Medicine 2023 Entry - Part 4

[opoponax]

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

@Needmoresleep re pay, I think you may not have taken on the full impact of the austerity real terms pay cuts. As doctors are now earning around 2/3 of what they used to and have additional costs such as repaying student loans, paying fees and sitting exams at rates which have gone up with inflation, doctors will not be sending children to private school in future unless they have family money or income from private work. This generation of young doctors is being squeezed.

Cratos, completely off topic, but applying for top economics courses is just as tough, if not tougher. 4x A* including FM does not guarantee a place. And for the more technical/mathematical economics courses the University does matter as you cover more ground.

There are lots of threads on this with some very informed academics contributing. Like medicine treat it might be best treating it as a two year process and be happy if you get one of the top 4 (Cambridge/LSE/UCL Warwick and now probably including the new Imperial course.) If it is 25% chance on each you then increase your odds of getting one. Cambridge is not automatically the best regarded course, though they serve some good dinners.

Another read across. DS read Economics at LSE (place on the final day, the other three rejected him) and DD is just about to finish medicine at Bristol. Awful at the time but we got through it.

I left out the big one. Pensions. DH somehow seems to be working in a bit of the public sector that has a defined contribution rather than final salary pension. He earned more than when he worked in the Civil Service but not that much more. (We needed the money at the time, and never thought about it.) Coming up to retirement it is clear that his pension will be nowhere near the pension enjoy by our public sector parents, indeed less in actual terms than than the widows pension my mother enjoyed when she passed away aged 90. DH used to talk about retiring around the same age as his father did (55) but has already delayed retirement once to 60. And is now talking of extending it a bit more. And he is lucky in that the public sector is more relaxed about age. DB lost his (very) high paying job in his early 50s because of a merger, and though he has picked up some consultancy and non exec positions since, it has been interesting to see how difficult it has been for him to adjust his lifestyle.

In 20 years time it is likely that retired doctors and teachers on index linked pensions, especially those living in cheaper parts of the country, will be far better off than many who were big earners in the past. And better off in the sense that we never placed much import on a new car, an exotic holiday or new stuff, so don't feel the impact of new enforced thriftiness.

@Monkey2001 that is scary. Sounds more difficult than Medicine.

Do the other Unis you mentioned have similar requirements to Oxbridge (interview, assignment submission & external tests etc. ) ? Why are they rejected ? Is this clear ?

My DS is not attending private school so it may be very tough. Perhaps other subjects should be looked at too as you suggested. Not sure how clever he is either (in comparison to others) but he is doing very well at school and he is more organised than the other DS.

@Needmoresleep thank you for your advice. You must be relieved that you are all at the end of this journey but I know another journey is about to start.
I will keep all this in mind. Did the other Unis tell him why he was rejected ?

It is sheer numbers. He was applying with five A levels including 4A* and this was a decade ago. Even back then his school were advising that it was such a lottery that he should apply for all four and be happy to get one, and to treat it as a two year process. So not unlike medicine. I understand that the new Imperial course had a 7% acceptance rate. Except you have more competition from top international students in the mix. (Numbers for medicine are capped.)

DD finishes this summer and DS completes his PhD next year and has a summer internship lined up with a dream employer. If you get through it, facing fierce competition at 17 is a useful experience. There are plenty of rejections further along the path.

Dd seemed happy with AQA bio this afternoon

said it was a real application paper

Hello folks. My daughter will apply to medicine this October. Can I ask what your offspring put as their 5th choice?

@W0tnow if they're not going to take it then it really doesn't matter. Most students will try again if they don't get in the first time. But if they are not sure about medicine then just put a course they would like doing - but not as an option for graduate medicine as it's far harder and more expensive than taking a year out.

Mine put cancer biomedicine at UCL because she thought it looked interesting. She did get an offer, but don't think she would have taken it even if she hadn't been offered any medicine places...it would have been a gap year all the way in that scenario.

So I agree with @mumsneedwine that it doesn't really matter, because most kids who really want to do medicine won't give up at the first hurdle.

I think the only reason to put a fifth one is if she doesn't get any offers and then wants to go for Extra, although medicine is rarely in there or clearing. Most who want to do medicine will just apply again with more experience and known grades.

The other reason to put a 5th choice is to get an offer when all your friends have them! Neither of mine accepted their 5th, both took gap years with complete confidence that it was what they wanted to do.

There is a growing trend to put Physician Associate course as a 5th option. At the moment it is an extremely good alternative to Medicine - the first 10 years out of university it looks like you get options which are in some ways better than those open to doctors (less moving around), and the pay and conditions are better. There is no current option to progress to being a consultant unless you do grad med, but that may change (much to the disgust of doctors!).

Agree with @Monkey2001 - DD felt a bit of confidence boost in getting her 5th choice offer (Med Chemistry at Edinburgh). The benefit that came from this is she was able to attend an offerholder's day at their expense (train ticket) to visit Edi which she'd also applied to for Med, whereas they didn't do a live offerholder day for Med. However, she had no intention of doing it, would have taken a year out if she got no offers.

Re fifth choice, it's also worth considering the possibility of not getting the required A-Level grades for medicine. It's one thing to take a year out to reapply with a year's extra experience and grades in hand, it's quite a different thing to reapply while resitting one or more A-Levels. Many medical schools won't accept resits, or won't accept applications while resitting, so you might be looking at a completely different set of medical schools from the first application. At this point, thinking about whether to do a different degree with the possibility of applying for medicine as a graduate might be realistic. But the first degree has to be useful in its own right, given the low probability and high expense of getting into medicine as a graduate. I frequently say biomedical sciences probably isn't the best choice for most people (medicinal chemistry, for example, has a far wider range of applications), but this is undermined by some medical schools favouring it as a first degree for graduate applications for medicine.

Wotnow, what interests your DD? There is a huge range of medicine related areas. DD was torn right up to the point of application between medicine and biomedical engineering. If she had had to reapply this would have been her fifth option, and indeed was her intercalation. Lots of pathways from there into medical research.

Anyone’s dc sit AQA biology p1 yesterday?

Dd said there was a lot of application required on the paper but thought it went well.

DS did edexcel B which he said was fine except for the last question which everyone thought made no sense!

DD did OCR biology B yesterday. She said it was OK but too much plant stuff which she finds really boring!

For those with offers have you been asked to provide evidence of vaccination status? I’m not sure how dd1 can prove the vaccinations she received when at secondary school? Can she ask her GP surgery to provide evidence? Will they have evidence if the vaccines were given at school?

We got a print out from the GP surgery.

@Lottsbiffandsmudge thank you. So helpful

@Thethingswedoforlove I think it depends on where your DC's school is as to whether the GP has records. Where we live, the only vaccine given at school was hvp, the others DD had at the GP. DS went to a different school which was in a different health authority and had the MMR booster etc at school. He kept getting called to go to the GP, I kept saying he'd had it at school. In the end I had to get something written from school and physically take it in to the GP and explain it all again, before it was put on his records. In the end it was fine, but more of a faff than it should have been!

@Pepermintea thabk you. We will go to the surgery and see what info we can obtain!

I'm guessing vast majority of our medicine 2023 people had chemistry this morning - dd says it wasn't as bad as she expected, hoping she didn't make too many of the silly mistakes that she's prone to. She is now at half way through! finishes 2 subjects this week too.

DS thought Chem (OCR B) was good today. He is only doing one this year, so is slightly thrown by how calm it feels!