Medicine 2012...(hopeful entrants) !!

Oh man I'm really starting to doubt my chances! Got a rejection from Oxford already and doubt I'll have much chance at KCL, BSMS or Nottingham with my low UKCAT 637.5

Damn you verbal reasoning, I HATE that section!!

Did your teachers actually say things along those lines? That's awful. The only reason I was ok with my UKCAT was that I had nice friends who sat down with me and reassured me I wasn't stupid, and then helped me figure out where I could apply. The last thing you need when you're applying to something like med is someone saying you're not good enough, jeez.

Although you did pick the three choices wisely and it only takes one offer.

Would you take the backups if you had to or would you reapply?

One of them said "Lets be honest your not a very strong applicant, so it would be better if you apply for 2 back up choices".

That's true.

Depends on my grades anything AAA or better I will reapply but if I don't get AAA and I get something below I will go to the back up choices.

I hate ALL sections of the UKCAT. If it makes you feel any better, your UKCAT is above the national average

BSMS barely look at UKCAT and Notts aren't UKCAT Nazis either. Kings balance UKCAT with GCSEs.

Is it different for internationals? I'm assuming you are from your flag anyhow?

So harsh. I hope you get 3 offers and prove them wrong.

What are the back up choices? Biomed courses? Would have have to stay at home if you did biomed?

Initially, I had an order of preference but that was a very very very subtle one which has jumbled around and then completely dissolved since So yeah, I really would just love to go anywhere. I've been amazed this year compared to last year's four rejections-without-interview, so I'm literally beaming. I'm so extremely happy to have gotten this far! !

Good luck guys!

Yeah it is different for us, unfortunately. Oxford rejected me based mostly on my BMAT (pretty low, granted), because I hadn't done GCSE's and they didn't bother looking at my grades
Our system is very easy, we get graded from a scale 1-10, 10 being the best and an 8/10 is equivalent to A/A*. It's not even difficult to understand!

Clinical sciences at Bradford so I have the opportunity to transfer to Leeds if I do well.
And Biomed at St.George, which gives you the opportunity to transfer straight to 3rd year at medicine if you do well in the first two years at biomed.

They don't bother looking at non-GCSE grades? That doesn't make sense, how would a non-English student have GCSEs.

Oh right, well, as long as your GCSE equivalents are good, you surely stand a good chance.

But wait, do you count as international? Because Holland is in the EU, so do you go through the same application process as home students? Because that would mean your UKCAT is good to go for Notts and BSMS.

Your english is amazing, btw, I wish my french was half as good as your english.

You picked the 4th and 5th choices really well, I didn't realise you could transfer from Bradford/SGUL!. It'd be cheaper than post-grad too.

Thank you so much , I'm doing a bilingual education so next to regular English I also take IB English A2 HL! Yeah Oxford said that since I didn't have GCSE's they weighed my BMAT higher than my grades, so yeah hoping for the best now. And we are counted as home-students!

I wish my French was good, I absolutely loathe my French teacher, hence I never do anything in her lessons and usually plan all my dentist appointments or whatever during her lessons lol.

But from what I've read it is very very competitive. So I'd rather do the straight medicine route if I can.

Yeah, I can imagine it would be. My friend transferred from Newcastle biomed -> Newcastle med and she said she only had one friend and she basically spent all her time studying to get the grades she needed in first year. And she's also ridiculously smart to the extent where she got over 700 in her UKCAT having only even heard about it a couple of days beforehand. Grrrr.

If you're counted as a home student you have a really strong chance at Notts and BSMS, and Kings too if they look at your GCSE equivelants too! So don't lose hope.

Wow, your study schedule must get really chaotic... how many subjects do you do? I only do three

Haha, think we can all relate to that. I used to claim to be ill so I didn't have to go into school purely because I had maths on that day. So glad I don't have to do maths any more!

Wow! I wonder why medicine is so competitive.

I have a total of ten subjects. We have cumpulsory subjects, which are English, Dutch, Maths and PE. For Maths we have A (which is sort of the easy maths) and B (a lot harder, the one I take lol), we also have C, which is for the people who are pretty bad at maths and who won't need it in their further studies anyway and we have maths D, which is very very advanced and which you require if you want to go to the Technical Uni's here in Holland.

In addition to that, I take Latin, Greek, French, English A2, Chemistry, Biology, Physics

But all students are also required to take General Sciences, Social Studies and either Classical Cultural Forming (if you take Latin/Greek) or Cultural Arts Forming. These subjects are only taken in one year and examined in the same year.

Most students in Holland, who do VWO (so the highest level of secondary education) have about 7/8 subjects.

Did you make a lot of changes to your application this year or is it simply the achieved grades that made your application stronger? did UKCAT go up/down? did you go for the same places? sorry for so many questions... I just want to be prepared for potentially reworking my application this summer.

well done on the successes this year by the way!!!

wow thats LOADS!!! and heres me dropping maths at the beginning of A2 cause i thought 4 subjects was too much

how do you manage to balance them all out?

Well I have 2 lessons of 75 mins of each subject per week, except PE, which is only 1 lesson, and Latin and English A2 are 3 lessons. It is pretty hard balancing them all out and managing to do homework for all of them, and during exam week it's especially a bitch haha. That's why an 8/10 is considered very good for any exam here, achieving those grades means you'll graduate cum laude.

I think the minimum amount of subjects for us is 7 or so? Our final exams are spread out over three weeks though, so that's cool.

Yeah, my application changed quite a lot. I came to realise that my main problem first time around was too much emphasis on the academic side of medicine in my personal statement. I think that prevented me from getting interviews at Keele and Nottingham last year. To improve that this year, I vastly increased focus on the doctor-patient relationship and seeming like I want to do medicine so that I can basically help people and because I appreciate the rewards of it. My personal statement is, in my opinion, about ten times better mostly due to restructuring and better choice of content. Obviously, I added gap year plans too, including more work experience, a second job in teaching, fundraising and extra AS levels.

Given that, I still think having obtained the grades does make a profound difference to your application because almost every applicant has the grades required and many have much better than the grades required in their predictions, which not all of them meet. Basically, having the grades already means there's no doubt in them that I have the ability and the study skills.

Similarly, simply being a reapplicant is a great factor, because they can be confident that you do really want to do medicine; you didn't just go for the fifth choice because you wanted to go to university or because it would be inconvenient to try again in three years' time, especially given that grad. entry is even more competitive. You've shown a huge dedication by giving an extra year of your life to getting that place - perhaps even more so for 2012 reapplicants as they still want to pursue medicine despite the tuition fee rises.

My UKCAT went up from 635 average to 682.5 average this year, mainly due to putting more time into it as last year I had summer schools and work over the summer etc. holding me back. My best hint is do every last mock UKCAT you can find (I used three books, the Pearson VUE official tests and two Kaplan tests given to me by a friend who attended the course as well as various internet resources).

The only place I have applied to again is Nottingham University, because I really love the course there mainly (two degrees at once - I would intercalate wherever I go, I think, but Nottingham saves time). My other three choices of 2011 entry: Cambridge, Birmingham and Keele, are not in my application this year. This is basically because I decided to play more closely to my strengths. There isn't really an order of preference this year, because I really just want to get into medicine after last year's catastrophe.

Any more questions?