Medicine 2022 entry - How difficult is it really? *title edited by MNHQ at OP's request*

[notmedicmum]

I couldn't find a thread for 2022 entrants to medicine - maybe I didn't look hard enough! DD is in Year 12 and has wanted to do medicine since Year 10. It's only this year that we realise the enormity of actually getting a place. Not only do you have to have brilliant grades, you must also have done work experience, volunteered (both difficult in the current situation), got excellent BMAT/UCAT scores. Oh, and you also must have cycled from Land's End to John O'Groats to raise money for charity or climbed Kilimanjaro or won the Nobel Peace prize or found a cure for cancer (joking about the last two). How competitive is it REALLY? I'm not sure about the value of the last apart from being used as a selection tool as the unis get so many qualified applicants - and showing enterprise and drive. Apparently this sort of thing is even more important this year as getting work experience is very hard this year. How does climbing a mountain make you a better doctor anyway? And what can normal students do to improve their chances of success??

Thank you @SandyBayley, @Monkey2001. Fingers crossed!!
Work experience is impossible to get. DD has not managed to get any hospital WE as local hospitals aren’t offering any. The only people I know who have managed to get any have connections. Local hospital isn’t even taking on volunteers. But I’m sure I read somewhere that medical schools aren’t expecting real life work experience this year.

DD is currently updating the ‘Wrk Exp Req’ column of her spreadsheet and reports that 1) at least 4 courses have changed their requirements in the last month and 2) there is a massive range from none required at all up to 2 weeks + of clinical experience.

She is also livid that she spent ages filling in Birmingham’s ‘would I get an offer with these results?’ form and then read on TSR that it is not at all reliable…

Ah yes, that Birmingham offer calculator had been wrong for medicine for at least 3 years! Birmingham changed their shortlisting algorithm last year to skew it significantly towards widening participation applicants. Their calculator on the medicine pages is very transparent but I don't know if there is any info out about the score required for an interview.

On work experience, it is worth digging right down through the FAQ. Manchester say you must have work experience, but then say they do not expect people to have managed to get clinical work exp this year, and the virtual ones are fine and they also say you can talk about work exp you INTEND to do. DS can talk about child care and tutoring for a girl with special needs and the 2 virtual work exp things available and I think that will be fine.

Which ones are saying want work exp?

KingscoteStaff, my ds is the same re Birmingham - spent ages filling it in over the weekend but just doesn't know how much reliance to put on to the Birmingham spreadsheet result! As their scoring system seems to have changed from last year he's got no sense of how he compares and doesn't want to waste an application slot if he's marginal..same for the Nottingham points calculation too which has changed this year so difficult to gauge context..

@Monkey2001

Good luck *@notmedicmum* DD. My DS said that is a very sensible thing to do the night before UCAT! He now seems to be mentoring friends as he was the first of his friendship group to do the test.

He hasn't managed to get any work experience, so will just have to make do with the virtual ones and a lot of musical and sporting experience. I will see if a GP friend changes her mind about shadowing, but post Covid I am not hopeful. I don't think the medical schools will expect people to have secured work experience this year.

So, we get to the test centre in plenty of time, DD goes in for test, comes out after 2 hours upset because the calculator stopped working halfway thru the QR section. She thinks she lost 8 minutes out of 24 minutes time on that section. Plus obviously got flustered and probably didn’t do as well as she should have in the subsequent sections. She had been asked to report the incident to Pearson/UCAT which we will do tomorrow

Oh no, @notmedicmum - how horrible for her. That really is the stuff of nightmares. And why should she have to fret overnight about reporting it tomorrow - the test centre staff should be all over it right now 👹👹👹

Oh no @notmedicmum - that's really upsetting. I have no idea whether Pearson would allow a resit in those circumstances. They should but the impression I get is that they're quite rigid. How is your DD?

@notmedicmum that happened to DS1 first time he did it, it is a really horrible thing to happen, was also halfway through QR. At his centre the staff offered to cancel that test and re-book, but he decided to stick with the score he got as it was good enough for the 2 UCAT universities he wanted to apply to.

I expect they will offer her a new date, but it must have thrown her and the last thing she will want is to get back into prep mode.

Test staff gave her an incident report card. Test finished at 3, by the time we got home it was past 4 due to traffic and the Pearson customer service line was closed. We’ll be calling them first thing tomorrow to see what can be done, however look at the UCAT website they only offer resits for a few people, which might be a blessing as I’m not sure she wants to go back to prep mode. Also it could take up to 2 weeks to get a definite answer. Nightmare!! (I’m exaggerating ). In spite of everything, she got 2800+ so would appreciate advice on how to proceed @Monkey2001. We may have to have a good look at that spreadsheet you put together…..

