Medicine 2023 Entry - Part 2

[opoponax]

Anyone out there with DC applying or reapplying for Medicine 2023, please join a friendly thread for mutual support and useful advice.

Ditto. Nothing like that required at our test centre. Good luck to your DS tomorrow @Cratos

Thank you for your replies and good wishes. We are all a bit stressed.

cratos
No mask or vaccination status required when DS or any of his friends did theirs! Good luck!!

Just reading through and is this for parents of school leavers applying for medicine, or parents who are medicine applicants (or both)? I am currently studying medicine and I am also an interviewer for a UK medical school, I am not on here often but if you have any questions feel free to fire away and when I’m next back on here I’ll try to pick them up!

Good luck to your ds Cratos. Likewise no masks required here.

@AliceUK although open to all it is probably more parents supporting their children. The children are all on TSR and reddit! Dd is applying strategically so on paper should get some interviews. In terms of interview preparation what would you say most people do? We have been told at some point there might be some interview preparation through school, but some schools are still interviewing online. Any top tips for preparation?

Thank you for good wishes. Finally, we have a UCAT score and we would be grateful for your advice please.

PREDICTED Yr 13
Chemistry A* Star
Biology A
Math A

ACHIEVED Yr 12
Spanish A* Star

GCSE
10 GCSE - Grade 9
1 GCSE - Grade 7
Includes triple science

UCAT
Total - 2960

Verbal reasoning - 590
Decision making - 760
Quantitative Reasoning - 740
Abstract Reasoning - 870
Situational Judgement - Band 1

WORK EXPERIENCE
Not very strong

• Recently started - Care Home and Hospital Volunteering
• Refereeing

Always attended state school but Not eligible for contextual offers or points.

1- Which schools should we avoid ? Should we avoid Nottingham due to low VR?
We are based in the South of England.

2- Would you recommend the BMAT test ? Interested in applying to Brighton Medical School.

3- We are indecisive about the 5th choice. Does having or not having a 5th choice effects Clearing at all ?

Thank you very much for your advice.

Hi @Cratos. Congratulations to your DS - great UCAT score! His stats are great overall and I think the only ones to avoid are Exeter (in previous years you need 3 A Stars predicted A level grades) and Keele (heavy on work experience). Nottingham looks fine by my calculation - I scored him at 136 and their cut off last year was 129. The Band 1 SJT is a huge help there! Depends on how your DS feels about applying blind really vis-a-vis BMAT. My DD also has a strong UCAT and there is not a BMAT medical school she likes enough to be applying blind - doesn't want Oxbridge or London so that doesn't leave that many. I think it would be different if she really loved one of them though. If your son loves BSM, it might be worth it for him. I would keep it to one BMAT choice with that UCAT score though. Re 5th options, if he wanted to reapply in the event of no offers, it doesn't make much sense to have a 5th non-med option. You can enter clearing if you have an offer from your 5th choice but you have to reject it first - just a bit of extra admin. The only advantage of putting a 5th choice is that they get an offer at the same time as their non-med friends - it can feel like a bit of a desert waiting for months for med offers to come through. Good luck with the choices.

@Cratos fantastic score. I make your Notts score 126 so v close to previous cut offs, but last year we think was 127. There are many other safe options though. See below for spreadsheet.
If loves Brighton then BMAT worth a go, but know that you can pretty much guarantee 4 UCAT interviews if choose carefully.

See, Monkey is less tired than me and can add up properly. Notts is certainly good !

I'm actually going to go against my normal advice about a 5th choice. Normally it doesn't matter, but with the rumblings of extra places it is possible that Medicine could appear in Extra. Happened a few year ago when Lancaster got given some extra slots. Advantage of having a 5th in place is speed. Easy to reject and apply via Extra than have to apply for a 5th, wait and then reject.
I'm only guessing about extra places but lots of political noise. However unless they increase the F1 positions it's a bit pointless.

Dd, year 13, has ucat score 2820 band 1, is very keen on Bristol but unsure if her ucat is high enough.

predicted 3 x a* for bio,chem and maths a levels. Gcse grades good too.

Should she risk it?

3 other choices Plymouth, Cardiff, Birmingham.

also considering Nottingham and Southampton.

Hi @FullOfDoom We made the decision when DS applied (he has just started at Nottingham after applying for a deferred place and taking a gap year) that we would put in one aspirational/risky one - and he too tried for Bristol. Now he didn't get it, UCAT had shot up, but he said - given that he was really keen on it, that he would have kicked himself if in fact his UCAT had been enough to get an interview at Bristol and he didn't at least try.
So we took the view that we would take it as our risky one, but only one risky one (just as other people were taking the risk on a BMAT university such as Oxbridge without knowing their score, but usually only one if their UCAT was enough to get interviews) - so we didn't go for Birmingham, that would also have been on his list was it not too risky. It was obvious to me at least that without any widening participation factors, he was not likely to get an interview. They have jiggled it slightly, but be very careful of Birmingham, as their calculator says "likely to get an interview" when it is absolutely obvious it is no such thing. My sense was, at least a couple of years ago, that Birmingham and Bristol moved roughly in tandem, so if the UCAT is risky for Bristol, it is probably also risky for Birmingham (and especially given that there are a lot of people with very good GCSEs because of TAGs).
And unless your DD is Welsh, I confess I would avoid Cardiff. They are very opaque about how they decide who to interview, and with that UCAT you should have much less risky choices. You haven't said what the VR portion of the UCAT was, but with the Band 1, your DD ought to have a very good chance of an interview at Nottingham and with that UCAT Sheffield would seem reasonably certain as well (DS applied to Bristol, Nottingham, Sheffield and Liverpool, had interviews as the last three and offers from Nottingham and Sheffield).

