Medicine 2021

[Millylovespuddles]

Hi all
It looks like there’s no medicine 2021 entry thread yet, so it might be an idea to get the ball rolling.
My DD is getting stuck into her A level course, doing well so far, but I’m guessing we parents could do with some mutual support and advice from parents who’ve been here before.

Or for a job they have developed resilience dealing with angry customers

Sorry, @mumsneedwine, I should have added this is a really good point. Prospective students who have part-time jobs in public-facing roles are likely to have had to deal with aggressive, abusive, drunk and psychiatrically ill people (just the same as the patients they will have to deal with). They won't just have demonstrated resilience: they are likely also to have demonstrated patience, tact and effective communication.

The best place for all advice is the websites of the individual unis. Easily accessible by the young people themselves who are probably going to give a better account of themselves if they don't have parents adding pressure by quoting med school statistics or passing on reams of untested advice from anonymous internet sources.

@alreadytaken you are simply wrong. Please don't listen to her!

For medicine, the university websites are a useful resource and a good starting point, but if you are a normal applicant from a normal school they can be misleading as they want lots of applicants. Leeds and Cardiff will not tell you there is no point in applying unless your GCSEs are all 8/9, with the possible exception of Welsh and WA applicants. You need to listen to people who have been through it recently or people who have become experts on current requirements (GANFYD) to make sure you don't waste one of your precious 4 choices.

As for the point about listing achievements in PS - EVERY open day we went to (and we went to a lot in the last 2 years) said they want you to reflect not list.

Please go back to the Oxbridge thread and don't mis-inform this one.

EVERY open day said.... - should have said except the ones which do not use PS, which is a growing list.

Also, in defence of GANFYD (not that she needs it for most of us), I have observed that she is extremely frustrated by people spending misinformation, it brings out her crusader spirit!

Toby yes. I've made the point about the value of a part time job multiple times on these threads over the years, including this one a few pages back where mumsneedwine had to agree with me. And especially where medical work experience is in short supply or physically difficult to access, as in rural areas, part time work comes into its own. It's highly relevant, even for the more competitive (or 'academic') unis. Medical students need to like science as well as people and be good at dealing with both, but they don't need to have ticked what seem to be the standard work experience boxes usually recommended in these threads. A part time job will fill the gap perfectly.

Monkey I know very well what I'm talking about . I'm also completely current as a matter of fact. Well, up to the last admissions round for the moment, but presumably that's current enough.

This mis-representation is a silly part of the hysteria. I said don't state the bleeding obvious. That's somewhat different. Some things can certainly be listed, especially if you're short of space in a personal statement - better than simply omitting. On your point about our school well, in fact people can apply from an address on the moon so in fact yes, all kids can indeed go to superselectives. That's exactly their point.

I find misinformation annoying too Monkey, but am able to keep my cool as well as a sense of perspective and humour. But then I'm not a very important internet sensation, and can only imagine that may cloud perspective.

Not all advice given on these threads is good. Plenty is, some isn't and a lot is all about making applications morph into a sea of grey.

@Monkey2001 Not sure why you've tagged me in this thread as I'm not sure I've actually made any comment on it, certainly not recently. I also agree that university websites are not sufficient sources of information

For what it is worth I'd recommend TSR as a more up to date and reliable source of information than mumsnet. There are normally supportive people sharing information there and frankly it's less childish than mumsnet.

There have been a couple of posters on medicine threads who simply want to use them to boast. Best to just ignore them as far as possible. To quote Mark Twain “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

Thank you SirToby for the useful advice, much appreciated.

Information on here will be skewed according to experiences.
The importance of the PS diminishes with other test / public exam / interview criteria. When it does matter for some medical schools, repetitive formulaic style of reflective writing that makes the same obvious points as everybody else (as encouraged by some posters here) will not separate out candidates if they are borderline for other criteria. Personal insights are of course important as they are for PS of other degrees.
Worth bearing in mind that it is easier to gain admission now and to encourage individuality at this stage will benefit your DCs in the long term in how they approach reflective learning and progress in their careers. Don’t box them, they are teenagers and more likely to be anxious with a formulaic approach.

Is it an excuse to be discourteous and immature because somebody questions your view and gives another equally accurate (or inaccurate one)? Even if limited to an internet forum it shows a lack of perspective on self limitations. IRL it is not an effective professional stance, particularly in collaborative careers like medicine.

Up to anyone on here whether you want to disregard this post. I am not a parent of applicants.

@mumsneedwine

It does not bother me in the slightest. I genuinely assumed it was a parody account when I was first reading the posts (still not any too sure....)!

