Medicine 2025 entry -part 3

[HGC2]

Will try to add old threads, maybe good for us to give an update of where our DCs are at

Yes. They'll get that to you soon. Sheffield is a lovely city and a fantastic medical course.

Thank you 🙏

12 April

She’s booked it today - thanks so much

Hope you don't mind me asking this question on this thread, but as there are loads of people experienced in applying to med school you may be able to help? My daughter saw a tiktok extolling the virtues of an EPQ and if you don't do one then you need to find another way to demonstrate research skills. She is not keen to do an EPQ, and her school only offer them in yr 13 when she wants to be concentrating on A levels and (hopefully) interviews, but is worried that she won't be able to demonstrate research skills at interview and therefore limit her chances of getting an offer.

Do you agree with this? Or is it just Oxbridge that would be looking for these skills? Did your child have to demonstrate research skills and if so, did they have another example other than an EPQ? (She's only yr 11 so time to investigate various options). Thanks!

@SuperSue77you don’t need an EPQ. They are useful to have something to talk about at interview, and can lower the required grades at a few Uni, but many students don’t have one. You can research by just reading things on line.

My daughter didn’t do an EPQ - she got 4 interviews and 4 offers. All her offers were AAA - if she had an A in an EPQ then her Sheffield offer would have been AAB. Thankfully she got her grades so it wasn’t an issue.

@SuperSue77 My DD did an EPQ and achieved an A star in it. She also had 4/4 offers for medicine. She had an offer from Exeter with a reduced offer of AAB and so made it her insurance just in case but didn’t need it in the end.
The EPQ was medicine related and linked to some work experience that she had done so was useful for her personal statement and she was able to talk about it in her interviews but I wouldn’t say that it was the most defining thing that sealed her offers. It should never be done for the sake of it and is only useful if an A or above is achieved to reduce offers in some med schools. If your dd feels it will
impact her A level results then I would say generally those are way more important and an EPQ isn’t necessary but might be useful if she is applying for certain med schools that value EPQ. Best of luck to her in her GCSEs this year 🤞

Great news on all the offers that came in recently! Sheffield and Plymouth I think being the most recent! 👏🎉

@SuperSue77 my son didn’t do an EPQ and got 4 interviews and (so far) 2 offers. Doing one in Y13 would be a hard no from me - applications and interviews and mocks and Alevels is stressful enough. I don’t believe he was asked anything about research at any stage.

@SuperSue77 Veteran med mum from former times chipping in here - this year DS (current F2) has been an interviewer on MMI stations. Who knows, he may even have interviewed some of the wonderful young folk on this thread 😉
I asked him how he was told to 'rate' applicants' responses and it surprised me that he wasn't given any mark scheme or guidelines on what would constitute a 'strong' or 'weak' answer. Instead he was encouraged to probe and draw out more detail from their responses and base their score on his own impressions.

He told me if a question had been around 'research skills' he would have been impressed by anyone who showed evidence of real interest and independently looking further into a medicine-related topic beyond standard A level content e.g. further reading or googling, online courses or videos, conversations with people in the field etc. An EPQ is by no means the only way this greater depth of interest and desire to find out more can be shown.

Just to add my DD did an EPQ and got an A - was medicine related, fabulous evidence of independent learning / medical interest / research (it was about the opioid crisis in the States and the role of the pharms industry - she'd contacted a number of US doctors who had engaged with her / assisted etc). She still only got 1 offer out of 4 to start with, another offer came later on.

She did get a grade reduction through it at one uni - but just to echo what everyone else has said, its not something that ticks a box at interview or necessarily gives you an advantage (or is the only way to demonstrate those skills), the process is much more nuanced than that.

