Medicine Graduate Entry 2015!! :)

You've got solid academics which will be fine for virtually all the grad courses, and you obviously have great work experience and patient contact through working as an EMT! As long as you get a good UKCAT score and personal statement you should be fine getting to the interview stage. Once you're at the interview I'm sure you have lots of experience to reflect upon. One or two of the grad med courses may not accept natural sciences and require a biological science (I'm thinking of Bristol but can't remember 100%). I wouldn't decide where you are going to apply until after the UKCAT/GAMSAT, always apply to your strengths. As you have a 2:1 you may be disadvantaged to apply to Birmingham as they state they prefer 1sts, but now accept high 2:1's. So my advice would be to get a great ukcat score and make your decisions from there! Newcastle and kings have a terrible applicant to offer ratio as they interview quite a few people to relatively few places, but if you get a really high ukcat score (775+) you've got a very high chance of an interview. Leicester may be a good choice for you (only accept grads with paid patient care jobs) and take multiple factors into account pre-interview or warwick (where I'll be going in September). Once at the interview stage the offer rate is higher at the latter 2 as well. Hope this helps and all the best with your application!

Went to the Kings open day today and loved it! Was anyone else there?!

Went to the Kings open day today and loved it! Was anyone else there?!

I want to study Pharmacy at university, as people have been saying that pharmacy is over saturated and people have struggled getting jobs. If this happens to me I might study graduate medicine, would this be a waste of 10 or so years in uni?, also my GCSE'S are 3A's 5B's and 2C's which are no way up to standard as undergrad students but I am interested in volunteering in japan working in a hospital. If I apply for pharmacy next year and decide to take a gap year, when I come back could I reject all the offers and apply for medicine? As my work experience will look very good on my application

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Hey, I have quite a bit of insight in pharmacies.

Firstly, you can't get a licence to open your own Pharmacy, they just recently siezed that loophole. The only way you can is if there is a need (if for example, a new town is being constructed etc)
You can only purchase a pharmacy, and they're going for at least £500,000 to a million.
Working as a locum is becoming increasingly hard because there are a lot of pharmacists around at the moment. The "pharmacist" magazine state that by 2020ish, there will be an excess of 20,000 pharmacists - without jobs. As well as there being limited number of jobs, they will be with a lower pay. A lot of pharmacists are coming over from abroad, and are a lot cheaper to hire so independent pharmacies prefer to take them on for obvious reasons.
So the pharmacy career is looking really tough, and I'm sorry because you've probably been looking forward to it
This of course does not mean you shouldn't go for it, if you want to by all means do. It'll just be difficult!

Now for med, if your A level grades meet the entry requirements, and you do well in your UKCAT and have sufficient work experience, you can apply for medicine at undergraduate level. Your GCSE's will play a part if you apply at Oxbridge, or UCL as I understand it so for the rest you'll be fine

If you do pharmacy however, and then do medicine it will not be a waste at all. Infact, you'll be an absolutely fantastic doctor because you'll have a greater insight on medications than most doctors would. It would definately benefit your career, and having pharmacy as an undergraduate degree will also aid your medicine application.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the reply and yes it did help a lot, im just really disappointed because I really wanted to be a pharmacist and I might not even be one due to the lack of jobs, is that magazine thing world wide or just the UK?
For the Undergrad medicine I have no chance hahaha it's just too competitive as everyone has higher qualifications, more w/e and other stuff:/ im just really gutted about pharmacy and I dont particularly want to be studying for 10 years:/, one other thing with the over saturation of pharmacists does that include clinical and community?

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I would say undergrad entry is easier than postgrad. With undergrad, you need a lower UKCAT score, and don't need to sit the GAMSAT - which is a killer. Also, not all medical schools do postgraduate medicine so you're chances become slightly limited. And ofcourse, there arnt as many post graduate places at the uni's that do postgraduate medicine, not as many as undergraduate ones anyway (Warwick has the largest number of post graduate places in the UK, with roughly 160 places)

It's a UK based one, I can confirm it's name for you when I next go to work. I'm sure you still can do pharmacy, maybe by the time you graduate in 2019, things may be different? If you love something - you should always stick to it because when you love it, you'll naturally do it so well that eventually someone would want to pay for your services.

With regards to the excess pharmacists, I think it includes both. Of course, you can use pharmacy to go on to study pharmaceutical chemistry or do a masters in pharmacology, which could put you on the platform of working in the mainstream companies, like GSK in the production of medicines. But personally, I'd keep away from that. Have a read of the book called "Bad Pharma" and you'll see why :P

It'll actually be 8 years at uni, and honestly, they'll fly! It feels like yesterday that I started doing my four year course in Forensic Science, & now I'm entering my final year!

Can I just ask for the UKCAT there are five sections right? The first four are included in your score e.g. 3000 and what about the situational judgement test? How is that scored?
So sorry I'm just a bit confused!

What does the UKCAT consist of? Like what kind of questions?

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http://www.ukcat.ac.uk/App_Media/uploads/pdf/UKCAT_Guide_2014.pdf




p18 & p19 in particular.




Read the entire PDF.

Also, does anyone know what the cutoff for Queen Mary's graduate programme last year was?

Thank you! You're probably the only one thats given me so much detail on things hahah, when people said theres hardly any jobs for pharmacists it almost put me off completely!, is there any way of knowing if there are pharmacy jobs going in countries abroad? I know you have to take a pre-reg thing and effort but if thats what it takes to get a job!, also could I just work in the EU without taking another pre-reg?

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Just a note, SHOO's post could be misconstrued to mean you must sit GAMSAT if you are a graduate applying for medicine. This isn't true, some schools take UKCAT, some ask for BMAT and other GAMSAT. You need only take the entrance exam required for your chosen schools, therefore you could just avoid GAMSAT completely if you'd like.

Also, somewhat pedantic but graduate entry medicine is still an undergraduate course. Post-graduate courses are those that confer degrees such as, but not restricted to, MSc/MRes/PhD etc.

Also, does anyone know what the cutoff for Queen Mary's graduate programme last year was?