying to Cambridge where l know many have taken 4 A levels. More interested in the London med schools. He’s emailed and asked and they just quote the standard “3 A levels required”. He doesn’t know his predicted grades yet but it’s more the risk of missing an offer together with the extra work load of the 4th A level that is bothering him. If many of his peers at school are doing 4 and he does 3 will admission a Tutor think “hmm despite going to X School he’s only take 3 A levels..”. His school have a huge cohort of medicine applicants every year.

Hugo offers being based on three is slightly beside the point - the Ho6 is referring to the obtaining of an offer, not what the offer will be. DS's was the standard offer for Oxford Medicine, as was his Imperial offer, despite him taking a large number of A levels all predicted A*.

I agree that other subjects are different. My other DC all took three A levels only from the same school and those were completely sufficient.

mumsneedwine our GP surgery puts the doctors' medical school on their website although I knew exactly where each was trained before the advent of the website since I've been at the surgery for years and three of the GP's were Oxbridge educated and since they were my sort of age with children who knew each other we tended to do something called talk).

I would certainly decline to be treated by a less than competent doctor. If all doctors were equally competent there would be no legal claims against them ever and no disciplinary action.

mumsneedwine I keep saying - very boring - that the rankings are done by other people who presumably know about these things. Save your ire for them.

And yes I know about empathy but it only goes so far. Fortunately DS is not only bright but also seems to have sufficient of that sort of stuff since he got his first choice of deanery in London and his first choice of job. I'm a little further ahead in this process - as a parent - even than you!

IME 3 A levels can be enough.

DNeice1 got her 1st choice F1 back in 2016, DNeice2 got hers in 2018. (Not called F1 anymore)

Both took 3 A levels; neither got all A*; both went to a high achieving selective independent school.
Their parents are GPs; every near paternal relative of theirs is a medic of some sort.

The parents were Oxford medics; nieces are Cambridge medics. Their parents and they are all supernaturally bright; objective, & medically speaking very high achievers. None have any great sense of empathy.

In my lifetime - currently I manage gp appts & hospital appointments for 12 different hospitals/departments for my immediate family - the empathetic doctors who look at you as a whole and not a series of challenges for different disciplines, 90% not theirs!, win hands down.

Academic medics are amazing for research & analysis & teaching.

In short, ask your dc what sort of medic they imagine they would like to be & ask them to base decisions around that; ask them to speak to admissions tutors & recently qualified medics.

Dont take any anecdotal information from MN as the gospel truth, including mine!

But then I've ha encountered serious clinical negligence on several occasions (in very, very serious situations), and so that may well have skewed my views/ wised me up.

If a doctor displays clinical negligence, that’s a lack of clinical skills not a lack of “scientific competence”. You yourself have just supported my point.

The idea that all medical schools are equal is slightly fatuous since even if the teaching is all at the same level (which it won't be, in the nature of things), the ability of the intakes differ

How do you even know? Have you read research supporting your claims, are you currently conducting such research. All medical schools accept AAA and above. I’ll keep saying this but scientific competence is not what makes a doctor.

Anyhow, there's some outrage about the very notion of top medical schools going on here for whatever reason and it's wholly irrelevant to the OP.

There’s absolutely no “outrage”. There are top medical schools ranked based on research etc. Not on who will make a better doctor.

I’m not going to be replying anymore but I’ve noticed repeatedly in threads you need to come across as the beacon of advice for anything to do with university/careers. Your advice when knowledgable is of great help to so many DCs. But often you state your opinions as facts. In a “Because I think it, it must fact”. Take the discussion on grammar schools for example.

The ridiculous things you’ve typed on this thread tell me you have absolutely no experience as a clinician in any hospital and probably not experience with a long term condition that requires frequent appointments to a doctor.

I’d advice you stop giving advice that is simply wrong.

I’ve rambled and rambled but I just don’t get it: why give our advice on something you clearly know knowing about ?

@goodbyestranger

So yes I do now absolutely look for an intelligent doctor who knows his or her stuff. That doesn't mean I ask specifically whether they're Oxbridge graduates or not (although as it happens my own GP is, and is excellent), but it's usually pretty clear whether they're seriously competent or not and for minor things it's not relevant

But of course there is NO correlation between the university a doctor went to and their clinical performance, so asking where a doctor was educated is irrelevant...

Then they get cross because a Ho6 says that his experience at a high performing school is that you won't have a competitive application to a top medical school without showing a bit more than an applicant from a school with slower paced teaching, simply because they think their experience fits all situations for all time, which it doesn't

In that situation it's the Ho6 thinking their experience, of their school, fits all situations! The experience of the admissions tutor, who has assessed applicants from all sorts of schools, is FAR more accurate.

