Medicine 2025 entry

[HGC2]

Inspired and slightly terrified reading the 2023 entry threads and how much prep has to go into a medicine application!

DC wants to do medicine, probably in Scotland as a Scottish student, doing well at school but this doesn't seem to be enough! School has little / no experience of applications for medicine as a not fantastic state school!

Can anyone advise what work experience / volunteering they will need (currently volunteering at sports club with hope of job)
what are the spreadsheets that people talk about?
How do you strategically apply?

I have one child at uni and they just applied and got a place, this seems like a whole other level!

@maybemedmum just a thought, but all her choices have very different teaching styles. She might not be bothered, but worth a think.

@maybemedmum Congrats to your daughter, brilliant! Given she has the luxury of probably getting an interview at any of her choices, I would look at the statistics of converting an interview to an offer. You have a 30+% chance at some unis (Liverpool, Cardiff) according to their published statistics compared to, for example, 71% for contextual applicants at Birmingham, 72% at Bristol etc (that was for 2023 intake according to websites / FOI responses)

@maybemedmum congratulations to your DD, she’s got a fantastic UCAT result! Did she use Medify to practise & were her practise scores 3200+? My DD is really struggling, scores around 2600. She’s looked at lots of YouTube videos but can’t seem to increase her scores. Any advice? Her test is next week 😬

@Midnight001 sorry she's struggling - it's such a slog isn't it.
DD used Medify and did all 4 practice mocks on the UCAT website as well. She started with a score of 2800ish (she's lucky that the qualitative and verbal reasoning sections came fairly naturally). She did a load of extra work on AR (which remained significantly weaker than any of the other sections) and basically did loads of timed mocks - 2 a day in the week leading up to it. Has your DD got a mouse, and keyboard with numberpad? DD found the timing much easier once all that was set up. Today was at the top end of what she's been doing in practice.
How long has she been working on it for? I guess it's hard to know if it's just practice and more practice. I think most people do better in the real thing and she only needs to get it up a bit to have lots of options.

Thanks for the advice. She’s using a laptop so I’ll see if we can sort out a keyboard & mouse as it sounds like that might help. She’s only done 3 mocks so far so maybe it is practise. Going to be a busy week!

Good luck with it. I think lots of timed practice really helped DD.

The second graph is the key one for your DD maybemedmum. She doesn't need any contextualisation to help her. Incidentally the Oxford interviews are often a wall (not literally but could be!) of graphs which the applicant is asked to interpret.

Ah the graphs didn't carry forward.

I meant the one showing the proportion of A*. It's not possible to improve on 9 9s on that measure. It's absolutely top of the pops.

Thanks @pivoinerose, that makes a lot of sense and happy reading. (I didn't really understand graph 2 at first - my long-ago degree was in English and MFL 😂.)
Really appreciate all the help and support.

No problem :) Your DD clearly isn't complacent which is a great attribute but she should go into Oxford interviews not lacking confidence either. It would be ironic with her statistics, hence my possibly tedious insistence that they couldn't be any better than they are. The Pre-Clinical pages are extremely helpful (as you'd expect) for gearing up for interviews. All I would add is that they're relentlessly academic - not much leavening at all after possibly an initial pleasantry - and in that respect very different from most other med school interviews, even Imperial.

DD has her UCAT in a couple of weeks. She is consistently getting band 2 in SJT. She had 1 once ( on Medify). She is getting hung up on this, because she can’t seem to get a band 1 in practice. Does she really need to worry much? ( not that worrying helps much )

My DD's is next week and she is struggling a bit. Hard to know how to help her, as I know I would find it such a hard test myself. I think timing might be an issue. I am trying to work out what kind of score would not be too bad.

On the flip side, I spent the night in A&E last night and it was f'ing awful and I started wondering why she wants to do this to herself!

@ColouringPencils timing was also an issue for my DD. What I did was look at the exams she completed and go through the mocks and only looked at questions where she spent a long time and highlighted to her that had she used that time on questions that are more intuitive to her that she would gather more marks. I think its about knowing when to guess, flag and skip rather than wasting time on ones they feel are the more tricky ones. She can always come back to them later

Thanks @SoTiredNeedHoliday that sounds like good advice, I will look at a mock with her this evening. Is it the case that there are always more questions than you could answer so you should keep moving forward if you get stuck?
I can't wait until it is over, I think it is stressing me more than it is her!

I think some can answer all questions for my DD timing was not on her side, so there were always ones she was better off to guess flag and skip and return to if she had time. see here

@Justlikingit SJT2 is fine (unless hoping for Notts or Lincoln). Others use it as a station at interview but it's a few points different.

FYI for next year. Already Bangor, New Astor and Leeds are in clearing. It is not over until til August 15th ...

Newcastle !!!

I know the people who have shared UCAT scores on here so far have had very high ones, but it still looks like you have options open to you if you have a score of around 2700, right?

@ColouringPencils yes, lots of options. My lowest this year was 2650 - got 2 offers. Apply strategically ...

@ColouringPencils Hope you are OK after the A and E visit.
I was kept well away from DD's UCAT prep, but I know she did lots of timed practices in the final run up to it and found that her speed and judgement about how long to spend on things/when to move on improved through practice.
DD goes to a large college and they always get quite a few kids into medical school and, as mumneedswine has also said, people got offers this year with scores of 2650/2700.
I think at this point lots of the people who've taken the test are the more confident ones, so scores are higher. I seem to remember the interim deciles they publish are always higher than the final ones in September? I'm sure there's also a bias of who comments on things - 2890 was top decile last year, but you really wouldn't think that from the scores you see posted.
Hope the final preparations go well. At least next week it will be done and she will be in a position to work out the next steps. Wishing her lots of luck.

Update. UCAT 2580 - got in. UCAT 2600 - got in.
V happy students🥂 today

Gave the wrong UCAT earlier 😂. Been a busy few days

Wow thats great! Which Unis?