Give-up Imperial offer and reapply for medicine in 2023

[Jalapenopepper]

DS has just finished his A Levels and has accepted a place to study engineering at Imperial starting September 2022. He now has second thoughts and wants to reapply next year to study medicine. He was debating between engineering and medicine all of last year - liked them both equally and was quite torn. He finally decided on engineering but has now changed his mind. He wants to take a gap year and apply for medicine.

I feel quite anxious knowing how competitive medicine is. If he doesn't get a place, he may end up with an offer to study chemistry or biomedical engineering that he does not want to do. Any thoughts?

Why would he have to apply for a course he is not interested in? Does he have relevant work experience? He can decide on results day if he thinks his grades are good enough and then may need to take BMAT/UCAT.

Can he defer his offer from imperial to next year?

Then apply to medicine in the mean time.

I feel quite anxious knowing how competitive medicine is. If he doesn't get a place, he may end up with an offer to study chemistry or biomedical engineering that he does not want to do. Any thoughts?

but if he doesn’t reapply for medicine he will still have a place studying something he now doesn’t want to do?

I would have thought a gap year with achieved grades & some work as a HCA or similar would be a good position for medical school applications.

He would have to give up the Imperial place to reapply.

Might be an idea to remind him that Imperial is twice as hard to get into than medicine.

Tricky

High level engineering courses often do not accept Gap Years, as so much maths and physics knowledge gets forgotten in a year

Did he do the right a levels for both engineering and Medicine? (Am guessing Maths, Physics, Biology and Chemistry? 4 a levels?)

He must have done very well to get into Imperial.

If it was my son I'd see this as a wobble and encourage him to grasp with both hands the opportunity to do engineering at what is one of the top engineering uni's in the world

I thought that with a medicine personal statement his fifth choice will have to be something like chemistry or biomedical sciences. I dont think he can apply for engineering.

Yes it would be a related subject. Some Biomed degrees can transfer into Medicine later.

good point- although engineering would be preferred to chemistry/biomed...

He could register for UCAT now and then see what his grades are before finally making the decision. They are quite different career paths. He might want to get some relevant work experience to see whether he enjoys medicine. He might also want to try practising some UCAT questions.

He shouldn't take a place to study something he isn't interested in. My DH studied what his parents wanted him to study 30 years ago and he's STILL pissed off about it! Having said that, it might be worth deferring his engineering place, just in case he changes his mind again between now and whenever he can reapply.

He actually took the UCAT last August and scored 3200. Will have to do it again if he reapplies. Worried sick.

He needs to apply to do The UCAT now, just in case. I'd suggest making no decisions until results day and if he's still set on medicine then decline Imperial. He'll need a good UCAT and BMAT (if likes those Unis). He'll need some work experience to talk about at interview. And he'll need to be prepared for a long process. It's not like other subjects where you put your UCAS in and wait for offers.
You need to apply strategically - look at selection for interview, not admissions criteria. Offers won't be made until v likely Jan - March (this year they are still being given out).
Pop over to the Medicine 2023 thread for more advice. It's a tough 5/6 years so he must be sure. Just don't do another degree with the intention of transferring (v v rare) or doing graduate medicine (bonkers competitive)

@Jalapenopepper wow, he got almost full marks on UCAT, that is amazing. Hopefully he can do it again as that will secure him lots of interviews (if he applies carefully)

Your fifth choice does not have to be related at all. As I found out by my indecisive dd this year!
dd applied for vet med, put down four choices and refused to put a fifth as it was vet or nothing! Then 2 months later she says she’s changed her mind and wants to do a maths related course, she phones new chosen uni, tells them she’s made a mistake with her original choices and can she apply, she’s told yes and can she send them a new personal statement! She used her old statement to say all the work exp she’d had made her realise it wasn’t what she wanted. Offered new course next day. With higher requirements than vet med!!! But it’s her decision!

Former STEM acc DS admissions tutor here. In my subject my School is in the bunch ranked just below COWI.

This sounds really difficult for everyone. First, to confirm PPs, you cannot reapply to UCAS if you have merely deferred your place. You must withdraw from your place first. We aren’t keen on gap years in STEM, through fear that the maths background is being forgotten. (I think this fear is misplaced, but there it is.). If your DS gives up his Imperial place, it is likely gone for good. If he really doesn’t want to do Engineering that is no great loss, so the question is - how sound is this change of heart? If he is not sure, he could come to regret it horribly.

