Medicine 2021 - Part 3

[SATSmadness]

Hoping for interviews and offers all round, now and well into next year !

Thank you everyone! I was posting at 5am this morning because I just couldn't sleep with worry. I also have year 11 so it's been a stressful. But today we've had a lovely day, a nice walk, takeaway and I gave ds a haircut to try and tame his mop.

I'm just so so proud of the strength, adaptability and resilience of these young people.

Good luck to all those waiting on Cambridge. And to everyone else, fingers crossed for good outcomes. I have to say the teachers at ds school have been amazing, they've offered moral and emotional support alongside heavy online live teaching. Positive pants on for the last week of Jan!

Glad you are feeling a bit better and that you have had a good day @powergower. It is really tough this year. I have a year 11 too. Fingers crossed your DS hears something this week.

Hope there is some good news this week. You are all doing so well supporting your dcs through all this uncertainty and hard work. Pat on the back for everyone!

DD did not get an offer from Cambridge so is now pinning her hopes on her next favourite choice of Uni which is in Scotland.
I am a little concerned that we read that Scottish Unis only take an average of about 12% of students from elsewhere in the UK so this too was a risky choice and surprisingly not flagged as such by school when she was ready to submit her UCAS application although time will tell whether the odds are as long as they turned out to be for Oxbridge this year.

The way things are going this year, I'm just hoping she can keep her spirits up during the long wait to hear the outcome of her 3 non Oxbridge interviews. Pre-Covid she would have been able to get together with her friends and talk through things face to face about the highs and lows of the whole process, giving/getting actual physical hugs etc and a lockdown 18th is looming too.

I hope she's not just putting on a brave face for me. It should all be good resilience training for the rigours of medical training/career anyway !

Good luck to anyone's dc doing interviews soon.

SATSMADNESS my daughter put a Scottish university and it was not flagged either and in all her reading she only came across this fact after applying. Seems like a waste of a place now.

@Iamsodonewith2020 DD was seen as a very strong candidate as far as this year's Y13 cohort are concerned so school UCAS adviser saw no reason for her not to aim high with her applications.

I think what may be becoming apparent in the field of early entry applications which require excellent predicted grades, be that Oxbridge, Med, Dent or Vet, is that the 2020 grades debacle solution resulting in serious grade inflation for last year's Y13s together with deferral at the Uni's request or the successful candidates choice and candidates having a second go but now with grades in hand being considered as ranking higher than those with equivalent predicted results, is reducing the places available for such Unis/courses to this year's cohort by more than is being admitted by the relevant Universities. Had this been out in the open, DD, along with others in her situation, might well have aimed slightly lower in the hope of standing out more compared with that pool of candidate applications so perhaps upping her odds of securing an offer.

The anecdotal data when joined up do seem to show a worse picture of reduced numbers of places available and hence reduction in number of offers being made to this year's cohort, than is being quoted in published statistics to date. As the saying goes, "There's 3 kinds of lies... Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics".

Our dc couldn't play the game to their best ability when the goalposts weren't clearly visible, or in some cases moved after the submission deadline date.

I'm probably sounding bitter but it's the plain unfairness of solving the plight of one cohort, in a bid get past all the negative headlines last year, by over compensating to the detriment of the following year's cohort that leaves me feeling worried and possibly ultimately resentful on DD's behalf. I'm not mentioning my thoughts to her but I guess once the dust has settled she may or may not actually care depending on what options she ends up with on results day. Medicine is a huge commitment so it has to be her decision whatever happens.

@SATS I'm totally with you on this. That's exactly how I feel and at this point, instead of foolishly thinking 'which offer will DD chose', all we want is one, and I don't care where!