Love the idea of slower paced teaching. Head sounds like a right loon if he thinks comps have time to go slowly !! They all sit the same exams at the same time, and no time for slow teaching. In fact has to be faster paced as most normal schools offer less teaching hours due to budgets so we have to cram everything in to less teaching time. Amazingly our students still get into 'top' Universities and onto competitive courses. This year one is off to Imperial for medicine and others to BSMS, Notts, Bristol and UCLAN. None looked at Oxbridge (for medicine - we have several going for other things) as didn't like the style of course. Most didn't look at London because it's too darn pricey. All will be great Drs one day.
My own DD has read this thread and had a good laugh. She didn't even look at a league table when choosing, she looked at style of teaching etc. She's working as a HCA for the summer and says it will make her a better Dr, knowing what tasks she's asking someone else to do and learning lots from the nurses. She said no one she knows would look down on another medic because of what Uni they went to. At the varsity medic sports things no one has a superiority complex so thankfully seems to just be parents who do. Her tutor this year is the most eminent Dr in his field and he went to Liverpool.

titchy did you read the bit where I said I don't actually ask. I might happen to know (as with the local GPs), I might find out once a mistake has been made, or I might look at the profiles of the consultants locally when allocated one (I did this very recently). My current consultant seems a decent bloke (although he has a very worried face, as I told him). Perhaps if you'd very nearly died or someone close to you had, because of clinical error, you'd be a bit more selective rather than assuming all doctors are competent. I think it's pretty easy for a reasonably intelligent person to work out if a doctor knows their stuff. I'm also not clear how you can say in big bold letters that there's NO correlation. Why would there be NO correlation? It won't be an exact correlation because students go to medical school at a young age and develop, but for there to be NO correlation would strike any normally logical person as odd.

As for your second point I think that's wrong too. MN has many examples of tutors in one discipline advising applicants for quite another discipline wrongly about certain requirements or processes and my goodness some people posting can take pomposity to a whole new level. The best advice seems to come from those who've perhaps mentioned briefly that they're an admissions tutor at Oxford say, then never mention it again. Just as with doctors, one can pretty easily get a feel for those whose advice is sound and those who are just frightfully full of themselves. If you take a seasoned Ho6 at a top performing grammar then he of course he won't base his advice purely on historic data from his own school. He'll be working with others right across the sector, will be steeped in information coming direct to him from the whole range of unis (which will tend to be the more competitive ones) and will have to know the specifics for the full spectrum of subjects which his pupils tend to do. It really is extraordinary how little people rate other people's professional expertise!

mumsneedwine grammars teach at a faster pace - fact. As a teacher yourself you'll know about differentiation and teaching pace and I would very much hope that you don't teach your top sets in the same way as your bottom sets or the very bright pupils in the same way as those who struggle. That's one of the major things a grammar is freed up to do. Hardly rocket science.

My own DC never look at league tables either mumsneedwine, but surely everyone is aware of their existence? If only when headlines hit the educational news as they tend to annually. I've no idea why the concept is so alien. Not all those who go to unis at the top of the league tables do so because of the tables. You do draw a lot of very interesting conclusions from some very dodgy premises!

Also, I'm not a medic looking down at other medics. I'm a consumer, with reason not to think all doctors are at the same level of competence. it would be astonishing if they were. Your DD is very young - she'll come across a range of competence as she goes through her training and then beyond but to date she's done one year, I think thta's correct. Probably not enough to make her an expert quite yet.

I forgot that what initially made me bother to comment here was the suggestion that some medical school graduates may not have jobs. After the first application 3% of home students were placed on the reserve list. Experience in previous years suggests that those on the reserve list who want jobs soon have one, although the list is longer than usual this year. www.foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/2018-12/UKFP%202019%20Application%20Status%20Report.pdf

However I also need to point out that Cambridge Medicine dont (except for Christ's) actually require 3 sciences www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/files/publications/medicine_subject_requirements.pdf

I was pretty sure I'd read of people with 2 science A levels and a 3rd subject but anyone who wants to know more can study the Freedom of Information requests. Most applicants will have taken 3 sciences, that doesnt mean it is required.

Cambridge bases its offers on research into who does well on their course. They havent found applicants with 4 A levels do better on their course so they dont require 4 A levels. Strictly speaking I dont know that applies to all colleges but they do aim for consistency across colleges.

I guess whether interviewers think maths is more important than physics depends on what they studied. You certainly need to do quite a few calculations and to be capable of understanding statistics - having A level Maths probably indicates you'll handle that part of the course. But A level Physics has its benefits and is pretty mathemaical anyway isn't it (it's a while since I knew about A levels)?