My daughter is doing an epq now - just finishing it off yr 13. Has not been too bad in terms of work, but she’s only doing 3 A levels (and one is PE which has a coursework element so less content to learn for final exams).. it was something good to talk about in interview as was nhs related and more importantly she’s really enjoyed it and looking forward to the presentation as she knows presenting is needed during med school and beyond. I think it was a good distraction during interviews too although annoyingly the only uni she applied to that will soften grades for epq (Leicester) have not given an offer yet and is looking less likely so may not be an ACTUAL help there.
it’s only 5,000 words and seems pretty doable to me and good to keep in with some essay writing if doing all science based subjects. but as others have said definitely not needed!

2 of my kids have done EPQ's. I would say only do one if they are really interested- I actually think for medicine it was not very useful for my DD, but would have been if she had been worried about getting her grades. She did get reduced grade offers, and it looks good on PS. She had offers from all 4 med schools. It was a bit stressful around the time of UCAT and mocks fitting everything in. It was really useful for my DS doing another degree though, as it actually taught him many more useful skills for university- referencing, working to a word count, how to present a paper etc. So I think they can be valuable in certain situations but absolutely not vital.

EPQs aren’t a thing in Scotland but when you say they may help - I presume this is only with a top score. If you have a lot of other stuff on and it slips down your priority pile, do school tell you your likely mark so you can pull it if it isn’t good?

I’d say avoid if done in year 13

EPQs are not offered at DS’s 6th form as of this year. Welsh Bac is compulsory. His offer from Cardiff includes Welsh Bac which includes an individual project - he is comparing the NHS to other healthcare systems and community project. For him this is very useful as if he can achieve an A it will count as one A level for their offer. I don5 think any other uni will count it.

Daughter was predicted an A in epq which went on her ucas application with all the other predicted grades. But the general point about it being something useful to talk about in interview stands regardless (though I’d imagine most kids applying for med will be being predicted around an A, it’s not that hard to get that grade and you get a lot of easy points for things like Harvard referencing and booking an appointment with your supervisor!)

Thanks everyone who has answered my query about EPQs, especially those who mentioned whether research came up in interview, or other ways to demonstrate research other than the EPQ. @Haffdonga thanks for sharing yor son's experience of interviewing on an MMI, that was really interesting, and also for the suggestions of other ways of research - she is doing all of those things so great for her to have in her mind that these are all examples of research she is doing, even if she is not formally capturing it in an EPQ.
I am encouraging her to document all work experience, courses, research into topics that she does and include her thoughts about what she learnt from it, so that she has a wealth of info to look back over which she can then draw on when the time comes.

@sproutsandparsnips

EPQs are not offered at DS’s 6th form as of this year. Welsh Bac is compulsory. His offer from Cardiff includes Welsh Bac which includes an individual project - he is comparing the NHS to other healthcare systems and community project. For him this is very useful as if he can achieve an A it will count as one A level for their offer. I don5 think any other uni will count it.

I think most medical schools accept the Advanced Skill Baccalaureate Wales in lieu of a third A-Level. All of the ones I've checked this morning accept it. I think the most common situation is that, as long as they've met requirements for specified subjects, if the WB grade is better than the grade for a non-required A-Level subject, they'll use the WB grade.

First offers out for QUB - daughter didn't get one. Bit demotivating but knows there's still hope. Anyone any joy there?

My son is waiting to hear from QUB too.

Cons re Sheffield
they don't get a traditional summer break after year 1, they are already on placements with 1 or 2 weeks in between

@Optimum19 for QUB, keep the faith. They've made 300 offers but more will trickle through in the next few weeks - my DD was waitlisted a couple of years ago but got a place a few weeks later. The big advantage of QUB if you're still without an offer by results day is that they are absolutely rigid with grades so they make a significant number of offers on results day - if you look at this, they'd offered down to 450 on their ranked list by the UCAS deadline last year. On results day they made 64 more offers, but that took them down to the 739th ranked applicant - so it's a really decent chance of getting a (very late) offer if your DC smashes their A Levels.

I haven't been able to post the link - if you search of Google for FAQ Medicine QUB there is an info page and it has a table on it showing offers made at various stages in the cycle - will try a screenshot