Medicine 2021 - Part 4

[MaddieElla]

Fingers crossed for those final offers coming in!

Hope no one minds me starting the new thread...

@redtulip, it is quite difficult actually, and we haven't been to either, so we are planning a trip - school have said that all the assessing will be done by May 27th, although they are hoping to do some sort of leavers activities, on the grounds that they have missed out on so much this year. But they will definitely be using the week after half term to moderate and work out grades, so either half term or the week after would be a good time to travel, assuming the Covid situation lets us. ideally we would like to take the train and see what it would be like for DS getting there and back again when he would be doing it under his own steam. But that is all dependent upon the governments timetable being adhered to.

@redtulip12
DD is 2nd year in Liverpool and loves it. Current circumstances notwithstanding she enjoys the course, huge volume of work and all online since Xmas but I get impression that Med sch has really tried to give them as much variety as possible. Course is relatively new and evolving but feedback seems positive. Her world has shrunk since lockdown but before then she was enjoying the city, lovely cheap accommodation and really looking forward to first clinical placements which should have been this term. PM me any questions if I can help.

Congratulations on the offers coming through.

Good to hear that those getting rejections already have offers for other places.

@GreyBow - you won't need an excuse to visit places after 22 April, tourism will be allowed so hopefully your DD can get a feel for the places before she has to decide. The offer holder events should help too. I know Lancaster have managed the social impact of Covid really well, there is a MN thread for parents of first years and there are a lot of Lancaster parents (not medicine) there whose DC were having a great time, lots of creative Covid-compliant events and the households all seemed to get on really well. In terms of the course, I may be wrong, but we got the impression that it was focused a lot on soft skills and lighter on science than the courses DS liked. That could be great for some, but he did not like it and may explain why there are so many more female students -- last intake was 93 women and 57 men, but all years are female dominated - www.lancaster.ac.uk/lms/medicine/mbchb-medicine-and-surgery/how-to-apply/#admissions-statistics-409970-0.

I was assuming we could travel again after April 12th which would work well for us as it's our Easter holidays. Sounds like there are a few of us planning roadtrips!

Thank you @sergeantmajormum. Great to hear your DD is enjoying Liverpool. I hope things can get back on track for her next September in terms of the Uni life she was hoping for!

@redtulip12
She’s got another term of this 2nd year, holidays now barely longer than school, but that’s medicine for you! They get vaccinated immediately after Easter so hopefully back to F2F and placements next month (and outdoor restaurants/pubs 😉) until exams early July.

@sergeantmajormum fingers crossed - the F2F contact is so important- as is the social life when they get the chance! We will try and get up to Liverpool after April 12th and have a look around. Everything we have heard sounds really positive - just wish it was a bit closer to home.

@Monkey2001 sadly, I only have my Dd until 11 April and then not again until the end of May, unless I can get her home for first May bank holiday. We haven't broken a single lockdown regulation for a year now, but are seriously considering it by a day or two....

DD feels the same about Lancaster, but she still likes it so I think it'll be the reserve!!!

Is Manchester always a late decider? Just heard most offers/rejections not till end of May!!! We have nothing here yet at all. Well done to all those with offers, especially multiple offers.

End of May for Manchester??!!! That's crazy. Surely they must have already made the decisions as the last interview was 10th March.

End of May would have me weeping. Fingers crossed it is much sooner than that.

End of May😳
I think others should read this and consider such things in choosing where to apply! Only half joking as that is sooo long

@Iamsodonewith2020 I am sorry to hear that your DD is still in limbo. We are waiting for Manchester too. How id you hear that most offers/rejections not until end of May. Can appreciate that they are a very large med school and will have lots of applications to work through but end of May!!

Sorry for the dodgy typing. I'm cooking at the same time.

Manchester will end up losing good candidates. I mean... if a student applied for example to both Manchester and Nottingham (both on a par), and had been offered Nottingham with their first come first served accommodation, they will be losing prospective students!

Opoponax they told them at interview. They don’t offer till all interviews and rescheduled interviews have taken place.

Also emailed. End of May does seem ridiculous. Am beginning to wonder if DD misheard in all the stress!!!!

I think both Newcastle and Manchester have already sent offers to the top performing candidates at interview and are seeing how many firm them before deciding how many of the next tier of performers at interview to make offers to. I expect they probably have twice as many candidates who they think will succeed as they need, so will not worry too much about losing some of the ones they are holding. It is a strange year because they will be expecting all offer holders to get the grades, so they will not be able to manage the fine tuning of numbers by flexibility on results day. I think it would be better just to do a big reserve list like sheffield does, it is awful to be in suspense for so long.

@Iamsodonewith2020 the interviews have all taken place though and offers have already started. @Monkey2001 several TSR posters said they contacted Manchester when offers started to come out and have been separately told that the admissions team is resource-constrained and both offers and rejections are being gradually sent out in parallel and in totally random order. There has been radio silence at least in the TSR sample for a while now and there is a lot of stress around that. I haven't seen anything about decisions being pushed out to end of May though and have just double-checked with DS that he hasn't had any missed emails from them.

20 May is the UCAS deadline for universities to make decisions, I think it was an April date in previous years and you had until around 5 May to decide which offers to Firm/Insure. The people on TSR said that Manchester were planning to get decisions out by 31st March. There should only be a few coming out in May - maybe reserve list offers, but this year is so odd.

I think it should be sooner for decisions for early entrants, and preferably all at once on one day for offers, rejections and wait lists.

Medicine isn't ever going to be an undersubscribed course and I know it's been extra work this year with the way interviews have happened, but I am not overly sympathetic to some of them for saying they are short on admin staff. There's about a hundred applicants for every job at a university at the moment, there's the future admin staff out there 😆

One day would take a lot of the emotion out of the process and make it fairer then I feel for everyone.

Better still would be post results entry though 🤷🏻‍♀️ Not sure why they ever changed that.

Have we ever had post-results entry? If we have, don't forget that the number of people going to university has exploded in the last 50 years - 621k to 2.4m.

I agree that universities should be able to stick to a timetable - Sheffield publishes a timeline and sticks to it and all results go out in 1 week (although it did last 8 days this year). I agree that it would be much better for everybody's stress levels if all were told the same day and I do really see why that can't be done from a mail merge spreadsheet!

I can't remember a post results offer thing - and I went to Uni in 1985. I think this years offers are so late because the Unis have waited to see what the exams actually are (a mess !) and also because a lot of the admissions staff are also practising doctors. And they've been a bit busy.
It's a tough year for them and the wait is agony I know. Sheffield are brilliant at being so open about dates but even they are later this year. 🤞🤞🤞 for everyone still waiting. And those wait lists will start to move as students with 2 or more offers firm their choices. We had one get a place off wait list this week.

Yes, post results was definitely a thing, but possibly only for Oxford and Cambridge? Although could have been all medicine, etc too.

I am not sure when it ended, probably late 80s or very early 90s? Students stayed at school and did one term until Christmas and did all the extra entrance exams and interviews then.

@GreyBow I applied to Cambridge in 1984/5 and had my offer before results ? And my brother had his Oxford offer before results in 1982. So must have ended a lot earlier than that.

DH in 1982 did Cambridge entrance for medicine (science papers and a general paper) and offered 2E's before exams.
Bojo is year above and I think he did 7th term at Eton to do Oxford entrance and would've had A level results before offer

I don't think A level results have ever been before most uni offers