All medical schools have some applicants who achieve great grades. If I wanted to be sure of having a competent doctor I might have a slight preference for one who did their junior doctor training in London (because its competitive to get a job there so has more of the ones who did well at medical school and on the SJT) but other parts of the country have doctors who did well enough to work in London and chose not to do so. I wouldnt care what medical school a doctor went to. Blindly choosing an Oxford trained doctor might just have got me this one www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-44547471

Cleopatrai I have experience of both things the OP was talking about - high performing grammars and the more competitive medical schools -hence my response. Other advice has been far too general and the bottom line of my advice is to go back to the Ho6 and quiz him. Sensible advice, with no feathers flying and defence of all doctors everywhere.

It's probably unwise to press the point about someone's medical history. I happen to currently be undergoing treatment for a blood condition requiring bone marrow biopsies etc. My first child nearly died at birth and was in a neo natal intensive care unit in the US and I nearly died with a delayed post partum haemorrage ten days after my second delivery, requiring more blood than the hospital had in stock. Both my parents died of cancer after long periods of treatment. Goodness me.

And those things are the tip of the iceberg, just the first things which spring to mind.

My own DC never look at league tables either - no they all just apply to Oxford

alreadytaken the very silly thing is that people keep saying I look for Oxford trained doctors when the discussion hasn't been about Oxford/ Cambridge at all. It helps to read what's written rather than for people to insert what they'd like to see written. I want doctors to be competent and I don't believe all doctors are equally competent, not by a long stretch.

Indicative and so because the eldest applies, the next one shouldn't? I take it you're the eldest child?! But no, they don't ever look at league tables as far as I know, nor TSR, nor all the various things which lots of MN posters seem to pore over. They're very relaxed.

I think we should leave them out of a totally non related thread however.

And I assume they therefore know that Oxford is in the top 3 for all their various courses without even having to look at the league tables.

You must be far more hands on than you admit to being if you know for a fact that they have never looked at any of those things that all normal students do have a look at. Or are they all so confident or getting an Oxford offer they don't bother with normal? I am really not saying that to be facetious but am genuinely interested as to why a teenager would not be researching their courses, potential university choices using the tables and sites their peers would use or be so assured of achieving an Oxford offer as to not look at alternatives even as insurance places.

You brought them into the unrelated thread by mentioning they don't look at league tables. My answer was in response to that. If you meant to say your child who studied medicine didn't look at the medical schools league table perhaps you should have indicated that.

Just skimmed through this.
My general view for what it is worth about Medical competence.
There is competence from intensive training, helped by academic skills, common sense and an open mind. The latter two can outweigh the former.
There is competence from keeping up to date long after the training information is no longer applicable. The extent of which this is done may be sufficient but some will be more assiduous than others.

There is competence from not having a closed mind and having a self awareness of fallibility and limitations in knowledge however senior and expert.
And finally there is competence from intuition and of course listening properly.

Perhaps if you'd very nearly died or someone close to you had, because of clinical error, you'd be a bit more selective rather than assuming all doctors are competent

Of course I wouldn't assume all are competent (I'd assume most were though) - but I wouldn't assume that because one went to Oxford they were far more likely to be competent than the one who went to Anglia Ruskin.

Adn I find it extraordinary you think there should be some correlation between UG institution and competence! Competence is far more likely to be correlated to working conditions, which would largely be a result of the hospital/trust, or domestic circumstances. Now find me a correlation between university attended and MH issue - then I'll agree there may be a correlation between university and competence, but it won't point to causation.

It really is extraordinary how little people rate other people's professional expertise!

See my comment about Admission's tutors - all of whom have said here and on other threads that regardless of school, 3 is fine. Eton, St Waynes Grammar, Bogtown comp. 3 a levels gets offers. Heads who say you need to do four if you're at this school are talking out of their arse.

Sorry about your health issues though - sounds shitty.

I think I will just acknowledge that goodbye knows more than me about teaching and current entry to medical school. Maybe you could help local students gain admission as you know so much.

I have just had a v lovely bottle of wine delivered from one of my medics this year, which is very kind. She got her A* star in chemistry even with my slow teaching, although she's not going to a 'top level' medical school, despite her 3 A* stars. But she's very happy.
Off to pub with fellow science staff to celebrate results. My classes of 26 and 24 A level students got 14 A stars, 26 As, 8 Bs and 2 Cs. Proud of all of them as they worked so hard. Bye all.

Pride & Prejudice. Controversial at the time.

I think the pettiness of certain posts speaks volumes.