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.

@kk10 also assuming that the scores follow approximately a normal distribution, 2750 is about the top 20% but the curve will decrease fairly rapidly between 8th and 9th decile, so 2830 is about the top 13%, there will be about 2500 people below him before you get to the cut off, although obviously they won't all apply to Southampton or Manchester.

@Unexpecteddrivinginstructor 10% are in 9th decile, 10% in 8th etc. Its why it's such a skewed set of results.

Yes, but it is highly likely to follow a normal distribution, virtually all IQ tests do, although whether that is because intelligence is normally distributed is another question. It means that the tails are longer so the number of people between 2500 and 2510 will be quite a lot, there won't though be many between say 3100 and 3110. This means that kk10's son is substantially higher in terms of the number of people than the relevant cut offs.

Sort of. UCAT doesn't really follow the norms as each decile has 10% of applicants in it. So the same number of applicants fall into each decile. So 30% have got 2710 or more and 30% have got less than 2400 or less. It's hard to know how far into the decile you are, eg. In top decile 29% could get over 3,000 but next score down is 2,940 and that becomes they decile cut off. Hope that makes sense.

But 2800+ should be absolutely fine for Southampton 😊😊

Helpful tool on Ucat stats page. They can enter their Ucat score to see the exact percentage they are in.

They will have standardised the scores to a normal distribution. The deciles are just the way Pearsons communicates it. From looking at the data I estimate the standard deviation is just under 300, so kk10's son is in about the top 13% with lots of people until they get to the 8th decile cut off. The curve at that point drops off quite steeply with each 10 mark increase.

I think it is a normal distribution. If you play with the percentile thing:
3180-3600 = top 1% (so 420 spread)
3110-3170 = next 1% (60 spread)
3060-3100 = next 1% (40 spread)
3020-3050 = next 1% (30 spread)
2990-3010 = next 1% (20 spread)
2960-2980= next 1% (20 spread)

2500 spans 2 percentiles (2490 is 49th, 2510 is 52nd)

@Cratos @Unexpecteddrivinginstructor @mumsneedwine ucat site says ds did better than 87% candidates

@kk10 that's brilliant. Should be easily enough for his choices

I bet that is a boost for him and should mean that he gets lots of interviews.

@kk10 she researched the way the course was taught and what life at Manchester was like, eg extracurricular clubs like sport. Read a bit around ethics and medicine related stories in the news. She felt it was the most laid back out of all her interviews.

@Thecatinthehat123 Thank you. How was role playing? I understand you can't tell the station. Just wondering about level of difficulty. Must be alright for your dd though if she got the offer :)

@Unexpecteddrivinginstructor oh dear! Lots of people within same 13% doesn't sound good :/ My stats understanding is not good :(

@kk10 36,374 people took the test, so 13% is 4,728. Only 4,728 people in the country got the same score or higher. I don't know how many people Southampton interview, but if it is 800, more than 17% of the people with that score would need to apply for it to be a problem for your DS. Several people on here have high scores and I don't think any are planning to apply to Southampton, also some of those scores will have been achieved by dentists, so you really should not worry, he will get interviews at both Southampton and Manchester if he applies.

Yes and there are 7500 places for medicine, so if it just went on ucat score he would get a place. He has really strong stats, and I imagine being a gap year student he has some work experience to draw on in interviews. I don't know what his score was last year but he should get interviews for most UCAT unis with that score this year.

@Unexpecteddrivinginstructor I wouldn’t bother with expensive courses, personally. They may be helpful for an OxBridge application, but otherwise they are a waste of money. They don’t teach you anything you can’t find on the internet for free! Plenty of handy YouTube videos. It may, however, be worth booking an hour of interview tutoring from a current medical student studying at a medical school of particular interest to the applicant, I know of more success stories from this through fellow students than from people paying for expensive courses! Some student will tutor for as little as £10, up to about £50 for those most experienced, but it’s not a necessity and entirely personal preference. Mock interviews with medics they don’t know will also be absolutely fine and possibly the most valuable of all!

