Medicine 2023 Entry

[opoponax]

Hi all,

I don't think there is a Medicine 2023 Entry thread yet, so it might be an idea to get one started.

Anyone out there with DC applying or reapplying for Medicine 2023, please join a friendly thread for mutual support and useful advice from those who understand the UK Medical School application process.

@opoponax all medicine courses have academic rigour. They all learn the same stuff, just at different times. If she wants early patient contact then apply to Unis that give that. It's a long, tough course so you want to enjoy it 😊.

I know they do @mumsneedwine and maybe 'rigour' was the wrong choice of word and 'focus' might be more apt. My understanding is that, whilst all medical degrees are equal, the learning experience is quite different depending on the course structure. Whilst DS, who is just as academic as DD, was crystal clear from the start that 'being in a classroom and writing essays for three years' (as he put it) was not for him, I think DD would really enjoy it is also fired up by the thought of . early clinical exposure and I think is genuinely torn in which type of course she would prefer. I was just wondering if anyone else's DC had been conflicted as it certainly wasn't the case for us first time round. The truth is though, that above all she wants to be a doctor and getting a med school place is the main goal.

@opoponax she should look at St Andrews. It is very academic but they have a few days of placement each year and a lot of soft skill stuff and it is BEAUTIFUL!!! The buildings, the beaches, the medical school. The dissection room is fantastic and you meet a lot of very clever people.

Whenever they go they'll be amongst very clever, very sparky young people. I'd suggest finding the courses she likes the sound of and applying there. St Andrews is fab but boy are they making them wait this year ! If she wants to do an integrated degree then look at those that offer that option.
Bit, one offer is all you need, so choose one that is at least a certain choice at interview. UCAT counts so so much. BMAT too but been a blind application last 2 years.

I love St Andrews @Monkey2001 and nearly studied there myself (100 years ago!). We took DD to visit last summer and she thought it looked great. The only thing that put her off is how far away from home it feels. It's all a bit hypothetical until she does her UCAT but I think the RUK cap is not such an issue there as say Dundee. Is that right?

The blind BMAT combined with the tech issues this past two years really freaks me out TBH. There shouldn't be that much chance involved in something so important. If DD gets a similar UCAT score to DS, I will be hoping that she concentrates on the UCAT heavy schools.

@opoponax, St Andrews has a lot of RUK students doing medicine (maybe 70?), most of whom are on the English route and do the second half of their training in Manchester. They had a really great offer to interview ratio in 2019 (around 85%), not sure what has happened in the last couple of years. I think that with a good UCAT and a Band 1 there is an excellent chance of an offer.

@mumsneedwine what I meant about clever people is that at St Andrews all students need the same sort of grades as the medics, so it has a bit of an Oxbridge feel.

@Monkey2001 😊 get what you mean. St Andrews is beautiful too, if a little remote for most.

Is St. Andrews ucat or bmat? I’m confused!

Hi @Thethingswedoforlove. St Andrews is UCAT. Monkey was referencing it as it is a 3+3 year style course with a three year BSc (Hons) Medicine degree first in St Andrews followed by three years clinical at another medical school(most of RUK students do it in Manchester but also London) to graduate with MBChB/MBBS.

Thank you op

Bit late as some of these have closed, but the MSC is coordinating summer schools for state school WP applicants - www.medschools.ac.uk/our-work/selection/msc-summer-schools

Hi All just wondered if anybody is considering doing a paid work experience/programme in the summer. I heard a friend s son will be doing one in Finance in Oxford for 5 thousand pounds. How useful do you think these programmes are? My DS did a short online programme a couple of years ago just to get a feel about medicine but we didn't pay much. I am just unsure what level of relevant work experience is expected from them to be invited for interviews etc. Thanks for all the useful advice in this thread.

You dont need to pay for any courses at all. What medical schools want to see is long term volunteering or paid work in people facing roles. The only thing you might want to pay for is access to practice UCAT questions.

@Cratos - how would you define "relevant" work experience? I was recently interviewing with a final-year medical student. One of the candidates had spent a week shadowing on a hospital ward and the student interviewer was appalled that he had come away with a completely misleading impression of what hospitals are like to work in. If they are in a protected, organised environment that shows them nothing of the mess and chaos that working in front-line healthcare involves, it will be an entirely worthless experience. I would tend to assume that the more expensive it is, the more worthless it will be.

In terms of how medical schools select students, @notnowbernadette's version is much closer to the truth than any marketing material from InvestIN or similar organisations. While experience in clinical settings can help young people to make career choices, it doesn't tell admissions tutors or interviewers anything about the applicant's suitability.

It is a sad fact that as soon as you decide to pursue a highly competitive course, there will be a very long queue of people trying to sell you things. Most of these things have no value at all, and are more often a distraction from what you should be doing, which is getting used to working with people who make demands of you. (Oh, and preparing for weird aptitude tests.) If I had to choose between an applicant who had paid £5,000 to meet eminent surgeons in a prestigious hospital and one who had volunteered in a food bank, I would go with the food-bank volunteer 100 times out of 100.

Thank you very much to you both for offering your opinions. Very much appreciated. And it is good to know we don't have to spend this kind of money.
I would like the experience to give him a realistic understanding of what medicine is and how it is like to work in a health care setting so that he can be sure about his career choice as well.
So far he worked in a cafe and he also works as a referee. He has applied to two voluntary roles in hospitals. One of them is a private hospital. He will have interviews with them soon. He might also consider a care home job since we have a local one. We didn't think about food banks before. This is a good suggestion too. We don't have any medical background. There is so much to learn. Thanks

@Cratos a care home job would be fantastic as will give him an insight into the social care system - something that is really good to be knowledgeable about at interview. Face to face things like working in a cafe are great too. Contact a few GPs as some are giving work experience again.
As the head of admissions at a large Uni once said, we prefer people who have worked at McDonalds, which shows patience, customer service, time management and resilience, to someone who just worked for daddy/mummy on the wards. Med schools don't count anything paid as they know it creates an unfair system.

