Getting into Medicine from a highly unqualified background/Clinical Sci at Bradford

Thanks for reading.

You can't transfer onto Medical Courses.

You will have to do a foundation year and apply for it either internally (your SU should help you with this) or through UCAS at a different institution.

Yeah I'm aware of this. It's very unlikely I will escape the UCAS process which I'm prepared for even with the looming deadline.

The Clinical Sciences course at Bradford has a Foundation level which can lead to transfer to Leeds Uni medical school year 1 depending on grades/interview obviously. I've read that thing course isn't necessarily a good route though.

Aside from the clinical sciences course would I need to get onto medical specific foundation course in order to apply for medicine in pending years or are there other science foundations that would safice? (I.e. do I have options for staying in Leeds?)

Read the perspectuses for foundation years and info. Check the Medical School websites. Alot has changed since I applied.

To be completely honest - you're not in a great situation...

Transfer to Leeds seems to be an outside chance at best plus you'd probably find the course quite hard considering your A levels. I'd personally give up.

Have you thought about doing an access to med course? I was in a very very similar situation to you. If possible don't drop out of your course (a lot of unis wont consider you if you've dropped out of uni once).
I e-mailed every med school in the country and asked their advice and a few of them said try to get into an access to med course (of course a few of them said don't even bother).
If medicine is what you really want to do for the rest of your life then there are ways to do it.
Some info on access courses -
http://www.col-westanglia.ac.uk/admin/cms_view.php?page_id=8960&showone=832&pai=34&template=no
http://www.sussexdowns.ac.uk/Page/Show/AccesstoMedicine
http://www.lambethcollege.ac.uk/courses/course_list/course_detail.cfm?cit_id=492

Ok, so that's all I could find but if you google Access to Medicine there's more. I think MANCAT do one as well and there's one in Scotland...somewhere.

EDIT - I'm applying for access courses this year.

Sorry if this post rambles on but I really need some advice from people who know a tonne more about this than I do, I'm totally lost.

Currently I am in my first year at the University of Leeds studying French and German, a course I have come to realise I am not happy studying. What I would really like to be studying is Medicine. Trust me I know how crazy that sounds.

I wanted to go into Medicine for many years when I was younger however I attended a language college and started to become interested in languages as well. By the time it came to choose my a levels I was not entirely sure the route I wanted to go down but I decided it was best to choose languages or sciences in order to concentrate on a specific area and do the best that I could. I was very insecure and unsure of myself as I was having trouble with depression and bulimia and I lost the bottle to persue medicine and decided to take languages instead.

I had a fairly decent AS year but by the time exams rolled around I wasn't feeling great again but I did ok and achieved ABCD, when it came to choosing a university degree I still found myself very indecisive. I changed my mind about what I wanted to study a million times and decided that the medicine ship had sailed. In the end I decided on studying French and German at Leeds.

However in the next 6 months the depression and bulimia came back in a pretty bad way, not terribly but it definitely affected my life in a big way. Teachers started to notice and got me into counselling which helped me a lot over the next 7 months before Uni and my doctor put me on antidepressants. For a long time I doubted that I'd go to uni at all because I wasn't sure I was making the right choice in course or in my life and my grades were slipping but in the end I decided maybe a fresh start was what I needed and I worked hard, pulled my grades up and got into Leeds.

I came off the antidepressants a few weeks before I went to Leeds (I moved from London) and was very scared that it would mean I couldn't settle and things would get worse again. However things were generally ok, I found a good group of friends and Im a lot happier for being in Leeds, I feel like I really belong.

I'm still not happy though, to cut a long story short, I realise now that I made the wrong decision. I now feel like I'm a strong enough person to persue medicine because it's really what I want to do, I'm not doing particularly well in my degree because I'm not interested, I rushed into it and was unsure.

My options now are very limited, my A levels are ABB(B in gen stud) in French, German and English. But one thing I have found that might work for me is the clinical sciences foundation at Bradford. I know I'm very close to the deadline for september 2010 but I'm feeling that currently this is my best bet as it has the transfer to Leeds Medical school programme which is apparently a difficult option but if at all possible I want to stay in Leeds as I'm very happy here and don't want to disrupt the settled life I have finally found. While the move to Leeds was very worthwhile it was also very hard for me as all the support I was used to had dissapeared.

Basically if anyone could give me any advice at all I would greatly appreciate it as currently I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Thanks for reading.

i think you need to consider - what will any med school or its foundation programme think if you dropped out of your current degree? i would say finish your degree with a good mark and apply to GEP.

from what i have read med schools do not like people that have dropped out of previous degrees/courses as they see it as lack of dedication to study.


as for clinical sciences at bradford - prob one of the hardest foundation courses to get on to in the country. it is def possible but it would not be something i would suggest putting all your hopes on. they require BCC at alevel so you are fine there but just because they have low entrance requiremets that does not mean that it is easy to get into. they base alot of their choices on potential, dediction to training (which honestly you do not show because you want to leave you current course) and experiance in healthcare setting (you have not said if you have this). also once your on the course there is no garantee that you will be able to transfer to medcine so if you got on would you be willing to study clinical sciences to full degree?
bradford is an option but a very very risky one for anyone even with a perfect application. like med school, any applicant that is good enough may still be rejected because of ratio of applicants to spaces.

unless you have a medical reason for leaving you current course med schools will not look highly on you leaving to do medcine.