UCL Medical School 2015 Entry

Do you think i will be rejected automatically for not being predicted A* in BOTH biology and chemistry?

I am doing four subjects and I am predicted A*A*A*A (A in chemistry)

Many thanks!

Ugh god, same! It wasn't so much the language itself as much as it was my class and the teachers... *shudders*
Ah nice choices! Yeah, all unis which offer medicine are of a pretty damn high standard so I just want an offer from anywhere!
I know what you mean, as soon as you've finished one thing it's onto the next. If only UCL just asked for the UKCAT... 1 less exam to worry about
Section 2 is bugging me, despite having taken all three sciences at AS and A2 (Yep, It's a killer...)there's so much stuff from outside my exam boards that they claim is GCSE standard... i think otherwise.
And not having done maths since GCSE makes it even harder... how are you finding the physics parts?

You can say that again, it's annoying cause the Spanish class was so much better, even if it's a worse subject To be fair my teachers were good, one even got me some work experience in France!Exactly haha I sort of wish I'd changed UCL for another UKCAT uni now, but I wanna be in London if I can... Or Southampton cause it's amazing there 😏Ah that must be fun nearly everyone at my school dropped physics for A2 because of the examIt's really not GCSE to be honest, in my opinion there's far too much content for what makes up a quarter of your time in the actual exam, only half an hour... It's actually ridiculousThe maths and biology have been fine, physics is, well, physics 😂... It's just gonna take more work. I'm just hoping section 1 can be a bit more 'forgiving' than section 2 if you get what I mean. Chemistry there's just a lot to rememberHow about you and physics, should be easy just kidding haha The joy of wanting to study medicine eh?

The science stuff isn't that bad - I'm not sure if you've been looking at the past papers, but the specified knowledge to be tested this year is different from previous years (so the 2014 specimen paper is the best for understanding the difficulty of the paper!!)
Have you looked at the BMAT website - there's a specification and also an assumed knowledge guide. Anything on past papers which is not mentioned in this guide will NOT be tested this year

I'm a graduate applicant - in my final year of uni trying to revise GCSE stuff is haunting!! So much work on at the moment and already had two exams this term!

It's quite difficult to relate the specification to questions they will ask, especially because the questions are all so strange and applied 0.o Past papers are the definitely best, but honestly, I've been treating them like gold dust because there's so few!

I haven't done the 2014 specimen paper yet because I wanted to do it closer to the actual thing... but I suppose it would help grasp how hard it is. I'll be doing that soon

Goodness, I can imagine you're quite busy with uni work right now... And I find it difficult trying to remember stuff from two years ago with A levels going on!! Maths is a nightmare for me too, I totally understand

To be honest I've done all of the past papers twice now! Left quite a bit of gap between retaking them - but since almost all of the questions have the same concept it's useful to do them over and over again (I find) because it makes you know what to look for and sort of be able to react quicker under such time pressures!!
The timing is what I find to be the worst - I've been able to get pretty much full marks in the past papers but only when I've taken like 45 minutes to take the test! So annoying!
Just going to have to triage the paper I guess!
I just made notes on the assumed knowledge guide and to be honest once you've done a few more past papers you'll probably find it quite easy

Yeah it was amazing! Got lucky because the surgeon I shadowed spoke English fluently so could explain stuff if I didn't understand
I did Spanish at GCSE, just not as good a subject as French mates in that class have said they'd have dropped it if they didn't have this class which makes up for the analysing of media hahaha
Erm I don't think it helps much, yeah there are the equations and stuff but to be honest, physics is the only one that seems to be mostly GCSE content, with some extra stuff. I'm not certain though, I need to go back over it all again. There's not a lot of mechanics type stuff so yeah. Don't understand why they want us to do red shift and all that type of stuff, seems totally irrelevant
Haha really not a fan of maths then eh
Biology content is probably the least and a fair amount we've done this year/last year
For me I just find the questions are immensely based on application, nothing is straight forward
Yeah thing is even if we mess up on this, we still have academics etc to help buffer, to an extent.. and then our other 3 choices too
Ah how come?
That's true! In reality it was no easier and this is no harder... (Maybe )

Yeah - I got 3 wrong but still got 9.0
I think you can generally get 4 wrong and still get 'full marks.'
The physics questions especially seem to be in the same format - work done/KE transferred/GPE gained/force ... There's also fair amount of radioactive decay in the majority of the papers.
So it helps if you kinda know where you're going with the question - what things to pick out to get on with it as quickly as possible!