I've got nothing to add to what the others have said about "reflecting".I think you will find that there is plenty to say and that the difficult part is deciding what to keep in and what to cut out. Also DD's school weren't convinced about the "reflecting" and thought the PS should be more "academic". But after 8 medicine open days DD was not swayed by school! I would say that the medicine specific open days are useful. Go armed with a list of questions to ask students, or if you can't think of any initially listen in to others as there is often a group of people asking around a student! (Not so with the maths open days I did with DS this year, where very few prospective maths students seemed to want to talk - including DS!)

Thanks pepermintea !

@Pepermintea medical students love to talk 😂. And agree that open days are vital to get the up to date specific info for each Uni.

The students can tell you all about the courses, although be aware lots have changed so talking to a 3rd year might be out of date info.

@GANFYD I feel for the people who would actually like to know how to help their kids with good advice. I found the 2018 thread so lovely and everyone was so supportive. Be nice if this could be the same for the 2020 mums. Let's hope so.

@sendsummer
Is it an excuse to be discourteous and immature because somebody questions your view and gives another equally accurate (or inaccurate one)?

It is actually the hypocrisy of your posts that is most amusing.

As you state, I first posted on here to challenge an opinion given by goodbyestranger and since then have had the following aimed at me, and others (in no particular order):

-GANFYD that is absolute bollocks

-GANFYD you're a bit uncool yourself

-gross immaturity and incontinence

-that's incredibly prejudiced on your part, to assume all schools do it as your own DCs' does!
-GANFYD ironically, I was a little surprised that you assumed everything was done in the way it's done at your own DCs' school
-I do slightly worry about the attributes of someone who holds themselves out as directly involved in med school admissions and yet who holds such spiteful views about a particular group (senior prefects). It doesn't send out a good vibe.
--a whole lot of very long very rude posts including quite bizarre ones about dull, nerdy, unpopular senior prefects (all senior prefects everywhere apparently) and justified those by saying how very knowledgeable you are and how lauded on a student website you are
-Can I just say that your latest posts display quite extraordinary immaturity, along with that same level of unpleasantness displayed early on in the post about a particular section of young people being dull, nerdy and unpopular.

(I would be grateful if anybody can point to where I am supposed to have said the things being perseverated on in this section?)

-GANFYD it's a somewhat rookie error to define competition by numbers alone! (although possibly changes her mind then as later posts "GANFYD seemed to imply that Imperial was the least competitive uni to get into for Medicine", so clearly was happy with my explanations when used to put down the achievements of another poster's child)

-GANFYD you do seem to have marched on here simply to announce your credentials as self-styled expert from another site supposed to be for students
-According to your own version, you post feverishly on a student website.
-You mentioned that you have a following on TSR
-then there's this very odd phenomenon of self appointed internet superstardom

(Again, would be grateful for the posts where I said any of this)

-I'm well able to sound like a teacher too mumsneedwine and recall posters on another thread suggesting that you yourself were being rather a playground bully

-mumsneedwine if you trog back to the other thread where other posters asked you to reign it in..... It wasn't me. I simply failed to roll over. You were a little more polite for a while.

I took from the tone and content of these posts that goodbyestranger would not have an issue with posts being replied to in a similar, robust nature.
Being unfamiliar with MN, I initially assumed her posts were trolling or a parody account, but I am assured by several people she posts in this manner on other threads, too.

So by all means suggest ceasing what had become frankly rather tedious exchange, which was also was not going to achieve anything as the self-awareness fairy was clearly on holiday with quite a few of her friends when some people's gifts were handed out!
But do not mistake my robust response to the type of comments made above with a lack of professionalism at work. Doctors are allowed to comment (indeed, would be expected to, professionally) when they see people behaving inappropriately or misleading others.

Having realised that some people actually DO believe that everything they say is correct and that fact plays no role in this, I had decided I would cease posting. I had already said to some of the people messaging me that I had no wish to derail the thread, nor to discourage other people from posting.

So if you have appointed yourself judge here, judge both people participating. Otherwise it seems to be you are merely demonstrating hypocrisy and cronyism. Or maybe you have knowledge that goodbyestranger lacks any form of professionalism and hence feel my behaviour should be held to a different standard to hers? If so, you would look less sanctimonious if you declared this information.

I think how ’competitive’ it is to get into a uni is far from as simple as comparing the ratio of applications to offers/places. To take Imperial as an example, some prospective applicants will be put off by the fact that their standard offer is AAA with the proviso that the A must be Chem or bio - this narrows the field before the ucas forms even go in, against say a uni like Sheffield whose standard offer is AAA and who are very open about their policies on contextual applicants, which would make them a realistic option for a wider range of applicants.

