Medicine 2022 entry

[Monkey2001]

Support thread for aspiring medics.

We want all our DCs to succeed, whatever their school type. We share knowledge to help them to achieve their goals, celebrate success and support if things don't go well.

As we press the "send and pay" buttons on UCAS, we wish all our DC the best of luck in this tough year with so much uncertainty.

@MN164 this is a summary of our thinking on TSR.

Birmingham - what is her score? I think SJT is used post interview, but they had a really high offer to interview ratio for non-contextual applicants (222/240). I would check how much impact band 3

Newcastle cut off 2820 last year and may well increase, so depends what actual score is.

Leicester should be fine

Cardiff OK as long as she was careful to cover everything they wanted in PS.

Liverpool fine but they had a terrible offer to interview ratio last year (28%)

Did she decide against Sheffield because of SJT? She only loses 1 more point for B3 v B2, so less of a problem than it is at Birmingham.

Sorry, I took an average and multiplied by 4ish

Total was actually 2810

2810 very risky for Newcastle

Useful info (although the image comes up very small on my screen and hard to read). I assume I can find this somewhere on the student room ....

Thanks for the tip on Newcastle.
Sheffield has not been mentioned in the mix. Not sure why.

You should be able to click on image to enlarge.

Bit late now, but I think Birmingham safer than Newcastle. Would say
Cardiff
Birmingham
Leicester
Sheffield or Southampton

QUB would be a guaranteed interview, but maybe would not like to go to Belfast.

May I ask a question about funding please? Medical degrees are longer than the normal 3 year degrees, sometimes up to 6 years. Are tuition fees and maintenance grants provided for the whole 6 years or just the first 3?

You get loan/maintenance for 4 years through SFE, then NHS pays your fees and a means tested bursary for years 5/6.

@NadiSel provided for 4/5 years (depending if 5 or 6 year course). Last year is funded by NHS (fees) and nhs bursary for living costs. Most Unis top this up if need extra.

@Monkey2001 beat me too it 😊. We are just learning how to apply for nhs stuff - all a bit confusing !

Another question for those who know: do the university medical schools treat applications from independent schools vs grammar schools vs non selective state differently? I know that you can get contextual offers depending on your postcode (or, is it where the school is?). DD’s school is non selective state but it’s not in a deprived area, gets so-so results on average.

@notmedicmum depends. A few (Kent, Birmingham are 2) will look at the school but most won't. Unless you are on their contextual list then same rules apply.

[quote mumsneedwine]@Monkey2001 beat me too it 😊. We are just learning how to apply for nhs stuff - all a bit confusing ![/quote]
Haha! But my understanding is that it starts from year 5, however long your course. So if you do medicine with a foundation year and intercalate, you got a loan for first four years and NHS bursary for 3 years. I am thinking DH and I could retire at that point so they can get full bursaries and support from universities!

On a serious note, I think university support varies and the basic amount makes it quite difficult to manage for students without parents in a position to help.

@notmedicmum Cambridge and KMMS are the only ones which heavily contextualise for school etc. Others (Exeter, Bristol, Birmingham...) have a list which you are either on or not and they tell you how that affects your application.

I am afraid it is one of those squeezed middle things. Your school is probably like ours - in DS1's year nobody in a year of 250 got all A* at GCSE, even though there were plenty of bright kids, so some options which would have been accessible to applicants from his school if they had gone to a school more able to support top students weren't available, such as Oxford, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Luckily plenty use UCAT which is supposed to be less linked to educational advantage.

Meant to say both Cardiff and Edinburgh have schemes to help people from more disadvantaged schools, bit not the ones in the middle.

On a serious note, I think university support varies and the basic amount makes it quite difficult to manage for students without parents in a position to help.

DS1 got a job in a cafe in Oxford for his last years, to supplement his income.

[quote Monkey2001]@notmedicmum Cambridge and KMMS are the only ones which heavily contextualise for school etc. Others (Exeter, Bristol, Birmingham...) have a list which you are either on or not and they tell you how that affects your application.

I am afraid it is one of those squeezed middle things. Your school is probably like ours - in DS1's year nobody in a year of 250 got all A* at GCSE, even though there were plenty of bright kids, so some options which would have been accessible to applicants from his school if they had gone to a school more able to support top students weren't available, such as Oxford, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Luckily plenty use UCAT which is supposed to be less linked to educational advantage.[/quote]
Squeezed middle - that’s a good way to describe the situation! Our school is similar - 300 students and perhaps a handful get all A* at GCSEs. Perhaps one pupil gets into medicine a year. So there is not the support, which is why we are so grateful for advice from tsr and mumsnet.

I think Oxford do assess context as they look at applicant GCSE grades gained against the average GCSE grade from that particular school, don’t know how they do it, which is why I was wondering whether other universities do it too.

I'm wondering if there will be less weighting on GCSEs this year anyway.

DD has 10 x 9s and an A in Ad maths but I know these don't carry the value they wound in a normal year. For Oxford Medicine interview selection it's a mix of GCSEs and BMAT, if I were Oxford I'd pay much more attention to BMAT this year.

@SandyBayley when number grades came in and most universities started treating 8/9 as A, loads more people had all 8/9 than all A. In our year that is even higher, so there will be very few shortlisted applicants without all 8/9/A*, so yes, all on the BMAT. OFQUAL data shows over 300% increase in candidates getting all 9s , but doesn't include the "all 8/9" in their report, which I think might look similar. High GCSEs is one of the reasons it is so hard to predict medical school cut offs.

As I mentioned on the other thread, an Admissions Tutor friend at a Cambridge college said that on line interviews did not work well for English and they relied heavily on Admissions Test and a friend applying for NatSci thought the same happened there. I don't know whether medicine might do the same. I am sure there will be fewer offers than usual as they know there will be grade inflation and Oxford were already cautious last year.

SandyBayley I think Monkey2001 misses a point about how the Oxford shortlisting works. Given that more applicants this year will have all 8s/9s, the BMAT will by definition (given the rigid mathematical formula used for shortlisting) assume more importance, and it's difficult to see how the BMAT cut off level won't be higher, since the numbers interviewed are pretty much set in stone.

I don't know how high achieving your DD's Y11 school was but I assume it was at least a relatively high achieving indie, and so her GCSE tally will be knocked back a little. From the shortlisting point of view the lack of distinction between 8s/9s is annoying, admittedly. Of course, once at interview, the fact that she's a straight 9 student is almost bound to show, and it's the interview performance which is critical. Very little else apart from the interview actually counts once Oxford has shortlisted.

For context, in old but similar money, 12A at our school (where ability is actually relatively mixed, despite being a super selective grammar) became 10A for the purposes of Oxford Pre-Clinical shortlisting.

Interviewing online is never going to replicate in person interviews but I would guess that the Oxford interviews for Medicine would be rather less affected than most other subjects, especially a subject such as English.

Just realised there was an autocorrect on my post - the Admissions Tutor was Engineering, not English! I think Arts work better than Sciences on line.

Each to their own then Monkey. My understanding was the opposite. But there are issues across the board with online interviews, to be fair.

Phew - well that was a close shave! DS (post grad med applicant) got his application in by a whisker after waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting for his promised reference to be completed on UCAS (with several polite and then increasingly anxious reminders to the Very Busy Person who'd agreed to do it). Talk about stressful! We'd been thinking of plan B options for today if the ref didn't come through like trying to grab someone off the street get in touch with old teachers.
I remember many stresses when ds2 applied but this wasn't one!

That does sound stressful @Haffdonga! Wishing your DS luck with his Post-Grad application