@notmedicmum that is really like what happened to DS then as he got 2800, and in 2018 that was a top decile score, last year it was top 13%.

DS1 hates raising his head above the parapet, and the UCAT people could not talk to me, so we just accepted it, but I think she can request an "annotation". If you look at the UCAT annual report it tells you how many results were annotated. I have no idea how the medical schools use that though.

I was trying to update my spreadsheet today, but finding some of the UCAT cut-offs is tricky!

Sorry to hijack...

I was watching BBC Breakfast on Saturday morning and this amazing man (Dr Waheed Arian) was talking about Kabul and how he came here as a lone child refugee from Afghanistan and dreamed of becoming a doctor. He has just released a book 'In the Wars' about his childhood and how he ended up studying medicine at Cambridge. I downloaded the audio book and it is fantastic. It is a cross between David Nott's 'War Doctor' and 'The Lightless Sky' by Gulwali Passarlay.

www.amazon.co.uk/Wars-story-conflict-survival-saving/dp/1787633969?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

@notmedicmum - I am so sorry to hear of the tech failing in your DD's UCAT. That is utterly rubbish and I really hope that it doesn't jeopardise her chances of getting into her preferred med school. My fingers are crossed for her (and you!).

@notmedicmum I meant to say that 2800+ in that situation is very impressive. Good luck with the discussions with Pearsons today.

Acutally, @notmedicmum, there is a page on the Pearson website for these issues - www.ucat.ac.uk/test-day/test-incident/, looks like this is where you should report it and maybe contact admissions at one of the ones she is considering to ask how they deal with annotated results.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for a clear explanation of the PBL method? DD seems to be rejecting it altogether and I want to make sure she has really researched it thoroughly.

@KingscoteStaff in essence you are given a problem at the start of the week with the aim to solve it, with your group, by Friday (this is a rough example !). During that week you will get lectures on that problem but a lot involved working together. Some love it, many don't (it's not used as much as a few years ago). Must courses now integrated, so bit if PBL, CBL and traditional lectures (& many include clinical from year 1). CBL is more getting access, so heart disease, and learning around that topic.
Hope that helps.

I really should proof read ! I'm marking v boring PAGs.
CBL - get a case !!

My d is at imperial. They use case based learning as part of a system based approach. So I’d they’re doing, say neuro, their anatomy classes etc will all be on neuro topics, their skills sessions will be on neuro exams, and in case based learning they’ll be looking at a ‘patient’ with neurological issues.

PBL is more a mix of different systems. So you might get a problem involving someone with an achy leg. You have to research what could be wrong, which could involve lots of systems. I think system based approach is becoming the norm.
I know my own DD had lectures on the heart (for example), dissected the heart part of the body, did cases on the heart and was on heart ward during the same time period. She found it helpful to learn, see and do one bit at a time 😊

This is a nice video by a UEA student talking about PBL

A friend's DD at Exeter liked it because she was a real self starter and liked being able to manage her own time and juggle her extra curricular activities.

This link from Hull/York seems to suggest that they do PBL in a group of 15 with one tutor and that each group stays the same all year - is this the same everywhere? DD is concerned that such a small group might struggle with personality clashes between student/student or student/tutor.

@KingscoteStaff

This link from Hull/York seems to suggest that they do PBL in a group of 15 with one tutor and that each group stays the same all year - is this the same everywhere? DD is concerned that such a small group might struggle with personality clashes between student/student or student/tutor.

I have heard that can be an issue, but the facilitators can change the groups. Of course you may find the reverse is true - at the Cardiff open day a student said all their best friends were from their CBL group. Probably a good one for the "Ask a Student" which all the websites have.

@Monkey2001

Acutally, *@notmedicmum*, there is a page on the Pearson website for these issues - www.ucat.ac.uk/test-day/test-incident/, looks like this is where you should report it and maybe contact admissions at one of the ones she is considering to ask how they deal with annotated results.

We ended up reporting the incident on the website in the end as Pearson weren’t very helpful on the phone. We’ll see what happens. I’ve been offline most of today as I took DD to Southampton uni to take her mind off UCAT etc. Well, actually she was more interested in going to IKEA . She really liked the campus (having said previously that she would not even apply). Whilst there I spoke to the medicine admissions people. Interestingly they said their UCAT cutoff was 2500 last year, with an average of 2650. I explained what had happened at the UCAT exam and they said that if she decided to apply, she should email them referencing her UCAS number explaining the extenuating circumstance and they would take it into consideration. Not sure if they really will as they probably have some sort of automated scoring system but maybe they will. Anyway, DD feels better now especially as her score doesn’t seem such a disaster.

BTW system based approach to learning makes much more sense to me than the other approaches