@NoNotHimTheOtherOne
Just to defend UKWPMED to some extent, only two of the six member schools (Birmingham & Hull York) require offers to be firmed to get the reduced-grade offer. Brighton & Sussex, Keele, Manchester and Plymouth will honour the reduced offer for firm and insurance choices.
I'm not making excuses for Birmingham and Hull York, especially as Birmingham isn't very up-front about its requirement for offers to be firmed (although Hull York is: www.hyms.ac.uk/medicine/applying/ukwpmed), but I wouldn't like to think of prospective applicants' being deterred from applying to the other four.
Yes, I have been singularly unimpressed with Birmingham. Their calculator on their web page says "likely to get an interview" when if you use a bit of common sense, it is absolutely clear that there is no hope. We swerved Birmingham because it was obvious to me that with a 7 in English Literature (his only 7, every other GCSE was higher), and a school not on the contextual list, there was no way DS would get an interview, but most DC don't have the analytical skills of a trained lawyer. So many DC we know were misled and didn't get to interview.
In fact I spent Thursday night at the "careers fair" at the (state) school DS went to until the end of GCSEs and that DD is still at. And while I was there officially to talk to the students about law, I was chatting before it started to the representative doctor, and she said that her problem was that while she could talk about being a consultant, what everybody wanted to know about was how to apply, and it was so long ago for her, that the system has completely changed. "Oh", said I, "send them to me! I can't tell them about whether or not they should want to be a doctor, but I can tell them all about the application process". So I ended up talking to a whole bunch of students either about what it is like to work as a lawyer or about the medical application process!
And these DC really don't have a clue and there is clearly nobody to help them (I sent an email afterwards to the careers co-ordinator offering my services, as clearly having had one DS go through the process and having kept an eye on things this year I am an expert). My DS bailed out of this school for A levels, feeling it was not going to give him the support he needed for a medical application (we agreed that if he passed the exams and interview for the highly selective private school he had his heart set on, we would find the money for two years of private school). And just talking to these kids and their parents, he was absolutely right, they have no clue, and none of the support that for example, @mumsneedwine gives.
And one particular issue that came up was that when dealing with a DD, while most parents were happy for them to apply to medicine (it is a caring profession after all), there were cases where they were only prepared to let them apply to London medical schools, so they could continue to live at home. Which means that applying selectively means choosing the best four out of five! Some of this might be related to cost (investing in a DS's career is more acceptable, and there is a wedding to save for in the case of a DD), but also that the expectation remains that a DD will get married during medical school, and will then shoulder all the burdens that go with that, while a DS can be older. Marriages are more difficult to arrange if a DD is not living at home (not to mention the fear of what might happen to a DD away from home and what that might do to her and/or her reputation).
Birmingham might have been one of the more acceptable alternatives if pushed (at least for DSs), given the community structures there, but I had to tell them their chances of getting in were low and it was likely not worth the application. The school is very, very mixed, financially and otherwise, and it does get very good results, which is presumably why it is not on the Birmingham contextual list, but there are lots of issues that don't get solved simply by getting top notch results.