E grade at AS Level Chemistry-should medicine dream be forgotten?

[zara77]

Hi Everyone
Really need some honest advice. My dd got an E grade at Chemistry AS Level. She got 1 A,2 B in other subjects. She had her heart set on medicine. But we have looked online and most medical schools require Chemistry. Post Grad Medicine is tough to get into,so she is a little lost. Her school recommends, her playing to her academic strengths and pursue a totally different degree. I don't really want her to do 4 A Levels but am getting the Chemistry remarked. My dd wants to resit the exam but i am concerned too much focus on one subject will let her down in her other subjects.
Should we follow the Schools advice? Would a tutor in Chemistry make a difference?
Thank you all in advance for your input.
Zara

They will probably take her AS grade into account if she applies to do medicine, and some won't accept resit grades. Getting from AS E to A2 A would be a lot of work. DS got AS B in chemistry but gave up further maths to concentrate on getting an A, which paid off. He needed 3xAS at A plus one A2 at A for dentistry. He has friends who are doing Biological Sciences, with a view to doing Medicine post grad, but it means 8 years of study in total, so potential huge debt.

Sorry 3xA2 at A plus one AS at A

Even if she is tutored, then she would struggle a lot when she got to Uni. A huge amount of 1st year medicine is to do with chemistry.

Sorry.

To be brutally honest, Medicine is highly competitive; dd has no chance.

Depends why she got an E. What are her other subjects, what was she predicted, was there coursework, what does she think went wrong?

If her A grades are in Eng Lit and Histort and she's just crap at Chemistry then unfortunately Medicine may be out of the question. But there may be another explanation - investigate and see how the remark goes.

Thank you all for the honesty, can she do post grad medicine-if she does a language degree?

someone who struggles with A level chemistry would have a really hard time with medicine - the first year has an awful lot of chemistry.

When I applied (long time a go) chemistry was the most important subject - my sister is applying this year & has just got a B in chemistry at AS - she's resitting as she really needs an A to stand much of a chance :(

Dillyprice-she was predicted B for AS Level-we are getting it remarked,her course work was 85%.

It would be very difficult indeed with an E at AS chemistry as there is too much solid competition and grad entry is a well known minefield and ridiculously competitive. Probably best to look at each Uni's requirements with a fine toothcomb just to double check, but it doesn't sound good to me. Dont suppose she did her UKCAT and scored amazingly, as that might offset it a little?
Did she just do badly in the June exams or were her Jan modules poor too?

Are there any access courses where you live?
If she struggles with chemistry then medicine is going to be a huge challenge.

What about studying medicine abroad?
Good luck with whatever she decides.

She did well in her mocks,she was only a couple of points from an A grade. So this mark has been a total shock.

if she has a, 2 x B, 1 x E then honestly medicine is a no. She needs to have 4 x A at this stage to be even in with a shout, of which for nearly all unis now 2 must be biology and chemistry. There are still one or 2 unis who don't require bio.
Even if she was predicted a B at AS i still wouldn't suggest she applied for medicine, we didn't see a single medicine offer last year or year before that didn't include an A at A2 chemistry.

Our chemists did two modules in June, plus the practical skills component. How many modules did she do, and what were the grades? I have sent for the paper for one of my year 12s, as she scored below expectations in one paper. The other paper was in line with expectations.

Unless she gets an A or very close to one indeed, I think medicine is not a realistic option. What other AS levels has she done?

