Peninsual Medical School Open Days

Hi

I am planning on re-applying to study medicine after receiving 4 rejections this year. I have been looking at Peninsula as a possible university to apply for. Now, every time I have gone on an open day, I have always found out way more than they make available in the prospectuses and on the website. Unfortunately, I can not attend the Peninsula open day this year. Therefore, I was wondering if anyone that has been before, or is a current student can give me some more info on what they look for in applications specifically and how they score you, or any other general stuff from the open days.

Any help is much appreciated

Thanks

Btw I'm really shocked you didn't get any interviews!!

I went to the open day. Peninsula said they expect reapplicants to have A*AA, which you should have by the looks of itt. They don't look at your GCSEs and they also said they don't look at work experience as apparently people with more work experience often have connections. They care about the PS and the interview!!
Tbh your grades look so good you may be better applying to a med school which place a large emphasis on GCSEs such at Birmingham, notts, Cardiff, queen Belfast, Liverpool.

Thanks Ryan, that's good to know. What do you think they look for particularly in the PS?

Emotion, empathy, reflection. You really have to be able to reflect what you got out of your work experience and also talk about your personality and what you have to offer.
If you ever want any help with your PS I'm happy to help

http://www.medical-interviews.co.uk/default.aspx

Check out this site, click on which med school and find peninsula, all the qualities they want in the interview are the same ones they want on the PS.

Thanks a lot, I may have to take you up on your offer. You seemed pretty confident regarding you PS so it will be good to get an alternative opinion. If I have any future questions about reapplying, would you have any objections to me sending a PM your way?

Why do they expect reapplicants to have an A*?

Because they make A*AA to AAA offers. So reaplicants have to have A*AA.
They said they are gOing to sway to A*AA offers though.

Fair enough, along as they give out A* offers to conditionals (school leavers) as well!

Yea, they said if your predicted A*s then you will get an A*AA, I would imagine they are trying to completely go to A*AA ... but are testing it out this yr.

Haha, that's good. For 2010 entry, no medical school (except, as it turned out, Cambridge) gave A* offers so everyone and their dog were predicted straight A*'s.

Exactly, I think a lot more people will be careful now with predictions. I'm sure other med schools will start to do the same.

Implementation of the A* was a disaster. It got so massively over predicted because tutors wanted to give students applying for competitive courses (i.e, economics, medicine, law) and those applying for Oxbridge the best possible chance, or the students browbeat the tutors into predicting them A*s thinking it would give them a better chance. Apparently 60% of predictions are an OVER prediction. How that is sustainable is beyond me, but it must make handing out offers harder than it should be.

There are always going to be exceptions to the rule, and this might sound a little rich coming from me (i.e, I technically got no ASs during my Year 12 because I had health problems from Year 10 onward and therefore missed all of the content from then till Year 13 but my teacher predicted me 4 As at A2, which I got), but I don't think teachers should be allowed to predict more than a set percentage of UMS marks than you achieved in AS. Say it was 10% - you got 252 at AS, so they're allowed to predict you 277 at A2. Hence, they're allowed to predict you an A*. If you got 212, they can predict you 233 at A2, hence, a B. Only if you have mitigating circumstances can they predict you higher.

Thats a good idea. But its not always a good indication, I got 96% AS psychology and 93% Biology and got predicted A*s but missed out on them by one mark at A2 in each subject mainly because of simple slip ups, yet people I know somehow managed to increase vastly from AS to A2 and they got A*s.

It's unfair on the students sometimes as well, because I knew someone who missed their Medicine offer last year. Even though he asked the teacher to predict him A*AA, he missed the offer he had at Liverpool and actually got BBB. I think possibly, on some level, he actually began to believe he was guaranteed A*AA since his teacher was ok predicting it.

That person was way over predicted then, I think schools need to stop that. Private schools are better at predicting A*s because if they predict A* and their students don't get it then it comes bk on the school ( and clearly they don't want to look bad ) it would be good if more state schools and colleges took this approach/ view.


I think Universities actually basing their offer on your predicted grades rather than not exceeding their standard offer is one way of discouraging over-prediction, but I think there need to be more restrictions in place before you even get to that point.

It depends on the type of students applying to each med school, because a lot have niche markets. I'm guessing peninsulas will now be alevels along with Cambridge. In some way its good that med schools are being more selective because it will produce better candidates.

I kinda derailed the thread there a bit, sorry.

Bold

The word peninsual amuses ms.
That is all.

I also find it mildly amsuing that the acronym for the the Medical shool is PMS.


Tehe.

I also find it mildly amsuing that the acronym for the the Medical shool is PMS.


Tehe.