Schools hot on 'medicine' as a career choice

[nokissymum]

my friends ds is 10yrs and been saying for about 3 years now he wants to be a doctor when he is old enough. Friend and i were wondering wether there are any particular schools known of whose graduants seem to have a strong swaying towards medicine.

I may be wrong in this assumption but seem to feel certain schools just seem to end up with most their students going in a particular direction, be it languages, enineering etc. Thank you.

I think you'll have to narrow this down to at least a county to give you a useful answer, but this is exactly the place to ask.

For example, at my daughter's school there are 8 girls (from 70) going to do medicine, and in my son's year there were I think 10 (from 100) from his year.... so there are definitely some schools that are very used to preparing students for medicine

If i narrow it down to specific areas, there is likely to be less response as there might not be many mners in that area. Best to just keep it open to areas people know of.

I think it would be helpful to have school names and the area as well, there might be another pattern to observe there.

Thank you for your contribution.

I was reading a novel in which the main character observed that "medicine" is the modern-day equivalent of "entering the church" .

In times past it was a badge of honour for one of your offspring to take holy orders; now if you meet someone whose dc is doing medicine at university you can see them almost bursting with parental pride.

(Additionally people will always get sick/old/need nose job so it's a bit of a dead cert as far as future income is concerned.)

Are you in a grammar area? DS is at grammar and wants to do medicine (though his sloth-like attitude to GCSE revision does not instill much confidence in him actually getting into med school). Several of his friends are aiming to do medicine/dentistry and the school does encourage them but also places a lot of emphasis on getting into Oxbridge which is actually a bit crap for medicine courses.

If you're in a grammar area and your dc gets in, they will be pushed to their limit, whatever their talents and aptitudes.

At I'd look for schools that have good exam results in the sciences and check leavers university destinations.

Try Epsom College.

Quite, cat. at 10 my ds wanted to be an astronaut, and at 3 he wanted to be a rabbit

Please say what exactly is crap about Oxbridge med courses mumblechum1* because the websites look really good/ before DS1 falls into the abyss.

Maybe you're a medic and actually know more. This is uncharted territory for us.

mumblechum1

Oxbridge isn't crap for medicine. They teach medicine differently from places like Manchester and Peninsula but honestly, all the medical schools in the UK are of a very high standard. Count yourself lucky if you get into any of them. Try and visit them to see where you will be for 5/6 years. Some of the less cool schools have a better combination of facilities/accommodation/campus life which is well worth considering.

Bristol University has an excellent reputation.

Sorry, it's a daft question. Do proper research.

It seems to me Queen Elizabeth Boys GS in Barnet, London send quite a number of boys to medical schools.

Talking about London, is this an accident of history or what but apparently the 10 best specialist hospitals in England are all in or near London. Make no mistakes, these are world renowned hospitals in their respective specialist fields. The capital is where you want to go for your medical studies and train in these hospitals. Yes, even Oxbridge students come to London for their clinical studies.

Edinburgh is also an excellent school if you can get in.

Yellowstone, I'm not a medic but have done a fair amount of research. The problem with Oxbridge med. courses is that a huge proportion of the first three years (in some cases almost all) is lecture based.

The best courses are clinically based, ie almost from day one the students are based in the hospital, learning from seeing the qualified doctors doing their job.

Most students feed back that they learn much more in the teaching hospitals than they do sitting in a lecture theatre for the first three years.

"crap" was the wrong word - typed in haste! Good luck for your dc.

I still don't really understand why its not better to say what part of the country you're thinking of? Unless you intend to move or board, of course.

Which Med school are best is a different question - I thought we were talking about secondary schools.

And Peteneras is right of course - after pre clin at Oxbridge, particuarly those from Cambridge, I think, many of the students move to the London teaching hospitals for clinical training (that seems to be the pattern for students from older years in my childrens' schools)

Thanks for that mumblechum. Yes, he knows someone just completing her third year who's found the lack of clinical stuff very frustrating. Reassuring that that's all you meant, though I can see it's extremely important.

peterenas I disagree about London. When you are a medical student you need to learn about ordinary everyday medical conditions, the stuff that is common. London medical schools traditionally gave too much specialist knowledge, and not enough exposure to general medicine/surgery etc and skewed perceptions of what medicine should encompass. Regional universities that can offer district general hospital attachments as well as university hospitals attachments are often better at providing a balanced training.

