Campus based med school

[GENDOUBLEZZ]

Dd is in year 10 and doing very well in all her subjects. We can't afford private school but if she continues to do very well academically and gets the necessary GCSE and A-level grades, she hopes to do medicine, ideally at a campus based university rather than a large city. If anyone has knowledge about the various med schools, which ones should dd look into and research further?

Exeter is good but this is very early to think about this. She needs to do Biology and chemistry, possibly maths. There is restricted access to medical school so even if very good may not be accepted in.

I'd suggest going on the Medicine threads. There are thousands of unsuccessful medicine applicants every year, all of whom have top GCSE and A level grades, and the general advice is not to get hung up on a particular university. It all comes down to the UCAT exam (taken at the end of Yr 12) and how you perform at interview. A very, very small percentage of students will have a choice of unis.

Having said that, off the top of my head, Keele, UEA, Leeds, Liverpool, Nottingham, Kent, QMUL, HYMS, Lancaster, Cardiff, Exeter.

You don't need Maths - not a single uni asks for Maths. Have a look closely at the entry requirements - some need 1 of Bio/Chem, some need both, think Newcastle doesn't need any!

Lancaster is a lovely campus based university.

DD is considering Nottingham, not for Med but something not unrelated and she loves the campus. We have visited a couple of times and also had a short break in Nottingham city centre and I really liked it.
I think its very well regarded for Medicine

She needs to be prepared for the fact that a great deal of time on a medical degree is spent on GP and hospital placements, which may be at some distance from the university. Even after graduation doctors have to rotate through different jobs as part of their training to become GPs or specialists, and a fair amount of moving around is inevitable.

University of East Anglia in Norwich. Beautiful campus, right next to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. Students have lectures on campus and at the hospital. Uni have recently invested in new facilities for the Med School.

Maths may not be required but my understanding is that a good grasp of stats is invaluable for learning how to carry out and evaluate research.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I think the biggest hurdle for anyone trying to study medicine is getting a place - you generally need a 6 at GCSE in Maths but thats it. I think lots of med students tend to be scientifically minded, so can cope well with the small amount of mathematical content in the course without doing Maths A level.

I'm sure you're right. The son of a friend who is now a consultant, or nearly, and also involved in research/teaching through a fellowship, did Biology, Chemistry and Spanish A levels. I was surprised but apparently the Spanish was not just acceptable but welcomed, and it served him in very good stead when he did an elective in Latin America during his medical degree.

I don't know anything about the medical school there, but Keele is a fantastic university, the campus is beautiful. The university really cares about the wellbeing of its students, which is why it always scores so high for student satisfaction.

As @Fiftiesishard said, maths A-Level is not a requirement. Please look at the Medical Schools Council entry requirements booklet for academic requirements.

Bear in mind that there is intended to be a massive increase in the number of people studying medicine over the next 7 years, with an extra 2,500 by 2028 (the year after your daughter would start if going straight from school) and another 5,000 by 2031. However, I think it is very unlikely that extra places from 2026 onwards will be on conventional 5-year medicine degrees: they will preferentially be for 4-year degrees (no details available yet) or apprenticeships (three pilots running in 2024-25, but still very few details in the public domain). The overall picture of applying to and studying medicine will look very different in 4-5 years' time. Even for 2027, a lot of details will be different and there will probably be medical schools then that don't exist yet.

As others have said, a feature at present is that most medical students have to spend periods away from their university: it's very unlikely they will spend 5 years in one place and they definitely won't live on campus for more than 2 years (more than 1 year is unusual in many places). At the medical school where I work, we don't see students at the university at all in years 4 & 5 except when they come in to sit written exams.

Lancaster

Maths may not be required but my understanding is that a good grasp of stats is invaluable for learning how to carry out and evaluate research.

But if they have a resonable level of mathematical ability (which should be demonstrated by a good GCSE grade, but isn't), the amount of statistics they need to learn shouldn't be difficult. We have far more difficulty getting students to make the effort to understand human behaviour - which is absolutely essential for practising medicine - so psychology might be a more obvious A-Level choice (it also covers the kind of statistics they will need).

Queen’s, Belfast, though it is extremely competitive.

A very reasonable maths understanding is needed, in order to understand subjects like neurology. The ones with worse maths skills do find it harder.

A very reasonable maths understanding is needed, in order to understand subjects like neurology. The ones with worse maths skills do find it harder.

They need it just for calculating drug doses. A surprising proportion of medical students (and junior doctors) really struggle with this. A-Level maths doesn't make any difference.

This is very interesting. I clearly need to educate myself. Is an increase in study places planned?

How about courses which do the science in the first 3 years, then move onto placements? I have glanced at the med school threads, but am feeling lost as to how and where to start the research process. Dd is strong in maths so hopefully that will help, she is thinking of doing Biology, Chemistry and either Psychology, English Geography at a-level, but we have to see.

I know it's a long shot but if anyone has experience of medicine at Cambridge I'd love to hear about it. I understand the structure is very different. And they require the BMAT.

How about courses which do the science in the first 3 years, then move onto placements?

It's only really St Andrews (which only has medical students for their first 3 years). Oxford & Cambridge are predominantly university-based in the first 2½-3 years but Cambridge, at least, is likely to change a bit.

Most others have more of a 2-year preclinical/3-year clinical split, but most of them will still have some placements in the first 2 years, and will have quite a lot of clinical & communication skills training, which often takes place in hospital settings.

BMAT doesn't exist any more, by the way.

Warwick Medical School.

Warwick Medical School.

Warwick is graduate-entry. I think the OP's daughter is intending to go straight from sixth-form.

OP the BMAT has been withdrawn, it was sat for the last time last yr (October 2023 for Sept 2024 entry). The "BMAT unis" will use UCAT in future.

Brighton and Sussex? But I think they only have on-campus accommodation for first years. She might want a bit of city living at some point.

We have far more difficulty getting students to make the effort to understand human behaviour - which is absolutely essential for practising medicine

I can well believe this. I used to have a teaching admin job in a medical school and sometimes got roped in to help with the OSCEs (face to face practical clinical exams, for the uninitiated). I once had to pretend to be an elderly lady who was about to be discharged from a stroke ward. The students' task (in under 10 minutes!) was to talk to me about my circumstances to find out how I would manage at home and to tell me about the kind of support that could be arranged. The scenario I was given was that I was a widow living alone in the home I'd bought with my husband decades before. He was now dead and my adult children lived far away, so I had minimal support at home. I was still struggling with mobility, the house had stairs, the only bathroom was on the first floor.

The students did well enough asking questions about all of the above, but one after another then blithely stated that it could easily be arranged for me to be re-housed somewhere without stairs! (a) It couldn't - there isn't a bottomless supply of supported housing or bungalows to be allocated immediately. (b) The old lady clearly wasn't up to doing the admin, so who would be doing it? (c) It's not a trivial thing to suggest to an elderly woman that she should leave her marital home after many decades!

Even allowing for exam nerves, time pressure and their very young age, i.e. lack of life experience, I was really surprised how superficial their summing up was.

The young man I mentioned above worked in an old people's home while he was in the sixth form, and that not only ticked a box on his medical application form (relevant work experience) but undoubtedly helped him a lot with developing communication skills and seeing things from a patient's point of view.

As someone else said, have a look at the med entry threads. Most people decide where to apply after they know where they are likely to be offered an interview.

you need excellent predicted grades as a first step, but after that the UCAT is the most important. Once you do the ucat you can decide how to apply strategically.