@opoponax
@mumsneedwine
Thank you very much for your comments. We are grateful for the feedback. He will think about whether or not he wants to try Bmat. He has not yet started preparing for it yet so he perhaps doesn't have enough time. He was nervous at the beginning of his test and that is why he said his VR was not good enough since the test started with VR section.

@Cratos well done, great UCAT score. He should not be afraid of the BMAT, it is much more like conventional exams than UCAT. Do a couple of practice tests under timed conditions to see if he is getting near the cut off for previous years before he finalises his choices. I expect the number of applicants for BSMS and Lancaster will be down due to blind applications. Anywhere except Edinburgh, Exeter, Keele, Sunderland, Cambridge looks fine.

@FullOfDoom I would be very surprised if the Bristol UCAT goes below 2850 but, as @Bimkom says, if he wants it enough to apply even though he probably won't get an interview, then of course it is his decision. Has he scored himself for Birmingham? I agree that Cardiff is dodgy unless you are Welsh or Widening Participation, I assume he has 8x8/9 at GCSE, has Cardiff released their new scoring algorithm yet? That might change things. Nottingham - have you calculated the score? Southampton is fine.

@Cratos has your DS already registered for the BMAT? The deadline is tomorrow (September 30th).

Anyone looked at Cardiff's website? Looks like they have suspended the Medicine pages pending the "big reveal".

Anyone going to Newcastle open day this Saturday? The planned train strike is not making public transport from London easy. We called them yesterday to ask if there would be a recording of the medicine talk but the person we spoke to didn't think so. DD has visited Newcastle and knows about the course from DS being there but it would be a good opportunity to ask questions about things like interview/offer plans for this year.

@MarchingFrogs really good point. We only registered 2 days ago. Thank you for reminding me of this. Very kind.

The Newcastle presentations are here https://www.youtube.com/c/StudyMedicalSciencesNCL, there was a link on the medical school website too last year.

This link is better
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5GbV4KaL1d9mGqZiXPYcduzDQryHD2Pd

@Monkey2001
thank you for your advice about BMAT. He has 1 day to decide since the cancellation deadline is tomorrow morning.

We started considering Bristol as one of his choices now. But still researching.

I am surprised Cardiff is taking so long to reveal their admission criteria. Many schools internal application deadlines have passed I believe.

Also Manchester would be an option if your DD prefers bigger city universities. Depends how she feels about PBL though
I've often read that candidates are unsure about Manchester because of PBL.

DD is at Manchester and PBL really wasn't a main feature of the course. She too was unsure about it and therefore had Manchester as her 4th choice. She had 3 interviews, and had the best interview experience there. She had 3 offers, visited all and Manchester came top. Her reason was that Manchester was so much more than a medical school. It offers amazing technology, many opportunities to expand in other fields, networking, intercalating etc...

She did 3 years and then applied for a PhD research programme offered jointly between the Uni and Cancer Medical Research. The PhD is paid for, she gets a very good stipend, and upon completion, they will repay her 3 years tuition. She is now in her 2nd year of 4 or 5, and loving it. She works in an amazing lab with brilliant colleagues and tutors. She will go back to finish her medical school after her PhD and will then decide if she continues with the foundation years or stick to research.

She's very pleased that she picked Manchester.

One thing to be aware though is the school is about 1/2h to an hour from the centre and student tend to have their social life around the campus. Also, although some students will get placements in the Manchester based hospitals, people with families or affiliated with the hospital's get preference. The majority of the cohort will be assigned to Preston. DD lived it there, students are not seen as a nuisance and are amazingly well supported, but if being in the centre of Manchester is a motivation, it's good to know that information.

Just to add that at least a few years back Manchester didn't look at SJT at all, which is why DD picked it as she got....band4! Still to this day we don't know what happened as she'd only ever scored 1s and once 2 in all her practice and was her strongest area. She's scored top of her year group in similar tests since she started Medicine.

She was of course totally devastated at the time but ironically, it turned out to be a blessing as it reduced the choice available! She had a good UCAT and BMAT score.

@Manchesterrocks glad to hear your DD is thriving at Manchester.

My son at St Andrews is going to Manchester next year and has been allocated Preston, but I think only about 80/400 from Manchester are allocated there, so it may just feel like a majority! After being initially disappointed, he discovered that the teaching and pass rate is really good in Preston, so is reconciled to the commute. He is interested in the MBPhD programme too, they have offered him a shadowing weekend over the Christmas break - maybe he will shadow your DD!

Did she live in Manchester or Preston for Y3? If Manchester I would be interested to hear how she found the commute - looks expensive, but manageable to me.

Hi Monkey, I'd forgotten that St Andrews students moved to Manchester.

She lived in Preston, mainly because it was so much cheaper for very nice accommodation. Hers was just at the end of the hospital road.

She loved Preston. She was there in the midst of COVID and yet was treated just like all other clinicians. Consultants are great and do take their teaching role very seriously. There was a good student community. She will be back and looking forward to it.

It's great that your DS is interested in the MBPhD programme. DD is doing research in myeloma. She did a placement in our local hospital in Haematology before applying to med school and vowed it was the field she wanted to evolve in and that never drifted. She is doing it in Manchester so back there for the duration. It would be fun if your DS was to shadow DD!