Yup, I am with you @Millylovespuddles

Just ONE medical offer from anywhere, and then the grades she needs to accept it 🤞🏻

I feel for you @mumsneedwine Teachers are not having an easy year of it 🙈

I am just frustrated that a 10 minute online teams talk with all of DD's teachers in February that doesn't mention grades at all is going to be a little redundant at this stage where there is little else to talk about 😁

@GreyBow as a teacher, I agree with you !!! I'm going to discuss the weather a lot 🤪

@mumsneedwine I think our dog will be sitting on our knee 😆 If all else fails, we can talk about pets.

I know we’re not good humans if we say we’re bitter, or resentful, or even just sad that the one year it really matters for our kids, the world goes to shit. I can admit that I am upbeat with DD, and I say that her worst case scenario is fine. It’ll all work out. But I don’t feel like that really. I want her to gain a place DESPITE what’s happened. I also know it’s not right to moan about how unfair it is, all other year 13s are in the same boat. But no one can say these kids aren’t being put through the mill. Normally stress starts in exam season; this year the fun began in January.

I do agree Sats, that the only offers I’ve seen so far (for her choices) are people with grades in hand, and contextual applicants. While it’s fair that you gain an advantage for achieved grades, there are so many more in that position this year.

And then we have exams which aren’t exams but are still exams. DD currently okay for physics and biology, but her indicative grade for chemistry is a B. She really needs to improve on that in the next few weeks. In normal times with an exam at the end of the year I have no doubt she’d achieve what she needed.

It’s all a moo point (sorry, Friends reference ) as we don’t even have any offers yet. She is adamant though that if she doesn’t get any offers for med, she will take her Nottingham Mpharm offer.

I’m so sorry about the Cambridge offer.

I feel your pain everyone - we are having our ups and downs too.

I think this is the worst part so far, waiting for outcomes from interviews, knowing that the odds are stacked against them.

I hope the rest of the interview invites come out very soon too for those waiting.

With regards to Scottish Medical Schools @SATSmadness and @Iamsodonewith2020 - DD has also applied to one. She would have liked to apply to more than one, but not living in Scotland, she decided it was too risky. She put her Scottish option as her kind of aspiration option - i.e. the one she knew was the longest shot. However they are all looking like a very long shot right now!

I believe what has happened with Scottish Medical Schools is that they were targeted with reducing the number of places given to RUK by 100, over a 3 year period.

I do think they interview accordingly though, so if your DC have secured interviews, it's maybe not as bleak as it looks on paper initially.

Regarding the core intake targets for each of the Scottish Medical Schools, for 2020 - 2021 it was:

Aberdeen - 152 places of which 21 can be RUK
Dundee - 134 places of which 15 can be RUK
Edinburgh - 190 places of which 59 can be RUK
Glasgow - 210 places of which 38 can be RUK
St Andrews - 98 places of which 39 can be RUK

These will change again for 2021 - 2022 intake but I don't think the info is out yet.

I agree that the information about the number of places at Scottish Medical Schools isn't that clear.

I was told that after interview, the chance of an offer is not so different than for Scottish applicants, although it is generally lower than at English Medical Schools, with the exception being St Andrews. However with the number of places being potentially different this year, it's all up in the air wherever they've applied isn't it

@SATSmadness I also meant to say I'm sorry about Cambridge but well done to your DD for getting to interview, which in itself is a great achievement.

That's exactly it! The ever changing goal posts. Since they applied the goal posts hangs changed constantly which means their strategic applications are fairly redundant in terms of strategy. Even now, they have no idea what this year entails exam wise, no idea about uni criteria and chances of plan regarding offer numbers, and no idea if they'll get any offers when in any other year they should have been flying. Very, very uncertain territory and all against the backdrop of a global pandemic and lockdown! Hang in there folks.....

@SATSmadness I'm so sorry to hear about Cambridge. I'm sure your DD has other good options but it must be hard for her when she wanted Cambridge so much.