I am no expert on applying to medical school but I have the sense that here on MN the planning usually takes years. Does your DS already have the A level subjects and grades he needs? That UCAT score looks superb. I suspect he can do it again. What about the extracurriculars he will need? Does he already have some of them? How will it be regarded if he is only starting to acquire important features of his application during his gap year? I have no idea, so my questions shouldn’t sound pessimistic. But I think your DS needs the answers to inform his decision.

Yes, he will need to do the UCAT again. The mark is good for just one application cycle.

My DD was torn between engineering and medicine but in the end decided to go for medicine and then intercalate, at Imperial, in biomedical engineering. The combination is strong and she still has the option of going onto a Masters or PhD in engineering if she wants. (I think there were a number of PhD places associated with her intercalation.)

Biomedical engineering is a really broad subject, with a lot of cutting edge science going on, so there should be something to suit most STEM types.

I assume options might include

1. seeing if he could transfer to biomedical engineering - I think various engineering degrees have a common first year. Then graduate medicine.


2. a bit underhand but start Imperial and then apply for medicine. People regularly apply via UCAS whilst at university when they realise they have made a mistake with their initial course/university. It is also not unknown for people to do this when they want to reapply to Oxbridge but are worried about giving up their Imperial place. A few are successful each year and restart their first year at Cambridge with the advantage of a year at Imperial under their belt. No obvious reason why you could not do this for medicine. You have started so don’t have the problem of an open UCAS application that you need to withdraw from.

That said if he really wants to study medicine I think he should withdraw and reapply. He sounds as if he is very bright. As long as he has reasonable communication skills and applies strategically (in his case probably to BMAT schools as well as UCAT ones as some are actually looking for students with research potential ) he should get a place. Having grades in hand helps.

As he already has UCAT scores from this cycle, if he does withdraw, he should be able to apply for clearing places in medicine if any come up this summer. (The rumour is that exam boards are clamping down on grade inflation and there are likely to be quite a lot who miss their offers.)

I'd be grilling him as to what has made him switch to Medicine and to think about the current experiences of junior doctors:

massive drop out after qualification
Current vote for industrial action
Lots of burnout
Living bursary campaign for med students

It's not currently a massively appealing career. NHS pensions authority has told doctors contacting them to retire they have to wait as they are inundated with requests.

@AnnaMagnani DS's take on why dropout rates are high for med is that people go into medicine without realising what it actually takes. On his part, he has been volunteering in medical and non-medical settings since age 13 (DofE, scouts) and is not phased by the workload, hours or responsibility.

Anna, so far and she is approaching her final year of medical school, DD has no regrets. Friends went to Oxbridge and on to the City and are earning enough to start buying their London flats. She thinks what they do sounds boring and is socially very narrow. There is a vast range of careers within medicine available to her.

She is aware some are not happy, and indeed some were unhappy since first year. It is not a career for everyone. Her first piece of advice to a friend starting grad medicine was to stay clear of the moaners, otherwise there was a risk they would drag you down.

i know several doctors my age who have had genuinely fulfilling careers. I am sure that the NHS is a deeply frustrating organisation to work for, but I suspect the problems are about more than money. The important thing is to do as much research as you can before applying. MN argues that any work experience, such as a cafe or shop is as useful as direct care experience. I disagree. A summer spent in a care home, a week spent at a holiday camp for the physically disabled (Phab) and weekly sessions helping disabled swimmers helped a lot in working out whether medicine was something she wanted to do. (Though probably would not help a medical school application- which I think is a pity.) She is still involved in the latter two activities.

from my perspective starting at imperial and then applying for med sounds great- I'll ask him to explore further.

@needsmoresleep forgive the ignorance but how exactly does one go about finding these summer opportunities? is there a website? DS is still 17 and turns 18 in august

@Jalapenopepper be v careful with that strategy. Universities don't like poaching and if they find out he's already started a degree elsewhere they will reject him immediately. Doesn't show commitment to medicine.
It may also have implications with student finance.