[quote mumsneedwine]@Cratos a care home job would be fantastic as will give him an insight into the social care system - something that is really good to be knowledgeable about at interview. Face to face things like working in a cafe are great too. Contact a few GPs as some are giving work experience again.
As the head of admissions at a large Uni once said, we prefer people who have worked at McDonalds, which shows patience, customer service, time management and resilience, to someone who just worked for daddy/mummy on the wards. Med schools don't count anything paid as they know it creates an unfair system. [/quote]
He certainly loved his cafe job and they were understaffed and he worked under pressure all the time. Refereeing requires similar skills too. We decided that he should stop these and find a voluntary job at healtcare setting now though since we were concerned these may not be right for his application. Thank you for your advice. We will look at care home jobs too but I am not sure how much contact they can have with the residents considering Covid risk. He may have to work at the background in the kitchen etc.

@Cratos doesn't matter if he's in the kitchen - he'll probably end up delivering meals to residents. And he will see how the place functions and get to chat to the residents too - to be honest they are usually so short staffed he'll end up doing loads of things. And covid restrictions have mostly gone - masks and testing aside as care staff still have those.
Whatever he does get him to keep a diary of things he's seen and learned. Comes in so handy when prepping for interviews.
There are some good on line work experience things now - Brighton and Kings are 2. Med schools like them too.

[quote mumsneedwine]@Cratos doesn't matter if he's in the kitchen - he'll probably end up delivering meals to residents. And he will see how the place functions and get to chat to the residents too - to be honest they are usually so short staffed he'll end up doing loads of things. And covid restrictions have mostly gone - masks and testing aside as care staff still have those.
Whatever he does get him to keep a diary of things he's seen and learned. Comes in so handy when prepping for interviews.
There are some good on line work experience things now - Brighton and Kings are 2. Med schools like them too. [/quote]
Very helpful advice. Thank you so much. Great idea to keep a diary for the future.
I am just checking medichut.com for packages to prepare for medical school application process. The packages are for 6 months. I don't have the full grasp of the timescales involved just now but perhaps it is best to wait until they get their predicted grades before buying them. Has anybody used these packages in the past ? There are 4 different levels. 🤔

Can I join in?

DD is in Year 12 and planning to apply for medicine next year. She has a spreadsheet and has already knocked out a few options but still has ariund 15-20 to choose from. I have no idea how she is going to whittle it down to 4. She is planning to do BMAT and UCAT so not making life easy for herself.

She was dead set on applying for Cambridge until very recently, but is now wavering a bit as she thinks she might want a course that gives her clinical experience at an earlier stage. It's a tough decision to make. She also wants to intercalate and ideally wants to spend some time overseas.

There is so much to think about! I am worried about work experience. She is shadowing at a GP surgery for a couple of days next week, but a lot of her other attempts to set stuff up haven't worked out. She did get offered a job in a care home, which would have been ideal, but in the end, she wasn't prepared to quit her beloved cafe job so she didn't accept the offer! She has signed up for a couple of online work experience things - Brighton and Sussex? - but I feel like we need to sort out some more!

I'm also worried about UCAT/BMAT preparation. DD is extremely bright but tends to leave stuff till the last minute and I don't want her to get caught out. Then she needs to fit in time for EPQ, supercurricular stuff etc. There is a lot to do, and I find it overwhelming just to think about it!

I think the real challenge is managing the time and everything that needs to be done. DD is very into the performing arts and that takes up a lot of time, alongside her part time job and lots of socialising. I hope that she will be able to get the balance right.

Thinking about summer schools too. They're expensive but probably worth the investment?

As the head of admissions at a large Uni once said, we prefer people who have worked at McDonalds, which shows patience, customer service, time management and resilience, to someone who just worked for daddy/mummy on the wards. Med schools don't count anything paid as they know it creates an unfair system.

That's encouraging. Hopefully dd's little cafe job will count for something!

Hopefully dd's little cafe job will count for something!

Whatever she does, she needs to be thinking about (and writing down) what personal attributes she has demonstrated, with examples to highlight these. Does she have responsibilities in her café job? One thing she should be able to expand on immediately is dealing with customers with food intolerances. How does she deal with questions about this? When does she need to check with the cook/manager? What is the café's standard operating procedure for a customer experiencing anaphylaxis (or choking, or any other emergency)?

However, it is likely to be very helpful if she has some kind of experience that involves working with people who have specific needs, e.g. coaching children with disabilities in sport/dance/drama, volunteering in a care-home/hospice (or hospital if it involves helping people get where they need to be in a busy and intimidating building), working in any kind of community group that supports lonely & vulnerable people, etc. For online opportunities, things like kissingitbetter.co.uk/ are very valuable.

Thank you @NoNotHimTheOtherOne, that's helpful, and yes, she does have quite a lot of responsibilities in her cafe job, as she has been there for quite a long time and the owner really trusts her. I'll get her to think about this.

She would love to coach disabled kids in dance/drama/singing etc, I don't know if anyone has any tips on how to find that kind of opportunity? I will have a look at the website you suggested.

She has tried to get volunteering roles in the local hospice etc but they won't allow patient facing volunteers under 18 and she is only 16. They do allow 16yos to do non-patient facing stuff, but she is not convinced that she would gain much experience that she doesn't already have from this.

It's worth trawling charities' volunteering pages, e.g. www.caudwellchildren.com/volunteer-application-form/

Many roles will require volunteers to be over 18, but ones that don't involve working unsupervised might not.