Medicine 2023 Entry - Part 3

[opoponax]

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

My DD also had an interview today (not Manchester though). She's feeling positive about it afterwards. Already had abother interview, so still waiting to hear from 2 choices - but very few interviews have come out from them yet so still have fingers crossed she'll be invited for interview!

Well done everyone on the interviews. Keep going !!

Don't want to derail but loans are stupidly unfair. You borrow £80,000 but after 10 years, and repayments at 9% you will owe £125,000 (accounting for pay rises but not inflation). You will never get the debt to go down. Over a lifetime it had been calculated that you will repay over £250,000 as a doctor - unless your parents are rich because then you'll have to repay exactly nothing.
I have no idea how this is deemed acceptable. So I'm afraid, personally, I'd go abroad and never return. But then I'm just a poor teacher (who went to Uni when it was free and got a full grant, of which I had to repay not a penny).

Agree that the level of debt for medical students is beyond ridiculous... these are jobs that are desperately needed in our society and this is how we show our gratitude to the people who train for years to be able to look after us all! I really think that doctors who remain in the NHS throughout their careers shouldn't have to pay back the fees at all, at least not over and above the level of a normal degree course. It isn't like anyone is going into medicine for the money, especially not when you look at what junior doctors earn after years of training

Anyway, that aside, dd seems to have really enjoyed her interview today. She has an interview for Barts next week, then the interminable wait for an offer.

😊 so lovely to hear of all the interviews going well. Keep smiling

Thanks for the information about the loans. My DS is not necessarily planning to move or work abroad yet (-: but I wouldn't want the loan to stop him if he wants to do this one day. There are many NHS professionals who are also from other countries. There should be some freedom of movement.
I am sure he would prefer to pay his loan back if this ever happens. However I also believe that students/parents should not have to pay an unreasonable amount of money to study at university. So the loan worries me. I need to start earning more money to be able to afford the boys uni education. This is a big pressure. It would be nice not to have to worry about this. Plus I am very concerned about a career at the NHS now. Hope things will get better when our DCs graduate.

Does Liverpool has role play station? Can't find information on their MMI structure

@kk10 if it's not easily found, it's probably not shared publicly. Liverpool may or may not give DC more information on the stations directly before interview.

@opoponax managed to find their YT video where they said that they don't use role play

@opoponax Hello … where did you find their YT video ?
TIA

It is fantastic to hear of all the interviews and I wish all your offspring the very best.

Following a very interesting observation on another thread by a frontline doctor who has interviewed prospective students for the past decade and a subsequent response by @mumsneedwine giving an example of how her DD has been patronised by candidates, I just wanted to offer a 'cautionary tale' of being interviewed by current med students.

My DD is a GEM final year student who has interviewed for the past 3 years and she would wholly agree that some candidates let their guard down and behave in a way that they wouldn't with other interviewers. This week, she was interviewing a confident, articulate candidate who became more and more arrogant and flippant as the questioning went on - in her experience this is not a particularly unusual situation so she wasn't phased by this - until the candidate started to flirt with her! Her medical school use a 'card system' for any concerns when interviewing - a yellow card will indicate a concern but a red card in any station will mean that that candidate will not be receving an offer regardless of how well they have performed in the other aspects/stations of the interview. Needless to say, this particular candidate was red-carded...

As the original poster stated - current med students are often the harshest critics - they are, after all, actually experiencing the course - and understand only too well what is required. Having said all that, I am quite sure that this is completely unneccessary advice to the vast majority of candidates!

@avenuekleber some people are extraordinary!

Didn't write for a while. Thank you very much the parents on this thread, who wished my Oxford wannabe a successful outcome on this Monday! even though you are strangers on the internet, your words are still truly supportive - all of us united to help our kids enter this profession.
The decision came - rejection. Sooner or later in life we all get rejected, that's a fact and we have to learn to accept it - academically, professionally or in a relationship. The problem lies in the injustice of this rejection. And that's what did concern me, however I decided not to write about it straight after the interview in December, though evn then I had a feeling about it. I come from a very modest and poor background, and believed strongly in the importance of education. And so did my family who I married to and among them were more than 1 who went to Oxford through their intelligence and hard study.
3 out of 4 interviews of my DD were all right/good, the 4th was horrible. Not primarily from the point of view of how difficult it was (that too) but in the treatment of her as a student and a human being. The tutor was interrupting her answers - and we are talking about personal questions even, not academic. Very irritated from the start, I understand it was already evening and he was tired, however surely that shouldn't set the tone of the whole interview. My DD said he made her feel like an idiot and seemed openly hostile. There were lovely girls - current students - who spoke to her on zoom before the interview started to make her feel welcome, who warned her and said explicitly that his behaviour might appear rude and irritated and he is known in the college for that. "Just try to ignore it". Well, it's rather difficult to ignore it when this person is responsible for the success of your application and a fellow of the college. I do regret now looking back recommending Oxford in the eyes of my child. And not because it's a rejection - sooner or later everyone has take it on the chin, like I said before. But I regret it in the way how this institution can shatter the self belief and confidence of children so easily and just walk away with it.
Probably it sounds dramatic but I am not writing all details - it's a public forum. I hope my post won't come across as a post of a sore loser: during the 1st interview of DD in a different med school the tutors were cold and distant and asked some tough questions but that was all; none of the criticisms I have written about above I could level against them.
And yes, academically my DD was in BMAT higher then 7 (both), all 10 "9"s in GCSE and from a state school, her "fault" was having an ACORN and POLAR both 5.
Having loved Oxford all my life, visiting it frequently, having Oxonians in extended family I now won't recommend this journey for my friend's kids who want to enter medicine. However, having never heard anything like this about Humanities or other STEM subjects - so I have to stay objective.
I know this post won't change anything but I am a human being and I am allowed to express my feeling and thoughts.
All the best to your DC in this journey.

