Medicine 2021 - part 2

[Millylovespuddles]

Following on from the first thread:
DD now has UKAT booked for mid-August. She couldn’t get a driving theory test booked until after the UKAT date, but will keep an eye out for cancellations.
Now, her big dilemma is Oxbridge it not....

@mumsneedwine thank you! I actually knew they could apply to the same uni twice.

What were the grades like for the two? Significantly different? Sheffield is a great university so I imagine the biomedicine still wants very high grades?

@GreyBow They were both AAA. But she wanted to get an one early offer so put a 5th one. Don't think she'd have taken it though. Sheffield ended up as her insurance but she did love it.

Ds has started some ucat reading, he seems really demotivated but wants to sit the test at home because he thinks it will be less stressful. I'm trying to convince him to he a test centre as I'm worried about our WiFi. We're going to run the suitability tests at home today to see if our home setup is ok for a home test. He asked for 2 months worth of medify subscription but had now decided he wants to sit the test in a week and doesn't want to spoil his summer with ucat revision!

@Powergower has he taken a mock test?

Powergower, others will have told you, but a strong UKCAT score is invaluable. It means more choices for med schools and stronger chances of getting an interview. More stress over this summer, but repaid in spades next year.

Practice does help. We knew one boy who did some (half an hour?) each day from Christmas and got in the 98%. I have no reason to believe that he was any brighter than DD who vaguely hoped she could wing it with just a minimum of practice. She did not, and though she got a place in the end, we had a long wait until March the following year - whilst the sub-set of places she was interested in and places that might be interested in her, despite strong A level predictions, a strong PS etc, was tiny. (Three to be precise.)

Powergower - If you could persuade him to spend a bit more time and practice it will definitely be useful. I can understand the pressure he is under and feel sorry for all of them under such pressure. The desire for a break is understable but a decent UCAT score will give him so many more options

Thanks everyone, I've had a word with him and he's decidedto start doing at least an hour a day and to try the medify mini mocks. I think if he does the mocks he can see which sections he needs to work on more. He has one friend from school fling the ucat but he's doing it mid September and wants to take his time whereas my ds just wants it over with. Might not be a bad thing if he can build up his revision.

No apologies in saying this, Powergower, it seems to me your DS has other more important things in his mind and is quite "allergic" to medical schools and everything that entail. And this is even before he's come anywhere near a medical school. My advice is to forget it and look at something else.

And this is precisely what I told my DD many moons back when she declared she wanted to do Medicine. I talked her out of it - Medicine wasn't for her and it still isn't.

I wasn't going to come out and say it quite like @peteneras, but DD has been studying for the UCAT for a while already and her whole summer holiday is based around working really hard for that and the BMAT (and Maths A Level) and trying to get the very best result she can.

While I KNOW that some students, especially perhaps confident boys, will be able to get a good mark without as much hard work, this is still a really, really, really stupidly difficult exam. Most students do not finish it. It's tougher than anything they will have taken before.

And if they don't want to work for that, maybe medicine isn't for them as medical school requires a lot of summer work every year.

But perhaps sitting a few of the practise questions will drive that home a bit?

@powergower , my ds just wants to get it over with too - also sitting it next week.. he's got so much work to do for his A levels plus BMAT and work experience that's he's not really got any break so wants one thing off his plate. He's doing about an hour a day practice with a month's medify sub. He's doing it at a centre as our
internet can be patchy sometimes.

Good luck to everyone taking their UCAT this summer. It is an exam designed by the devil. But a good score opens so many doors so it is worth a month of hard graft. Practice does help so so much and I have no clue how you'd have a hope at the abstract section without seeing loads of examples. Speed is key - don't know, guess, flag it and move on. Get all the marks you can on the ones you know then of time look at the flags.

Good advice @mumsneedwine - and yes, good luck to everyone's DC taking it over the next few months 🤞!

I will take (polite) issue with peteneras.

UKCAT is one of several hurdles that prospective medical students are expected to jump. Different medical schools have different requirements. Medicine offers a variety of careers involving different skills.

