Advise on how to go about Alevel resits please

[crispy2019]

She had 3 offers for med school at AAA….however she has achieved BBB. Does anyone have any words of wisdom about the best way of approaching resits. Her school will support her taking the exams there but she can’t physically repeat year 13. Online at home seems soul destroying…does anyone have any advice?

Have a look at the Free Fees Initiative in Ireland. UK students continue (afaik) to be covered on same basis as EU students despite Brexit. There are some conditions re residency in the preceding years. Could be an option. Dublin is expensive for accommodation. Cork, Limerick and Galway are more reasonable. Resit grades are accepted on most courses. Also, as PPS have said, get those rechecks!

I didn’t apply for medical school at 18 but had aspirations to be a research scientist. I would never have had offers in any case and got BBB at A level. I did biomedical science as my first choice and absolutely flourished academically at university and graduated with a first at the top of my class. I then went on to Graduate Entry Medicine instead of research, and again, academically prospered and got my first choice job out of medical school (when it wasn’t a random number generator). I worked part time throughout both degrees and now find medicine a tough but rewarding career when many of my peers find the reality of difficult work in a difficult environment overwhelming. I think this difference is age and experience. My advice would be - let her go and enjoy her younger years and study a degree for the love of study, and enjoy the university experience. If she still wants to do medicine then there’s ample opportunity in 3 years to really put in the hard yards. Burning out at 18 years old before you’ve even got there is no benefit to anyone. Good luck.

Also graduate entry medicine degrees don’t always require biomedical science or a science undergraduate degree. She needs to be doing a subject she loves and is good at, so that she achieves as easily as possible.

Firstly, my sympathies with your DD. I remember not getting the results I had been predicted and feeling like my world had fallen apart. I can't comment on current medicine but if you and feel she is capable of AAA and there are potential places available I think she should do what she wants.

We are going back a little way but in my case the school recommended a nearby private college, where I could do resits, I had achieved CDD (I had been ill and had my exams in isolation and there were issues with the physical exam papers and incorrect copies which just threw me and I never recovered my composure for the whole exam period, I knew I was capable of better and wanted better results on my CV). I did one term of lessons and then resat exams in two subjects in January, coming out with AB. With hindsight, I wish I'd sat the maths exam again in the summer because I was seven marks off an A, so I probably could have got there.

I couldn't do my chosen course with the initial results and I'm very glad that I made the effort to redo and improve, there was one other person from my sixth form at the same college who was doing medicine and had to improve his grades and he's gone on to be very successful as a medic so if you're dd is driven and wants to do it, support her, she should go for it.

Post-uni, my A-Level grades haven't mattered at all, but it mattered to me then to have an accurate record of what I was capable of achieving.

Tell her to look at Romania. There were a number of Brits studying medicine in Bucharest, Cluj and Iasi. Much cheaper too. All taught in English.

My grandson was the same last year he missed it by one point, his school supported him but he could not go there. He was super determined. Studied at home and revised so much . Results today all A and hes off to medical school next month. Tell her she can do it . She needs to ask the school what support they can give and set herself a schedule for study

Yes they do if they really want it. I know some who have done it

OP, plenty of people blithely suggesting that she should just pivot to a bio-medical science degree and that may well be possible, but you should be aware (based on my own experience) that many of the strongest RG universities will ask for at least one A grade for their bio-med courses. There may be something via clearing of course.

Those recommending studying abroad - beware that she will then be an “IMG”- things have changed recently for IMGs (international medical graduate)

Hi. Just came to say I completely understand your feelings, trying to help and for me it was really the first thing in my daughters

Has your daughter considered a healthcare degree with a view to doing graduate entry medicine? I’m a doctor who did graduate entry, currently 6 years post qualification and honestly I’m so glad I entered this way. The extra life experience helped me deal with the high demands of a medical degree, I also worked as a healthcare assistant just after my first degree which gave me invaluable insight into working with my nursing and other MDT colleagues. It might not be the route she wants to take but I thought I’d mention it! More than happy for you to reach out if you have any questions or want further advice 🙂

My younger niece didn't get the grades for medicine, she did a biomedical science degree and then a postgraduate medicine, she is currently an F1 Dr.