@Monkey2001 @Unexpecteddrivinginstructor I am so grateful to have found this helpful group. Last night we threw in sgul in the mix. We ruled it out initially due to its poor offer rate. DS attended their open day and liked campus in the hospital and friendly vibe. Would be good to hear interview experience from someone here. Ucat 2830, B2, achieved AAA*, volunteering in Barts and MIND for three months now. Done GP and community mental health work experience. We would prefer sgul over Manchester and Southampton because of its closeness to home

Hello everyone,

Good Morning.
How is everyone doing with finalizing the list?
We submitted ours yesterday ( now it is with school).
Here are the choices we have put

1. UCL
2. Imperial
3. Southampton
4. Leicester
5. Southampton Biomedical Engineering. (Non Med)

Now it is wait for the next stage 🙂

@medParent you must be relieved. Good luck with the process and fingers crossed.

We are still thinking. I think we have only about a day left at this stage or less (-:

Hello, Leicester pre-interview score 92.19%. Would this be a strategic choice? Thanks.

Could we please receive some more advice about Medical School curriculums 🙏

I think what we are after for our DS is early clinical exposure and a curriculum that is not too crowded. He does well with exams but we are not sure how he would do with essays and research. A traditional course will probably not suit him. He is confident and enjoys interaction with people.
If he doesn't have enough patient contact for 3 years, he may lose interest. Also he might struggle with high independent learning expectations (like PBL perhaps) since he likes his social life and sports.

@Cratos I think he might need to change his expectations a bit, to be honest. All medicine curriculums are crowded, as they have a pretty limited amount of time to learn all the classroom/lab stuff before being more-or-less full-time clinical. All courses have high independent learning expecations, and he should expect to have to work about 35-40 h a week, taking all scheduled teaching and directed/independent self-study into account.

There are two seemingly mutually contradictory statements in your post: "A traditional course will probably not suit him. He is confident and enjoys interaction with people", and "Also he might struggle with high independent learning expectations (like PBL perhaps)". Any course that isn't "traditional" (in the sense of a large proportion of time spent in lectures or other didactic teaching sessions, strong direction towards learning specific points) will be more dependent on students' taking responsibility for defining what detail they need to learn things in, what sources to use, etc. Students who want less stringent independent learning expectations - and particularly those who rely on cramming for exams - tend to favour more traditional courses, although they can come unstuck on these if they think all they have to do is memorise what's in lectures.

Medical students do have a reputation for getting involved in a lot of activities (sports/dance/music/drama, volunteering, partying) but they do this in addition to - not instead of - long hours of study.

@TODAYISTHEDAYICLEAN is that a score of 59? Last year the cut off was 59.5, but it is difficult to know what might happen this year because last year they misjudged their achieved applicant offer and had a lot of people with guaranteed interviews, so there may not have been many interviews available for Y13s. 59.5 is full academic points and 2750+ UCAT and it seems unlikely that it could be higher than that. I expect the cut off to be 59 or 59.5, but there is a lot of uncertainty when there is a big change in admissions scoring. So a little risky, but I think it will probably be OK.

@kk10 is SGUL still doing their weird asynchronous interview which you do in a certain time window and upload? I have no idea whether it is good, but it is at least fair - both my DSs experienced MMI stations with people they did not like, at least everyone has the same experience with the asynchronous ones, and that is luck of the draw.

@Cratos there are sample timetables for a lot of courses around. Lovely Leicester was really straight-forward, 9-1 Monday to Friday and you can choose when you do the rest of the time, although there will be a significant amount of independent study. I think they all have a reasonable amount of clinical contact from Y1 apart from Oxbridge (and St Andrews). There are links to "what is it like at......" posts from students most medical schools here. lifeofamedic.com/2020/05/31/welcome-to-the-virtual-medicine-open-day/

@Cratos meant to say that medics have to make the most of the first year at most universities as the work ramps up.

DS2 submitted last week
Cambridge
Birmingham
Exeter
Sheffield
Imperial (non med and will get a straight rejection!)
UCAT at 94% and I wanted him to ditch Cambridge but he is determined.
Had mock MMIs at school until 9pm.last evening and is now focused on BMAT and the Camb supplementary form....
Started volunteering at Music for Memory with dementia patients last week.... other work exp done in year 11 and 12.