Aren't they just. Had another absolute blinder this afternoon - asked the candidate whether they could give an example of self-directed learning (I'm paraphrasing the question) and the candidate proceeded to read his EPQ to her....🙄

@avenuekleber gives us hope that as long as our dc keep their heads down and give reasonable, if not amazing answers, there is a chance that they might get some offers.

@GoldieRetrieversRule1 at least she tried and she won't have to encounter him as a tutor, sounds as if he has a reputation. Feel sorry for the current students having to justify his behaviour. Hoefully the other three will come through for her.

@GoldieRetrieversRule1 I am so sorry your DD had such a tough experience at Oxford. Hopefully her other interviews have been less rude - unfortunately some can be quite brusk and seem unfriendly. Personally I'm not a great Oxbridge medicine fan as I think the courses are very heavy on science and less on patient contact, but that's just my opinion. I really hope she gets an offer from a much nicer Uni 😊.

@Unexpecteddrivinginstructor - you've hit the nail on the head. As a general rule candidates don't want to stand out as it is usually for the wrong reasons! One very basic criteria that DD applies at the outset is whether she would want that individual as a course mate/placement partner - nothing more scientific than that!

@GoldieRetrieversRule1 I am afraid that the whole process is flawed - DS1 failed his Sheffield interview first time round because the student doing the "knowledge of course and city" did not like him for some reason (he knew plenty about the course and city and would not have said anything inappropriate) and DS2 had a horrible interviewer for his first station in his Manchester interview last year which threw him off balance for the other stations. People on TSR talked about Liverpool interviewers with such strong accents that they just could not understand the questions. I have talked before about how the Oxbridge process draws applicants in and makes them fall in love with the place, leaving them bereft when, as most do, they are rejected. Hope that the bad interview experience makes her think that she did not really want to be there anyway.

That was exactly dd's conclusion regarding the Oxbridge medical courses. Don't get me wrong, she loves science, but for her, the lack of patient contact - and more importantly, the absence of any real focus on patients in the way the Oxbridge academics talked about their courses - was a deal breaker. I studied in Cambridge myself (not medicine!) and dd had always intended to apply there from a very early age, but in the end, when she looked into the detail of what they were actually offering, she decided to go elsewhere.

I really loved my time at Cambridge and I'm grateful for the opportunities it gave me, but I do get annoyed by the excessive focus on these two institutions to the exclusion of all others. No young person should feel like a failure for not getting into Oxbridge... it's a bit of a lottery and it doesn't necessarily reflect how deserving they were. And @GoldieRetrieversRule1, I am still smarting about how stupid one of my Cambridge interviewers made me feel more than 30 years later. I very nearly went to another university because of it!

And yes, I agree the whole process is flawed. Especially the excessive focus on UCAT/BMAT. DD did fantastically on one of these tests and much less well on the other. I'm not convinced that either is a particularly reliable measure of how good a doctor she will be, but for so many institutions, the results of these tests alone will determine whether or not they get an interview. It is what it is, I suppose, but it's frustrating for the kids who are working so hard to get through it all.

I’m not sure about the UCAT/BMAT disparity. I think with all the inflated GCSE and A levels grades recently these tests hold some valuable insights into students real academic abilitIes.

They have to differentiate them somehow. Grades will all be great. Not sure I can think of another fairer method.

Can I join in? My son will be sitting his GCSEs this summer and is planning to do medicine.
We just got home from his sixth form evening and both biology and chemistry teams seem keen for him to proceed to A level. He's got 7s in his mocks for both subjects so far and I think he can probably bump them up to 8s.

The sticking point is the third A level - he's not great at maths - probably end up with a 6 and he doesn't fancy physics A level one iota, so he's doing German, as well as an EPQ on the Cold War (don't ask...he loves a bit of Cold War).

I know lots of med schools now are quite keen on more rounded candidates, but would he be better off doing psychology as this third? Just to get in a bit more stats and science? It's a toss up between tearing him away from German (he's doing three language GCSEs), which he will do really well in and steering him towards more sciencerering (what we call it).

Thanks ladies...

@Nursenomore2023 I agree that UCAT / BMAT is at least a level playing field, but I think TAGs have certainly made things more difficult - certainly, it would have given some high achieving students another option if they didn't get a high UCAT/BMAT score - they could have targeted (and stood out at) GCSE heavy unis. That's been taken away by TAGS - everyone has top grades. I've said this before but I was stood in a queue in summer 2021 overhearing 2 teachers discussing how they were awarding TAGs at their respective schools with one mocking the other for being quite strict about how they were doing it (a one off controlled assessment per subject) - he said at his school they were just getting students to take test after test so even if they didn't do well in all of them, they'd have enough "evidence" to give them 9s. I know it was more controlled than that and there had to be some credibility to results, but it certainly wasn't fair across the board.

I agree that a 2 hour exam is arbitary though and not necessarily reflective of the qualities our DC have to make them suitable for a career in medicine. And don't get me started on the lunacy of having to apply without even knowing how you've done in one of them!!

@Africa2go as a teacher who made their students sit many actual exams, I get v v v v v mad at how some schools decided to award TAgS. It is a scandal. Hopefully after this year it will all even out again.
@NewMinouMinou the third A level can be in anything, so choose the one he'll get the best grade in (eg. Enjoy the most).

@NewMinouMinou
Im not as knowledgable as other posters about the process but DD also didn’t want to do maths. She chose biol/ Chem and English lit ( and an EPQ) and that doesn’t seem to have affected her chances- or at least not for the unis she was interested in. She has loved the combination which is a huge plus . I would think a language would be a positive- but others will have more insight.