Year 12 - Further Maths or EPQ for Medicine?

[StableCable]

DD has just started Year 12 at a new 6th form. She got 9 Grade 9 and 1 Grade 8 at GCSE. She did Statistics and Further Maths as well as Maths and got 9s in all of them.

She is considering applying for Medicine (although not definite) and so has started A Levels in Biology, Chemistry and Maths. She has also started Further Maths due to her Maths enjoyment. College also offer an EPQ and she attended the introductory talk for it this week.

She is not getting any guidance from her new 6th form as to what she should keep doing and what she should drop, especially if aiming for Medicine. Most uni details seem to focus on a 3 Grade offer and nothing else, so is it better to drop FM and EPQ to maximise 3 grades?

She may not go for Medicine and do a Maths Uni degree and the presumably FM would be handy.

Why do people do an EPQ?!

Neither

She should focus on getting relevant work experience and prepping for the UCAT which is the medicine entrance exam.

Yeh if she wants to go for medicine then that should be her focus. No need for FM nor an EPQ, there are lots of other things she does need to do.

OTOH if she wants a maths degree somewhere great (presumably, with those GCSE grades) then FM is probably needed. As in, even if not asked for at COWI, pretty much everyone will have it and you risk being on the back foot without it.

I suggest now is the time to decide if she really wants to do medicine; it's not really a choice to be i doubt at this stage as yes, she needs to do well in the UCAT.

Thank you.

Coming from a non medical family I do think it is a big ask to be sure of something at age 16. Especially when she has been head down studying for those gcses until now. We have booked open days at several unis in October so that she can seriously consider what it entails but that may be too late to decide what to drop or continue with.

Why do people do EPQ?

Maybe for now she should continue FM and review that after uni open days, so by half term?

To answer your question, why people do an EPQ, there are loads of reasons:

Try before you buy - how do you know you are going to like something you have never studied but are applying for at uni? Do an EPQ in it! If you hate it, you haven’t wasted any money. Example from my teaching is a student who wanted to study dietetics who produced the most beautiful recipe book designed to support families with a specific medical issue. She is now a dietician in a hospital.

Use it to progress your uni application. Example from teaching is a guy who wanted to study at a particular college at Cambridge. He looked up the area of research of the admissions tutor for his subject and wrote an EPQ essay on that. Yes, he got in. Another this year produced a very niche artefact directly connected with a niche course at Cambridge. They too were offered a place and will be heading there after a gap year. These students are already demonstrating commitment to their courses.

Skills. Learn how to research, how to analyse sources, how to reference before you go to uni and are expected to do all these things. EPQ doesn’t specify which referencing system a student should use as long as it is “recognised”. I always suggested to mine to look at the Library section of their 1st choice uni to see which system their chosen subject used, then do that.

I could go on, but won’t. I taught EPQ for 8 years, leading it for 4. We regularly achieved 90%+ A star/A grades on cohorts of 75+ students so knew what we were doing.

I can’t really help around medicine requirements other than saying what the previous two posters have said sound right from what I’ve heard.

But regarding why they do an EPQ - there are quite a few reasons:

There are a number of uni courses for various subjects that include it in offers in some way - in that a very good EPQ means you can drop a grade in one other subject. For instance this sort of thing from Birmingham: https://admissions.bham.ac.uk/knowledgebase/article/KA-01332/?level=undergraduate
Or if your offer is made on ucas points, like one of my son’s friends, the EPQ comes with ucas points so it can help make up your required offer.

(It isn’t necessarily the case as well that “if you’d not done the EPQ you’d have got higher grades in your 3 subjects” - maybe for some but for others it’s more about spreading your bets, and adding in something that is entirely coursework rather than relying totally on a short time period of intensive exams).

It can help build interest and “personal statement material” in a subject you’re applying for, that isn’t directly linked to one of your a levels. Eg one of my son’s friends was studying something like history, eng lit and maths, and was applying for law, so he did his EPQ on a law based topic.

The EPQ also teaches them v relevant skills for uni / life - doing a biggish piece of research, documenting it, drawing conclusions and writing essentially a dissertation. Even if you don’t need the points / grade for anything, this can be a valuable skill to start building.

But like you say, it does depend a lot on what the student wants to go on to do. My eldest was going on to engineering so it was a no brainer for him to do further maths a level instead. My youngest is thinking about law and while he’s very capable of doing FM a level, he is sure he doesn’t want to go in a maths-based uni direction, so is doing an EPQ to build his dissertation writing skills and get some law type research under his belt to add to the other law type things he wants to do for applying that they need to do to be competitive.

It sounds like for either your DD’s options of maths or medicine, it wouldn’t really help to do an EPQ - for maths definitely the FM would be a far better choice. And for medicine I don’t think the EPQ is as helpful for anything - I think that medicine entry reqs don’t tend to lower entry requirements with epq as much as other courses. Though do check that - just something I saw in passing.

Thank you for all the input.

In case anyone thinks I wasn't valuing the EPQ - it isn't that. Learning for learning's sake is always good anyway! But I was trying to understand the thinking if/when universities don't include it as a criteria and if it takes away from study tome for the grades that offers are based on.

EPQs give you additional ucas points I think? Equivalent to half an A level?

You can also do your EPQ on any topic you want and it can be presented in many different forms, written, an art piece, etc. so if you're especially good at something that's not an a level topic, it's another way to demonstrate your talents/get a good grade. You can only do one EPQ which I think is a shame as many would struggle with A levels but fly with EPQs due to the flexibility around subject content and presentation.

My medics do an EPQ if they are taking 3 A levels. That is the expected route in that school. I have supervised projects such as antibiotic resistance, personalised medicine, mild traumatic brain injuries and widening access to medical training for under-represented communities from my aspiring medics. Whilst it is true that universities do not consider EPQ in their offers, the research has offered a great way in to their personal statements.

Great posts from @Malbecfan and others as to why an EPQ is a positive thing to do.

I don't personally think that it will make that much difference to uni offers for your DD - I am assuming that she will be aiming high and not that may unis lower the offer for a high EPQ grade, although some do.

I think it is a great thing to do if there is something that interests and engages a YP that's not covered (or coverable; DD did an NEA for Eng lit A level that would have also worked as an EPQ) in their A level course. And yes for sure it develops useful skills.

Neither of my two A levellers did one as they had it all on to get the grades they needed in their A levels and didn't really have time to work on anything else.

In terms of why should she be able to choose this early @StableCable – tbh, while I agree that 16 does seem early to choose your career, I think there are some exceptions and medicine may be one. If you are genuinely drawn to the idea of being a doctor with all that entails, I think you might well know that at 16yo. I certainly knew I have absolutely no interest in the area at all. So would imagine the converse could be true?

Whatever, if med is on your radar there are things you need to do (or ideally need to do) at age 16 and one is choose the right A levels. Another (over the next year os so anyway) is experience and a third is prepping for the UCAT.

Wrt FM – I always think, rather than going from "I want to do a maths degree; oh better take FM then" it should be the other way round. Surely the desire to take FM comes from love of maths? I took an extra exam in German; DD would have happily taken further English lit if there were such a thing. So if you love maths and excel at it enough to take FM, then great, take it. Then see if you want to continue down that path.