Applications for Medicine - Entry 2012

[iorsa]

Are there any parents out there who know anything about the idiosyncrasies of the following medical schools:

Birmingham
Bristol
Cambridge
Cardiff
Imperial
KCL
UCL
Oxford
Southampton

DS1 is hoping to apply for medicine to four of these schools, but we've no medics in the family, and would find anecdotal info really useful. Thanks in advance.

What does the sixth form tutor at your school say?

The school is fine with him applying for medicine since his grades are fine - it's just that we've no medics in the family, and no-one in the family has applied for medicine. So we don't know the ins and outs of the various medical schools. Any info would be gratefully recieved.

Your son might find it useful to look at The Student Room where there will be some threads from people who applied to all of those places last year reporting whether they got an interview, if so, how it went, and offer conditions.

The son of a friend of mine applied to medical school this year and got no interviews at all. His GCSE grades were good but not all A*, his AS grades were good but not not top notch, he had some relevant voluntary work experience/work shadowing and his leadership qualities were well-evidenced from years of participation in the CCF at school. I don't know what his personal statement was like but as both his parents are medics and he goes to an independent school with a good record of getting students into medical school I would imagine it was OK. The grades look the likeliest culprit for his lack of interviews.

Having said that, another friend's husband is a teacher in a state school. As she is a medic, he brought some of his pupils to a workshop she was doing and she had a long chat with them about medical school and medical careers. She mentioned to me recently that of those who went on to apply, some have got interviews and offers and some haven't, and not the ones she would have predicted. Her conclusion is that the whole thing is a lottery.

Sorry not to be more positive! I wish your son good luck with the process.