Alternatives to Medicine after strong A level results and no interviews

[nomoreforks]

So my YP applied for Medicine with good predicted grades and 9s/8s and GCSE. Got no interviews (UCAT was not amazing) and withdrew application. Has received A*AA in A level. Has no idea what to study and does not want to sit the UCAT again. Is feeling really lost about what to study and where. I studied English at University so I am of no help at all. She does not want to be a pharmacist. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Has she looked at dentistry?

My niece did a degree in biomedical sciences after being rejected for medicine. She had job as a healthcare assistant during her degree and for a year afterwards before reapplying for medicine.
She was accepted at Nottingham Uni and is now a cardiologist ( the debt after her medical degree was horrendous).
She is convinced that her healthcare experience helped her to secure a place to read medicine.

If she’s at a loose end she can either find an organised gap year group - there are so many; or do what I did and go to a capital city for a year to learn a language.

I wouldn’t recommend au pairing but that’s because I’m not keen on children 😂

Has she thought about alternatives like Radiography or Speech and Language Therapy which are really interesting and clinical degrees. Nursing also has some great career progression options if she likes clinical work. Or maybe something like Biomedical Science or even Biomedical Engineering?

I think she needs to be really honest with herself. Is she just hurting from rejection/no interviews or does she want an easy life/better pay? If it’s the first one then she needs to resit UCAT and ideally get some medical work experience - HCA or CA jobs in hospital/care homes are the best for ongoing commitment and ensuring you have the work ethic needed for medicine. Also get someone to look at her PS/uni choices as this can be a reason for rejection pre-interview.

If she wants an easier life/better pay than NHS medicine can offer then she needs to look for inspiration, and has a good few months to see what her a levels are suited for, before applying again. NCS website has health and science careers listed (assuming her a levels are science based).

end of September is not that far away - so if she wants a better UCAT she needs to start prepping now. I would be worried about her last minute deciding she wants to sit it, taking it unprepared and feeling even worse with a bad score. Can you agree a date in 3
early September with her that she needs to decide by to avoid this?

Encourage her to think about that attracted her to medicine, and work from that to identify alternatives

There's a lot more to maturity than chronological age.

A gap year that doesn't include some solid work experience is a waste of time. It shouldn't be all about travel and leisure.

Is she feeling burned out? Is she focusing on the friendships and the fun because she feels she's exhausted?

Is she experiencing trouble making the transition from the environment of school where the future is very theoretical to the world of closing all other doors and going down one irreversible path?

She should take a year to work or do a random foundation course for fun (art? Music?) and use the time to plan her next steps.

Has she considered studying medicine at Plovdiv University in Bulgaria? The course is taught in English and she could transfer back to the UK system relatively easily. 40% of the cohort is from the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgz8g8jg48o.

If it makes you feel any better, my son was in a similar position a few years ago. He took a year out, worked in a bar while he got his head together. He then decided he couldn’t face applying for medicine again and did Chemistry at a top uni. After a year he switched to economics because he wanted more free time! Upon graduating he decided he still wanted to do medicine and applied for the post grad route. He got onto a great course with graduated last year. He got fantastic results. He’s now just started his second year as a junior dr.

So tell her not to lose heart. My son was 25 when he started his medicine degree and he was one of the youngest people on it.

Before your penultimate post about social media, I thought she was probably all caught up in the process of exams and applications and success and next steps etc. Seems that might be the case. Medicine isn’t something to embark on without commitment, especially if she now wants an easier life than a doctor’s. She needs time, to get over the feeling that she’s left behind/ everyone is moving on apart from her/ she’s adrift. She needs to get a grip of her situation, and she’ll probably need your help with it. She’s got great a level results, she can take time to decide what she wants to do. I’d frame it as this being the opportunity of a lifetime, rather than a failure. She’s going to make a more considered decision, she won’t get sucked into something she doesn’t now want to do and waste a year or more on it, she’ll save money on wasted fees, she’ll be a year older than most of her peers when she does start - and son on and so forth.

Gap year absolutely. I think it’s quite hard to not feel under pressure to do what everyone else is doing and jump into university and pick a course even if you don’t know if it truly is what you want to study. Some work experience can really clarify though what it is you want to do. I had a gap year and when everyone was heading off to uni I did wonder had I done the right thing but I absolutely had. Made no difference starting the year after, in fact I ended up in a flat with quite a few people who had all taken a year out and none of us dropped out it was all the ones who’d come straight from school.

Did not do this ! UKGrads now get priority for jobs so he'd likely be unemployed in the UK..

Maybe more than she thinks. My DD took a gap year - decided on around Easter and at results day realised only 3 friends were actually going to uni that year. All the rest took gap years.

she’s had a great social life.

Congratulations to your daughter on fantastic grades.

Medicine is a vocation so if she’s not passionate about it then she shouldn’t pursue it, even if she’s clearly smart enough.

Sounds like a gap year is exactly what she needs to figure out her next move. There’s no point in going to university unless she absolutely know what she wants to study and (loosely, at least) why.

I’m a big advocate of yp travelling during gap years. Nothing worse than hanging around her old town with her parents while all her friends are going off to university.

Even more competitive

Apparently you can start a BSc in neuroscience in Brighton and after two years switch to medicine relatively easily.

Radiography?

It may be easier but there is no easy route into medicine, it’s very, very competitive.

Being totally honest - those are good jobs but the pay is mediocre compared to being a doctor. On the other hand, being a junior doctor is absolutely brutal and the job market is getting worse, being shunted off to a random part of the UK is totally normal.

With excellent grades she can do whatever she wants - the problem is she doesn't know what she wants to do. A gap year sounds the obvious choice. If medicine is still on the list she needs a relevant gap year job/voluntary work.

Can you say what it was about medicine that was attractive to her, as that may help people advise you? In my experience, people who target this career are divided between those with a real interest in helping people and those who pursue it because they want a prestigious career.

Dd1 decided against applying to med school and did BioMed instead. Her first year was studying with the Medical students, so she really enjoyed that. Then they split off. She now works in a specialist consultancy in London in the medical field. Hard work too, but good pay and she enjoys the medical/health crossover.

DD only had one interview for medicine and wasn’t successful. She achieved the grades then took a gap year to have a good think about what she wanted to do. She worked, travelled and volunteered. She applied to do biomedical sciences and got an offer straight away at her first choice.

There were several students on her course whose A level results meant that they missed the medicine offers, and these students were quite bitter about it, so my advice is to only do biomed if you really want to. DD enjoyed her degree course, and it became clear what direction she didn’t want to take and where her further interests lay.

She worked in a pharmacy after graduating to save some money and have time to decide what post graduate education she wanted to do. She is currently studying diagnostic radiography and absolutely loving it. Her biomed degree meant that she hit the ground running. She is also loving the smaller cohort and has managed to build a rapport with many of her tutors which she couldn’t do on her undergraduate degree with a cohort of over three hundred students.

@EricTheHalfASleeve (love the user name 😁). DD's main motivator is to be able to enjoy what she does and job satisfaction, so while the pay isn't comparable to being a doctor she won't be on the breadline. I feel that not getting into medical school was a bullet dodged as her health issues mean that she doesn't have the stamina for the hours and shifts that the job requires.

This is a tricky one. She needs to decide whether she wants to be in healthcare, in which case go for medicine again, or maybe something completely different- economics? Engineering if she has the right a levels?

Other healthcare degrees are great in their own right but don't offer the flexiblity of a medical degree (unless you want to go up the management ladder, lots of chief execs of Trusts seem to be nurses)