Back to OP - I think you need to concentrate on finding a school that produces high volume/standard of science students, but that maybe has a good ethos of community volunteer work as well.

When I have worked in schools I have been suspicious of pupils who when asked what they wanted to d when they left school said "Law or Medicine".
Schools with lots of Doctors kids tend to have lots of kids going to do medicine. Schools with lots of certain immigrants also seem to have lots of kids who want to do medicine (not always very realistic ambitions).

I'm a vet and trained at Cambridge, where all our preclinical lectures, at the time, were shared with the medics, except for anatomy, so I have actually done Oxbridge preclinical medicine, pretty much, albeit a long time ago. It is/was a fabulous academic training, and there is plenty of time to see clinical stuff in the clinical years (where it was normal for the medics to go elsewhere), so IMO it's not fair to say it's bad for medicine. It is, however, very different from a course with a more practical and hands on approach from the beginning, such as you get at some of the other medical schools. I think it depends on the character and interests of the student, whether they would find a rigorous pure academic start challenging or frustrating. And I'm not up to date on the current course.
But really, where you go for medicine is icing on the cake of whether you get in at all. And I completely agree that some schools are more switched on to getting pupils into medicine than others, but without knowing whether you mean state or private or even which region of the country, it's hard to give any useful advice. I also agree that he may have changed his mind in a year or two - but maybe not.

There is a huge spectrum of jobs in the field of medicine. A number of my family is in various aspects: research scientist, pharmaceutical rep, dentist etc.

You should encourage your child's ambitions - it is lovely that they have them...

In answer to some of these questions, i posted this thread simply to have a discussion with a wider group of people to see wether friend and i were correct in our thinking that certain schools, wether it be state or private and regardless of county, tend to produce children who would go on to study medicine.

I was also interested to see was wether there are any trends, that might be spotted from your responses.

Of course this has all kicked off from my godson who has always said he'd like to study medicine, if there is high concentration of medkids being produced somewhere then i suppose theres no harm in his parents having this information, wether they will move etc i have no idea thats up to them and if child decides he wants to become a "painter" later on like my ds [Grin] it really doesnt matter, there's no harm in discussing it.

mummytime said she is always suspicious of children who say they want to become a "doctor" or "lawyer"......why ?

And

schools with lots of certain immigrants also seem to have lots of kids who want to do medicine (not always very realistic ambitions)

I agree that studying medicine is not always a very realistic Ambition, neither is it always for any other profession tbh, but i'm interested to know why it is not always a realistic ambition for certain immgrants.

Its the kids who say "doctor or lawyer" because those are two hugely different careers. In my experience they tend to be kids of a certain type of parent who is pushing them for a high status career. Now I could see someone being drawn to both if they are not sure between a country solicitor or a GP, maybe its the helping people bit. But Barrister or Surgeon? It just indicates a desire to be the top (maybe Company Director or Politician as back up?).
I'm also not being racist. Its just sad when you see 14 year olds who just are not going to get the A* for medical school, whose parents perhaps because of cultural background are still pushing them down that route, rather than looking at alternatives. This is even in very good schools btw.

Certain immigrant background (Russian maybe) are more likely in my experience to push their kids hard into medicine, without fully understanding the situation for that subject in this country.

BTW I think if you didn't have to have all A's for medicine it might produce better doctors, but that isn't the situation in the UK at present.

If a Kid said they wanted to be a doctor or lawyer or politician all in one sentence, id probably smile, pat the lil'un on the head and tell him to run of and have some ice cream, in this case however johnny has always said he wants to be a doctor, but even that can change.

The cultural aspect, is an interesting one. I believe all parents regardless of culture want their children to succeed, but certain cultures do seem to push in the direction of certain professions more than others, for reasons that us in the western world may not necessarily relate to, because life is generally easier here, if my ds wants to be painter, as long as he is happy that is fine by me, but being a "painter" and being "happy" would NOT be a realistic ambition in some othef parts of the world.