Re Scottish unis, my DS was extremely keen on one Scottish option but the RUK cap meant that they had a shockingly low number of places for English DC. He wasn't sure what to do as, like your DD, his stats were very strong and he loved the idea of going there. We felt we couldn't influence his decision and left him to work out whether he was going to follow head or heart. In the end he decided not to apply as his odds were so much better at an equally well-regarded med school where he was pretty much guaranteed an interview. However, sometimes he says he wishes he had applied to the Scottish one even if he had been rejected as he will never know. There is something to be said for that, especially in these crazy times, where anything can happen.

Agree with what you are saying, this year we are just hoping for any offer.

Sorry one last thing on Scottish Medical Schools - for St Andrews they do 3 years at St Andrews and then 3 years either on the Scottish or English pathway. I assume this might be why there are proportionately more places for RUK at St Andrews, as after 3 years a good proportion of the RUK students go back to English unis.

Frustratingly LaLa 'twas even closer than interview.

Despite genuinely thinking that it was "game over" after her interview performance, when the rejection e-mail came it informed her that she had been "pooled" which we're told is closer to the coveted offer than a straight rejection from the college applied to.

I'd hazard a guess that, unfortunately for DD and her cohort, many colleges are in the same boat this year of just having so many Oxbridge material candidates but insufficient places to accept the usual number of this years Y13's due to the knock on effect of last year's oversubscription issue.

After discussing stuff online with her fellow early entry candidates yesterday, she remarked to me that most of them are a little concerned that even their supposedly less challenging 4th choice place is starting to look less like a reasonably reliable safety net at this point in time.

They've now had almost a year of worry over the school/Uni situation which is twice as long as last year's Y13s and will run for another 6 months to results day. They've also had the upheaval of on/off isolation/lockdown learning which is not something last year's had to go through.

We're having a cheeky mid week takeaway tonight to lift the mood despite the fact that it's not even mid week yet ! Takeaways always get a cheer of approval, plus no cooking for me !

That’s so frustrating @SATSmadness; keeping my fingers crossed for her.Takeaway sounds like a very good idea!

Hi all, I think I must have fallen off the previous thread in my notifications! Good luck to everyone with their interviews and commiserations to those who have received rejections. My DS has not received any interviews yet - just had his second rejection today so he's very down as he thought he'd applied strategically and also thought his stats were good. Realistically he's starting to look at a year out if necessary and reapplying next year - but as he'll be competing then with people with CAG'd GCSEs who knows what the selection criteria will be then. All very stressful especially with ongoing testing and pressure at college and exam uncertainty....

I was Bluemazarine before my name change btw -

@SATSMadness Cambridge has the same number of places available as usual with a similar number of deferrals as they usually have. They have made fewer offers because there are no exams which would usually see some offer holders miss their offers and not gain their places. They do not want the same scenario as last year where they had to take in additional students and ask postgrads to live out.

As a school we have had a better med offer rate this year for Oxbridge (mainly Cambridge) and we are starting to see offers from other unis coming through so hopefully anyone waiting will see some movement soon on track. Good luck everyone.

DD has got an invitation for interview at her 4th medical school🎉🎉
I just hope she gets one offer after 4 interviews! She's done 2 so far but I don't think some of her answers sounded that good - I haven't told her but have practiced similar questions briefly since then to improve her structure

Great news @WithIcePlease, good luck to her!

Yay, well done to WithIcePlease DD. Welcome to the 4/4 club.

Sadly one of DD's 4 became a rejection after interview yesterday and given the stats posted above re the Scottish Uni med school applicants ratios, I fear she may well get another "no thanks" in due course. Clinging to the hope that she she might get a preferred firm and a back-up offer, but this year, well, who knows !

Hello again @Owledge. Hang in there, still lots of interviews coming out. @WithIcePlease wishing your DD all the best with the upcoming interviews. @SeasonFinale we have had of some good news Oxbridge stories at school too. My DS's best friend from their nursery days got a Cambridge offer yesterday. We Zoomed him and his family last night and his joy was infectious. Onwards and upwards!