The Chances of Medicine

Cheers man! Best of look! Where are you applying to?

I remember when I was at college, the numerous people who said that "Maybe medicine isn't for you" and "Have you maybe thought about a different career?" This absolutely infuriated me, I like many of you reading this, was absolutely determined to get into medicine. Looking back it was silly: people who didn't really have a clue about medicine were telling me that I couldn't do it, or just laughed me off.

I applied for my 4 options in medicine. During my HYMS interview, I was asked about 2 people i would take onto a desert Island. These 2 people could be dead or alive, fictional or non fictional....I was nervous and misunderstood the question, I replied I would take Ray Meers alive and Jeremy Clarkson dead......I know....the consultant burst out laughing and we swiftly moved on. People at my college laughed and told me i didn't have a hope in hell of getting into med school. By April of AS i had got 3 offers (manchester, Keele and HYMS) and rejected Liverpool before they replied.

I'm currently in my second year at Keele and absolutely love it. My message to everybody applying for medicine is to not let people demean you. By all means take on advice, but just do your own thing and stay focused on your exams and volunteer work, and brush off any ignorant comments...a medical students gave me the same advice when I was in college and I personally feel that it was this advice that powered me through college.
Enjoy your college years, work hard...and you'll love your med school years even more!

Hey Zali, Firstly, best of luck for your exams! Advice on the personal statement, I've read tonnes of them, but usually i find that the ones that are most succesful are ones that are really honest and think slightly outside the box. So for example when talking about your hypothetical work experience on a ward or a GPs, try and not only discuss about your experience and the patient's experience, try and think outside the box, this can include talking about the finanical/emotional/psychological stress on the family (med schools would love that) also maybe talk about some spiritual needs of a patient you may have seen (like them seeing the hospital chaplain).
Best of look Zali!

Hi Happokrates!Yeah no problem, facing facts, keele university isn't brilliantly well known for prestige, but in terms of medicine, prestige isn't everything. My friends thought i was frecking nuts to rejects HYMS, liverpool and manchester for keele, but like a medical student once told me, its 99-100% employment for almost all medical students who get their degree in this country, so your choice of medical school (excluding oxbridge) is to try and provide you with the easiest and most supportive pathway for the 5 years of hard work and fun times.
- Keele aims to train excellent clinicians: I found more aimed at me as i wasn't and am still not interested in research.
- The student support here is excellent and really helped me through a difficult time last year, (I can't praise them enough), wheras other medical schools were more slit throat.
-It's a very small medical school (120 in the year), so everybody knows everyone else. I didn't realise how cool this was when selecting med schools, but looking back it's so good to know everyone and have so many different friendships.
- New anatomy suite - if you're into surgery

best wishes and good luck

That's fair enough, was just not the obvious choice that's all. I'm glad you're happy. Thanks for the good luck but I'm already at med school, I didn't choose the obvious offer either, picked Nottingham over Kings and Newcastle for similar reasons.

Ah sweet What year are you in bud?