And I’m not comparing those two unis for any particular reason other than that I know a bit about them because they were my daughter’s firm and insurance last year. She would have been really happy at either of them.

I think all this ‘race to the middle’ stuff is downright insulting. A place to study medicine is a high aim and a great achievement and to belittle those who don’t aim for one or two universities says more about the poster than the reader. People use these threads for advice and support while they help their kids through the quite arduous process of applying to study medicine, and will weigh the advice given and previous experiences of others here alongside the knowledge, skills and qualities of their own kids and the advice they’re getting from school and other sites. It would be sad if people felt that they couldn’t ask questions because of concern about being insulted or made to feel stupid x

👍

I think how ’competitive’ it is to get into a uni is far from as simple as comparing the ratio of applications to offers/places

I quite agree, but this is what they use as the "competition ratio" and is the only figure readily available (generally published by the MSC) and comparable.
It can be useful, as if I were predicted A*AA, I might be more inclined to apply to Imperial, with a 3:1 ratio and 70% of those interviewed getting offers, than I would to UCL, with a 10:1 ratio and 60% of those interviewed getting offers. Depending on all my other feelings about the med schools being equal, of course! But you are right, you cannot directly compare Imperial's 3:1 to Oxford's 10:1 as Oxford has a much lower application to offer ratio (about 10% who apply to Oxford get offers versus 25% of those applying to Imperial - obviously there are multiple confounding variables along the way, as no 2 applicants are entirely "equal").
Applicant to offer ratios are far more useful, but really difficult to get hold of (would suggest an FOI if people trying to narrow it down) and then use interview to offer ratios, as some med schools make offers to over 80% of those interviewed and some to less than half.

So I would still say look at where your stats mean you are likely to get an interview, narrow it down to those you would actually like to go to, then start fiddling with the fine detail of competition ratios if you need something to help short-list, as stats like this can only be applied to a population, not to an individual

Please can I ask where you’d find interview to offer ratios? Would this also be a FOI request?
Thank you

HostessTrolley by race to the middle I mean far too much of the information given by mumsneedwine (who has an issue with the more academic medical programmes) and new posters such as GANFYD is tailored to the middle ranking unis. No more no less. The rankings aren't mine. Advice here should be far more differentiated. GANFYD told me off roundly above for saying that competition was simply a numbers game, when it manifestly isn't, as you say. The latest Oxford Admissions report has just been posted by the uni: www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/study/medicine/pre-clinical/statistics.
It shows again that the majority of med school applicants in any given year will have whistled themselves out of the game simply by virtue of their tally of A equivalent at GCSE (10 A is pretty much what you need and what you've needed for ages). Competition goes way beyond numbers. And presumably there's a spectrum of applicants on MN, not just all UCAT applicants looking at Nottingham, Sheffield etc.

GANFYD what a daft waste of time to copy all those extracts! All I said was don't state the bleeding obvious in personal statements, no crime has been committed. I obviously wounded your [insert appropriate French phrase - I could easily get this one wrong. Self-love, that sort of thing]. But honestly! Please for everyone's sake, calm the fuck down!

I think know your enemy is useful counsel here as sendsummer, being an Oxford don, could most likely eat you for breakfast.

All medical degrees are academic. All lead to the same qualification and the same opportunities for a fantastic career. The GMC ensures this so that's obvious to most people. The new SJT seems to be carrying more weight for F1 and the new National exam might be used more too. So much changes so quickly and by the time the new medics qualify I'm sure it will have changed again.
Choose where you have best chance of interview and think you'll be happy for 5 years. A good work life balance is emphasised by medical tutors so looking at what a Uni can offer outside the course is important.
I shall now sit back and wait for the abuse.

HostessTrolley yes apart from middle ranking in the uni rankings for Medicine an equally good and related measure is middling entrance requirements., as you say.

Well I sincerely hope no one has just found this thread looking for general support and advice through this stressful process
I'm off for a while

mumsneedwine (as the doctor said to you on the other thread about part time working) give over. Honestly it's boring.

Medic mums, I'd start a new thread to get the help and support you need as I don't think this is going to stop. I am reporting to Mumsnet as giving misinformation is not fair. Good luck to you all - whenever your kids go I'm sure they will make great doctors. And they will understand empathy and have the ability to listen to others better than some adults.

Different kids with different bents and different abilities look for different things. And they don't all emerge into the daylight after five to six years of med school as uniform beings. That would be a complete nonsense. Hence me banging the drum for a less dull approach at the outset.