I've not practised s1 in ages.... and not looked at anything from s3... hoping my native wit will see me through for the essay!!

Wow well done, that's incredible!! Familiarity with the questions definitely helps with section 2, but also with section 3 to some extent. There are some main broad topics which get asked quite frequently but in slightly different ways so I've got a couple of examples of arguments prepared for those just in case

Yeah I will probably have a quick scan over - got that official BMAT book so will look through it. Hoping my university topics will help, we do a lot on NHS structure and principles/foundation and ethics and stuff.... yikes! Week tomorrow!! So nervous... I've applied to both UCL and Leeds so it means a lot to do well

Yeah exactly! I hope interviewers pick up on it and ask me about it, as long as I get interviews of course... haha. Yeah that's the shame about French at AS, it was all about just being able to pass the exam (like every other subject I guess) but A2 you have to have a 20 minute conversation, not easy!Just a hunch . Yeah QR was my highest too, surprising cause it was my lowest in my practice tests! I guess the practice questions just weren't as hard as the actual ones. I'm feeling like I remember a fair amount of the physics, obviously there's stuff I've forgotten/never covered but it's not tooooooo bad.You know! From the looks of things though, they only take content from your personal statement, they don't like grade it based on how well you've written it, so I don't think that'll be too much of an issue, then again I might just be making this up hahaha... We always think we've done worse than we actually have to be fair.The worst thing about this is that at the moment, everyone else is just able to chill, and I'm just sitting here like nope don't have the time to do that haha

Oh dear... so little time, so much to do But based on your practice tests I'm sure you'll do great Which other ones have you applied to?

Hopefully one of the three titles will be based on something you know well. I know quite a bit about the principles of ethics from having done my extended project on it so I'm hoping for something along those lines!

Ah thanks! fingers crossed eh
That sounds like a useful technique, may have to steal that haha
Oh for sure, it's genuinely annoying that all subjects we learn for exams and not to just learn for the sake of learning. I feel like I've already forgotten some and I've done the language for so long! And it's only been like a month since I dropped! ������

I'm hoping for that just as much as you! You never know, let's hope they have a massive mess up with marking and can't use them at all
The official mocks were horrible though, so much harder than the Kaplan ones, not to mention the actual one haha! It was weird, I did worse on DA and VR even though they were my best when I practiced

Hahaha everything about this whole application for medicine has been about hope, why stop now ������
Exactly, I'm just happy I have next week off too. It sucks though cause we have mocks and all that stuff, and biology control assessments at least we've done our chemistry ones and they were fine (I hope)

Leeds, Sheffield, Leicester and UCL are my choices!!
Yeah we have some decent lectures on ethics and different principles of ethics and their origins etc which is good as I've just revised a load for ANOTHER upcoming exam!! I have studied two modules on Clinical Ageing which I'm hoping will come up... ageing population is a really current issue, health economics and healthcare rationing etc....
Maybe I'm being too presumptuous !!
You will def be able to incorporate ethics into at least one of the questions though!!!

Ooh nice choices, I'm going for Sheffield too

That's really good, it sounds like you've covered a lot of relevant topics. Hopefully even if the question doesn't directly ask for one of these you could still incorporate your knowledge into your essay as examples. Nah I don't think it's presumptuous, that's quite a range there!
I'm a little worried about fitting it onto one page, I tend to write way too much for everything so I'm really trying to cut it all down!

It's true they do 'prefer' applicants with a subject other than standard sciences and maths, but it is certainly not the decider for an offer or not. If you have a contrasting subject, UCL love languages especially, then it benefits your application. If you don't, it's not a huge deal