Medicine 2024 part 2

[mumsneedwine]

New thread. Hope the offers keep flowing in

@rosesinmygarden I don't know the answer to that (bet @mumsneedwine will) but wanted to wish your Dd all the best x

@speedyhedgehog That is such poor form from Sheffield. Thankfully your DD already has other offers, but still….
@rosesinmygarden Hope Sheffield decides soon, and well done to your DD for taking it so well.

@speedyhedgehog Glad to hear your DS enjoys Southampton. I guess we went to know whether he’s happy with the teaching, whether the med students are well-integrated with the rest of the uni, what the male/female ratio is and where they live in placement years - is accommodation provided or do they commute from Southampton?

@rosesinmygarden email Sheffield telling them you want to remain on the wait list and have no other medicine offers. Give them a few days and hopefully they will reject. I imagine most places will try and update ucas before Easter so hopefully all do r by end of the week.
I'd not withdraw just in case it flags up for Sheffield that you are no longer interested.

That’s really shocking from Sheffield @speedyhedgehog, your poor DD. She must have been so upset. I’m sure the admin of these things can’t be easy but at the end of the day, it’s the young people applying that really matter. I know they’re highly competitive courses, but a bit of focus on student experience wouldn’t go astray. Delighted she has other offers - will she join her brother or is that too much!?! My neighbour’s DD is in final year in Southampton and has loved it all

We she consider a gap year? I am a medic and interview for one of the medical schools and all the candidates who have done that really shine and score well. Plus if she applies with A levels already it’s so much less stress. And if she gets great A levels it’s always worth a ring round on results day - that happened to my nephew with no offers then got an offer for Leicester on results day
Graduate medicine is hard to get onto so consider other options prior to taking that route if medicine is what she really wants
or consider a degree in another healthcare discipline - pharmacy/ physio/Nursing radiographer etc then decide about medicine. Also if you have a qualification you can work whilst studying which can really help the finances and once you get to the clinical years it is way way easier

She will only do a second round of medicine applications if she gets the grades that make it worth the risk and worth all the stress of going through UCAT, interviews etc. once again. It's a plan B. She feels if it's meant to be, it'll be. She's certainly not as 'set' on medicine as she was in yr 12.

Otherwise, she's happy to be doing biomedical science and excited about the course. She's got 2 offers for that and she's been to 2 really great offer holder days with taster sessions in the labs etc.

Thank you for all the great advice with regards to the different med schools! We appreciate that she is in a very privileged position to have such good choices. I guess we will go back to the offer holder days and see if she gets a gut feeling about them. 🤞

Rosesinmygarden- We did discuss what to do if dd was not successful this time around and a gap year was definitely the way forward for her (despite having to take the dreaded UCAT again) as it does seem much harder to get into medicine as a graduate and easier as a student with grades in hand. Depends on how keen your dd is to start uni but we always wondered if it was possible to defer entry for a science course and re-take the UCAT and reapply for medicine. Not sure if that is possible but others might know?

Can't apply for any ucas course whilst holding another so, no

Depends on how keen your dd is to start uni but we always wondered if it was possible to defer entry for a science course and re-take the UCAT and reapply for medicine. Not sure if that is possible but others might know?

You can't make a new UCAS application if you're holding a deferred offer from the previous year, as that previous application is still live.

Info for southampton, Ds is very happy with the teaching. In first year his flat was a mix, he was the only medic in his flat but there were others in the same building. So he has a good mix of friends. He thinks the course intake is roughly 50/50 in terms of male female he wasn't sure so hasn't noticed a large discrepancy either way. He isn't on placement yet but for gp when he had to travel the university organized transport and paid for it

She's not considering graduate medicine at all. So that's not an issue and we dont need advoce about that. Plus you'd still need the grades for that I imagine.

We are waiting for her grades to make a final decision but still obviously need to firm, insurance and apply for accommodation for September. That's why I posted.

It's interesting how everyone assumes she'll want to do graduate medicine or take a gap year. I guess may those are popular choices.

My understanding is you can't defer AND reapply, sadly. However, if you've been offered a science type course this time round then surely it'd likely be offered again?

Hi DS has been offered Southampton and UEA. Can I ask about the accommodation- is it very expensive to live there? What about 2nd year etc? Want to have an idea of how much we’ll have/can give him
DS also got that email from Sheffield! Shocking form from them- really should be more careful!

He thinks the course intake is roughly 50/50 in terms of male female

That's very unlikely. Nationally, over 65% of students entering 5-year medicine degree courses are female. In 2020 (most recent data publicly available), it was 60% at Southampton; it has probably increased since then.

It's interesting how everyone assumes she'll want to do graduate medicine or take a gap year. I guess may those are popular choices.

They are popular choices. It's generally difficult to persuade 17-year-olds to think about alternatives, even when you know they are going to be forced to consider them at some point.

Plus you'd still need the grades for that I imagine.

Most medical schools either have minimum A-Level requirements for graduates (usually ABB/BBB, though, rather than AAA) or require an additional aptitude test (GAMSAT).

Although she can resist the ucas before results day which will together with A level results will give an indication of how likely she is to be offered interviews.

*Sorry - resit the UCAT.

@speedyhedgehog Thanks! That sounds great. We were struck at the Exeter offer day how female-heavy it was - both for offer holders and student volunteers- which is a factor in preferring somewhere where the halls are not medics-only.

65% female nationally is pretty high.

Final uni here and it’s a rejection from Liverpool. Shame as it’s our local med school but she has other choices and Manchester is one of them so not a million miles away

Rejected here also @ipredictariot5 - a gap year it is, as that was the last one. Best of luck to those still waiting.

Sorry to hear that. Feels pretty annoying that Liverpool interview such a huge number as far more then get rejected and disappointed.

Sympathy to your DC @LaMereDuChat It is such a brutal process.

We met many at open days who had been successful post gap year.

Sorry to hear that @LaMereDuChat hope your DD is ok and can start to look forward to an amazing gap year instead.

I think we were in Exeter the week before @Barleypilaf and didn’t notice an obvious imbalance one way or the other amongst the offer holders. But now that I think about it, all of the student helpers that we met or spoke to (apart from 1) was female

My dd finally heard back from UCL with an offer so she is very happy but it is a brutal process and it feels like it could have gone either way.

@LaMereDuChat my dd has been doing volunteering with someone who reapplied and got multiple offers second time round.

Feels pretty annoying that Liverpool interview such a huge number as far more then get rejected and disappointed.

I'm not sure why people feel it's better to be rejected without even being interviewed.

But now that I think about it, all of the student helpers that we met or spoke to (apart from 1) was female

Might be a slightly different issue. Even if you had 75% male students the majority offering to do things like open days - especially at weekends - would be female. Over the past five years I have had about a dozen students who've regularly worked as ambassadors at open days, etc.,: only two are male. I do a lot of outreach activities with schools. If these are at weekends there will always be a tiny number of male pupils attending, while there will be reasonable numbers on weekdays.