For my bright dyslexic daughter, UKCAT was by far the highest hurdle. Even if she had practiced from Christmas on, she would have struggled with the speed requirements. And extra time does not help when everyone expects to be brain dead at the end of normal time.

Oddly her dyslexia comes with complementary skills. She learns by listening, has an extraordinary memory and picks up concepts quickly. She is also very practical. She will be far more suited to a busy A&E than a branch of research medicine. Whilst the boy we knew was putting in hours upon hours in his bedroom practising for the test, DD was on the sports field, or volunteering with a local disabled group. (Or watching US medical dramas, which had an unplanned advantage of contributing to her wide medical general knowledge.)

She got the A level grades with a good margin, she is fine with the academic and non academic aspects of her course. She just happens to be useless at timed aptitude tests like UKCAT, CAT and 11+.

The advice still stands. Practice helps, and you want as good a score as possible. For example if DD had not, effectively, given up, her strong GCSEs and a slightly better UKCAT would have put her in the running for Nottingham or Cardiff. She was lucky because at the time Bristol did not use UKCAT. There is no way she would get a place there now.

Can anyone share a link to part one of this thread please, I can't find it on the search! And hello! My daughter is taking UCAT next week 😁

Djchickpea - I am not very good at this sort of thing but will try to share the link. Can I ask how long did your DC study for to prepare for the UCAT? Thanks
Medicine 2021 - www.mumsnet.com/talk/higher_education/3755607-Medicine-2021

Part 1: Link is here.

Hi thanks for the link, I couldn't get it to work but found it using the website (rather than app). My DD has spent about 2 months really seriously studying for it. She had a medic portal day course giving an overview (about £170) and a 2 hour Kaplan on verbal reasoning (about £30 - this was really good value for money, great instructor and really beneficial to mix with other aspiring medics during lockdown). It's really hard to say if any of this has been of benefit her mock paper results are really variable (quite common apparently) so I'm just keeping everything crossed for the day!

UCAT have confirmed via twitter that masks will be required in test centres. DS wears glasses so will have to get used to it and find ways to stop it misting up.

@altmum demister spray (opticians sell it - or Amazon). Or wipe glasses with shaving foam and then polish off. This was a tip from medical professionals and it works !
Good luck.

Thanks for the tips.

Hi all - DD is sitting her UCAT next week at a test centre and has seen a post on the student room from someone who called to book their test and was told that white boards are not being used in test centres, only at home.

I don't think this can be right, as the website says white boards are used at the test centres - this changed a while back from being scratch pads.

DD is freaking out though - has anyone else heard anything about this? I can't see them letting candidates at home use something that test centre candidates can't?

@GANFYD any thoughts? Would really appreciate it!

@LaLaFlottes , we've just seen that too - seems very unfair if that was true doesn't it? I can't see anything on any other social media about it though? My ds had his on Wed - he'll be unhappy if he can't use a whiteboard!

@LaLaFlottes Everything on the UCAT website still says people will get noteboards and pens at centres and can use a whiteboard at home. I think it highly unlikely they would not publicise such a significant change as to remove them in centres, especially after the fuss kicked up when they were not going to have them anywhere! I even more strongly doubt they would let people use them at home and not in centres, as this would create an unequal testing environment.
www.ucat.ac.uk/media/1420/ucat-test-centre-candidate-guide-2020.pdf
www.ucat.ac.uk/news/ucat-2020-update-22-june/
www.ucat.ac.uk/faqs/

@Lega yes DD will be really upset too. I did notice that the post on TSR says that candidates sitting at home would be able to use a whiteboard, which makes me think this can't be correct, as I'm sure it would be made the same for everyone, so whiteboards wouldn't be able to be used at home either?

Obviously they will be cross if they can't use them but the main thing I suppose is that it's the same for everyone.

I do think this update would be on their website though if it was true don't you?

@GANFYD thank you - that's what my sensible head is saying but it's just really thrown DD. Thanks for replying.

We'll call on Monday to check but surely UCAT would have updated the website. Not what we needed this weekend!!