A City Girl on the Farm GYG

Are you getting your university application in on the opening date or a few days after applications open? I'm also applying to Cambridge, Nottingham, Edinburgh (and Surrey). Good Luck

My school has a deadline of Sept 14th. I’m going to go over it when I go back on Wednesday then talk to them about sending it off before the 14th. What about you?

I'm hopefully sending my application off at the start of October as I have two afternoons at a post mortem laboratory at the end of September and want to include details about it in my personal statement. I don't think my sixth form have an official deadline for early applications so I'm just aiming for the first week of October (cutting it a bit close but oh well).

I think it’s really hard to know how to time it with early applications- some of the unis don’t give you work experience questionnaires till later anyway so does it even matter for them? So hard to work it out... looking forward to getting going with all the surveys and things though, put all this prep to use!

Hi everyone!

So I haven’t really updated during autumn term (oops)- it’s been a bit of a whirlwind so far and I’ve been struggling to stay motivated with school work, let alone writing this! Plus someone I know found this and I initially was a bit 😳 but actually have realised I don’t care at all!

So autumn term. A lot has happened with school and uni applications. I managed to get my uni application in on the 23rd of September in the end, after a long process with the school and a lot of fruitless conversations with my head of sixth form! My personal statement ended up tweaked a lot but I have an amazing careers tutor who knew exactly what she was doing so I was happy with her fine tuning :-) I also sent off the Liverpool work experience questionnaire and Edinburgh WES (the website kept crashing for this 😠) by this point, so I’d have those two completely finished off. I then had the Cambridge SAQ to fill in, which was fine except we had to upload a picture and I didn’t realise at the time that that picture would go on our ID cards! 🤦*♀️

During this time I had mocks, which also determined my predicted grades 😬 I only had mocks in chem and maths, and I smashed my end of year grade in chemistry! In maths I think I did a bit better, and either way it was enough to get me that triple A* prediction! Which is a real advantage for Cambridge applications, especially when I’m already applying with an EPQ grade, so made me feel a bit better about applying there :-)


Next was Nottingham’s surveys. The first was just work experience, but the second was a personal attributes questionnaire which was really hard as there was a very low character limit! I had quite a few possible answers for each question so I had to choose and refine the answers a lot, but hopefully it paid off. The SJT was okay, I finished much more quickly than other people which I’m worried is a sign I’ve rushed it- but there’s nothing I can do now!

So by late October everything was finished and the long wait started. I was still doing some wider reading for interview prep but I was mostly focusing on school (which was quite intense I think, we're being tested a lot so my life has pretty much been subject test revision, AS revision, homework, work experience, and the odd going out with friends :-/).

In November I got an interview invite for Liverpool, and a couple of weeks later I got an interview invite for St Catharine’s! I’ve had both interviews (Liv on the 26th November, Cambs on the 6th December), but I’ll write about those in a separate post as this is getting quite long. Since then I’ve got an Edinburgh interview for the 23rd January (still waiting on Nottingham grr), and a Liverpool offer!

I am absolutely in shock about the offer as I wasn’t expecting to get in anywhere, let alone get an offer from the first place I interviewed at! Now all I have to do is get the grades (AAA, but I’m going to aim for three A*s anyway so if I miss I still meet my offers), and I’m going to vet school! All that hard work seems to have paid off.

Thanks @OrangeArcher for reminding me I even have a GYG :-)

So the interviews. Liverpool was first (MMI) and as I live in Cheshire it wasn’t too far to travel, so I just got the train up on the morning of the interview. We got to the cathedral where the interviews were being held and saw no signposting or anything, walked in and found that we were in the wrong place! Luckily a friendly staff member of the cathedral pointed me and another interviewee in the right direction. It was nice to talk to other applicants pre-interview but once we got into the prep room we were all pretty quiet, it was quite intimidating sitting in the massive silent cathedral. I was given a pack and told I’d be on circuit 2, then we went through to the interview room. There was a screen with a timer on at the far end and a large hall with lots of tables (some with interviewers sitting at them).

It started and the first couple of interviewers were very grilling so I felt as though I wasn’t giving the right kind of answers. I tried not to let it throw me off in my rest stop, and next was maths, which was pretty easy except the second question which I took an educated guess on! I had to walk all the way down the hall for the next station, but when I sat down I was really relieved as I knew exactly what I was talking about. That boosted my confidence for the next station which had a really lovely interviewer and really put me at ease. Finally was the SJT, which was very similar to Nottingham’s SJT, so it wasn’t too bad (and I thought the scenarios were easier, maybe because you only had 5 instead of 30 minutes).

Afterwards we went on a tour of the uni and I saw some of the facilities which I hadn’t seen, which cemented my love of the uni. I think I left there with Liv as my first choice, but I didn’t really know how to feel about how the interview went (two good stations, two bad, and then two unmanned). It obviously didn’t go that badly as I got an offer!