Have a look t the various routes at various institutions.

This. Especially as medical schools are so unlikely to accept resits. It’s so competitive they don’t need to.

Has she thought about stuff like biomedicine , pharmacy, diagnostic radiography, midwifery. Our local uni is in clearing for pharmacy and I think BBB would be enough

Can she not go through clearing? My sister needed AAAA to get into Cambridge and I think she got ABBB and still managed to get in.
Also just want to say that getting BBB is still an amazing achievement!

BIL is a doctor. He did an Oxbridge science degree first and then post grad medicine in his mid twenties after a couple of years in a different career. Medicine is really demanding. He is super bright and was used to being top at everything, it was a learning curve at med school not to come top at everything....
Unless there were extenuating circumstances with the exams I'd encourage your DD to think really carefully about resits. A post grad route might be better?

She isn’t clever enough for med school but that doesn’t need to be a problem, encourage her to think of something different.

Sorry to hear this.
I have worked in the NHS for many years. I would ignore any posters saying that because she hasn't got AAA in her A levels at 18, that medicine isn't for her/ she isn't clever enough.
I know a lot of drs. Some of them completed a foundation year first. Others did post grad medicine. A couple studied medicine abroad. The difference in clinical practice? None. I only know their alternative routes because they told me.
So I would look at all the options.

Thanks for the input everyone, lots to think about. It will test her resolve for sure.

Lots of great advice here already. She should be able to talk to advisors about this - there will be local careers advice if her school isn’t great.

I don’t ever recommend resitting Alevels to students. Especially not all of them. It’s soul destroying. Far better to work out a different path to get her where she wants to go. I would absolutely suggest biomedical science at a uni that has a medical school attached (Bradford for Leeds, or Worcester Uni are good examples) as with both if she excels in year 1 they’ll transfer her to medicine and she won’t have lost any time compared to a resit route.

Its hugely sad for young people who don’t have the results they need, but what is important is the focus on getting to that goal and not the pathway for doing it.

There are other pathways. Would she study something related like Biomed and do postgrad Medicine?

An alternative is via the grad route - she takes her BBB and studies medical bio sciences or similar now, gets lots of work experience/voluntary jobs in a local hospital, and then in 3 years she applies to do the 4 year GEM (look at Surrey for the details but other unis offer it). It’s a slightly longer route but the BBB won’t hold her back - I understand it is easier to get a place on GEM if you’ve got a 2;1 or 1st with a relevant degree and a few years of relevant work experience as it shows commitment to the profession. By doing a BSc/BBiol etc she can develop an interest in a specialist area of medicine in the 3rd year project that can help narrow down interests and make a GEM application (and post qualification applications once qualified) really stand out. It’s 3+4 years, obtaining an additional degree level academic qualification, but better than a year out doing resits ie 1+5 to end up with a cv that will foreground the resit year?

My neighbours are both GPs and they suggested this for one of my DCs

Notice my post crossed with @LIZS

Could she go into biomedical science and then transfer over to medicine?

Worth asking for a remark on the ones that aren't far off. They often have astonishingly inexperienced markers.

I used to work at a Sixth Form and she might find it difficult to get a medicine place after resitting. It’s quite a brutal system and lots of universities who offer medicine won’t even consider an applicant who has resat their A-levels. As others have mentioned, there’s mileage in her looking into the other options she has like biomed and then exploring routes into medicine that way. There are places that offer gateway courses but they tend to be for very specific reasons. Either to do with the context of the student (often for students from disadvantaged backgrounds) or for students who got top grades but maybe didn’t do the right subjects e.g. they had biology but not chemistry A-levels so these may not be of practical use to her.

Has she had an appointment with her school careers advisor to discuss her choices? Where I worked we would have staff in now for the next couple of weeks to chat through options with any students who needed it. I won’t gloss over it, if she really wants to still pursue medicine she’s got a slog ahead of her but the best thing she can do is chat it through with a qualified careers advisor who knows the system inside out.