If she'd been predicted a C and got a D in her mocks and ropy coursework then I'd say she's not good enough for Medicine. But that's not the picture here. Unless the school is dreadful at chemistry and its marking is all over the shop (possible) then either there's been a mix up with the paper (possible) or a specific fixable disaster DD has made in the exam. I'm not familiar with the course, but how badly would you have to do in the exam to turn 85% coursework into an E grade?

zara, is the 85% course work mark % of actual marks, or % of UMS gained? very big difference, especially for chemistry where the grade boundaries are all tightly stacked at the top end. In addition were the school using the coursework to pull up what they thought might be a weaker exam score?
Is she doing AQA?
Eg 85% actual marks is around 43, which gives you 44 out of 60 UMS. Total AS is 300 UMS (coursework is worth less % wise at AS and A2 than at GCSE)

IME, the practical paper is the one the students do best in. That's no surprise at is it closely supervised by the teacher and they can do a bit of reading up between the practical and the write-up.

She needs to get her papers back to see where she went wrong.

Universities put a lot of emphasis on, in order, the teacher predicted grades and reference, GCSE grades and the personal statement. Poor AS results are not the end of the world. A lot of schools use AS exams as mocks, so don't put a lot of effort in. A university will not know if your school is one of these.

The challenge is figuring everything out before the early UCAS deadline for medicine.

This might be the time to call admissions tutors to see how they would view a poor AS grade, as well as looking at related courses that might allow a transfer to medicine after the first year.

Is she able to put together a good personal statement, communicating her passion for a medical career, backed up with work shadowing evidence? She is going to have to shine in all the other parts of her application of she is going to stand a chance of it not being thrown straight in the bin.

I got into med school with grades b,b,c at A-level but i had a first class degree in biology. I was the only graduate with a first, the others had a 2.1 . I hadn't done chemistry since school as the degree counts the most. If she goes in as a graduate I think it'd be easier.

Chemstry is hard and I can sympathise with you dd.

Would your dd consider doing a degree in nursing or an allied medical profession like being a physio or OT or audiology? It would develop her caring skills and give her a career if she cannot get on the post graduate medical course.

Why does she want a career in medicine. Nursing may be a better option if she wants to work in a caring profession. Nurses nowadays do stuff that used to be done by doctors. I imagine that someone with an excellent nursing degree and some work experience would be snapped up for a post graduate course.

Realistically going from a grade E to an A in one year is next to impossible. Unless she had some extreme challenging circumstances that has pulled her grade down.

The amount of experience she does will count too - I did a years placement during my 4 year biology degree doing research at a hospital, got work published etc which definitely helped. From my experience, A level grades for graduates are much more relaxed otherwise we'd have done it at age 18!

Just got back in,thank you to everyone who has commented. She if she didn't medicine,then she would do a language degree and then try to do post grad medicine. Again i don't really know if this is a viable option. She has always wanted to do medicine-with no encouragement from me!(i never had a head for science!). I want her to follow what ever makes her happy. Her ultimate goal is to work in poor nations and help those who are disadvantaged. Which is also why-i'm not sure whether to discourage her. It seems a shame that by 17yrs old,certain life paths are being closed for her.

I think it'll be difficult at graduate entry with language degree. Most uni's only take 10% graduates and I would expect there to be competition from graduates who do science/ healthcare degrees. E.g my course had physios, radiographers etc on it who I imagine would gain entry before BA degree graduates?

Surely in order to do postgraduate medicine, your first degree would have to be in a related subject such as biology rather than languages?
If she wants to help people in the developing world, then I'd be looking at other routes into a medical career, as others have suggested.

Hopefully, you she will find something out there that she equally passionate about. There are so many options. Time to get down to some serious studying of prospectuses and Uni websites.

Best of luck with whatever happens.

She may be able to do a language/science joint honours degree.

Not sure if this helps but when I applied for my biology degree 2 years ago I noticed that at leicester you could enter the second year of medicine if you passed the first year of biology at a high enough level, not sure if this is the case at any other universities but might be worth looking into?

zara, something doesn't seem right. If she did well in the mocks, had a decent predicted grade, got 85% for the course work & thought the exam went OK, it doesn't add up.

Even allowing for weightings, the exam would have to have been an absolute disaster to end up with an E overall.

(Of course, doing an arts degree isn't going to help her post-grad; there's no getting round the science bit!)