Next was Cambridge, which was panel. I was a lot less nervous for this one (I was shaking before Liverpool) because it’s just talking about science, and because I’ve stayed a little detached from Cambridge just in case I get that rejection. I went up the night before via a 4 hour train journey and stayed in the YHA hostel. It was nice walking through Cambridge the next day and I sat (very cold) by the river before my interview. I went in and registered then sat in the very very quiet waiting room for ten minutes before going up to the interview.

My interview started late, and I was just starting to get a bit nervous when the interviewer called me in. When I went in he immediately put me at ease and it really was just a nice conversation about science. We went into a lot of detail into one of my work experience cases and I actually learned a fair bit from that (I’ve thought about and researched that case a lot but the interviewer still had a lot to add), then I had some maths problems. It went well I think but the last problem took me a little while to finish and a fair bit of prompting. I came out feeling good about it.

My next interviewers were waiting outside the door for me because the first interview overran, which was scary! It was literally goodbye to the first and and hello to the second... I don’t know really how the second one went. It was a lot more science heavy and we covered a lot, but I felt that I was answering the questions okay. Again, I came out feeling good, but I think the first one went better than the second.

I find out about Cambridge on the 14th of January. As it is I’m not to worried about the outcome, but I’m sure I’ll be upset if I’m rejected. It’s unpleasant to be rejected from anywhere, but at least it’ll be buffered by the Liverpool offer!

Thank you for updating your GYG blog as I have been getting a little lost in the Facebook chats when there are loads of people talking about interviews, offers etc. I'm glad you have gone more in depth about how you felt your Cambridge interviews went as it's nice being able to see how everyone actually felt rather than just "it went okay" etc.

Hello! I thought I’d do a little Christmas post, seeing as I have a bit of time on my hands :-)

For the 22nd and 23rd (the weekend) I just vegged on the sofa with a book and maybe a teeny tiny bit of work, but mostly I’ve been trying to enjoy the holidays. Then on Christmas Eve I spent the morning at home doing some Solomon papers and old unit 1 and 2 chemistry papers, before heading to my grandmas for Christmas!

My gran lives just under an hour away and normally we’d stay with her but this year with the ever expanding family, plus a mother and baby foster placement, there was no room at the inn so we went and stayed at a nearby hotel. I had good fun putting out a parsnip (we were out of carrots), mince pies, milk and a note for Father Christmas with the little kids. It was a bit weird going back to the hotel instead of onto a sofa or air bed but I definitely had more of a lie in without the baby crying at 2 in the morning!

My family is a bit strange with lots of loose ends so there’s an awful lot of coming and going in the Christmas period, sometimes it feels like a bit of a merry go round... On Christmas Day morning we said goodbye to the baby (who is very very cute) who was being taken by her mother to their family for Christmas. Then watched the little kids open stockings (and opened our token stockings which were very nice this year, featuring some uni stuff), and helped peel potatoes etc. We ate late then opened presents.

I got a vet book called 'Once Bitten' by Nick Marsh. It’s semi fiction but very entertaining and a balanced view on what it’s like to come out as a new grad into work. I need to read more of those kind of books as I really loved it and had blasted through it by the end of the day! I also got a planner which I really need for planning work experience and uni stuff, and some notebooks and stationary. The best bit was some driving lesson money as I have been paying for driving lessons myself so far and hopefully I will pass the test based on what I got for Christmas (crossing my fingers I don’t have much further to go), so I will be able to use my paychecks for other fun stuff (like savings, or pots and pans :-/).

Today I’ve done the rest of the C1 Solomon papers, come to my dads where I’ve opened more presents (I’m very spoiled to have two christmases I know), and then sat watching James Bond with a purring cat, new blanket, and glass of wine. Speaking of, my dad bought me an obscene amount of wine for Christmas 'to celebrate getting into vet school', which I look forward to blitzing through with a friend or two in the new year.

Hope everyone’s Christmases were amazing, and happy new year!

I'm really glad that you had a great Christmas (well two) and I might just have to pick up a copy of 'Once Bitten' for myself to read. Make sure not to work yourself too hard and I hope the rest of your holiday is amazing!

I’d definitely recommend it! Same to you

Thank you 👍. I'll have a look tomorrow to see if there are any other vet books similar to 'once bitten' as well. I've got a few that I've been meaning to read so I'll have to start reading them this holiday instead of going on my phone during revision breaks. The books are called 'the secret life of cows', 'the age of the horse : an equine journey through human history', 'pet subjects', and 'vet on call'.

I’ve been looking to read vet on call as well! When I get paid next month I’ll use a bit of it to buy some vetty books so I’m going to build up a little wish list... I need to read a bit of Herriot as well to see what all the fuss is about

I've read some of the illustrated James herriot books and I've also got 'the real James herriot : the authorized biography', 'it shouldn't happen to a vet', and 'if only they could talk' to read as well. I've also been to the James herriot museum and did work experience at skeldale vets (Jim Wight is the author of James herriot and used to be part of skeldale vets).

Ah I knew someone from Facebook had done WEX at skeldale! I love the show, looking forward to it starting up again

Did you know Noel Fitzpatrick has a book?! I didn't and saw it in Tesco's today so I may need to buy it.