Further Maths for Medicine

Hey. I want to apply for medicine at a top university if I can - I've just finished my GCSE's and can't decide whether to do further maths next year. I did further maths GCSE and got A^ in my mock and my teacher has said I would be ok with it but I've read a lot of medical schools don't accept it. However id be doing it as a fifth AS and fourth A level, as well as biology chemistry maths and French (probably drop French after AS) and I've also read that it's good to do extra subjects. I would enjoy the challenge of it and at my sixth form if you take further maths you go into a separate faster paced set which I would like, and it seems like a good set with a lot of my friends and people who'd be good to help me. I don't want to spread half too thinly and still have time for extra curricula things so I'm not sure what to do....

Firstly there is no such thing as a "top univeristy for medicine really" all medical schools and good and quite frankly the medical school you graduate from does not matter. I should hopefully be starting my first year at medical school come september and I did at AS-Level Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, FMaths & General studies. I enjoyed all my subjects and I did really well on some of the first few mocks we did in yr12 hence why I was asked if I wanted to do FMaths as an extra AS. I accepted to do this and completed 2 modules in yr12 and then did the final module in yr13. I have to say yr12 is very difficult and time really flies. You're going to have to do many other things like volunteering, extra curricular activities, reading around medicine and reading out of the spec in your subjects a little if you want to apply to universities like Oxford or Cambridge. I would therefore not advice anyone to do more than 4 AS and 3 A2 as I found it quite difficult near exam time although the actual workload was manageable. This as a result cost me some A grades at AS, so I achieved ABBBBB and strangely enough all my Bs were 76%-78%. I only took 4 into A2 including general studies and found it a lot easier. I would advice you just stick with 4ASs as it seriously doesnt matter. If you wanted to do anything then I will urge you to sit an extra maths module eg M1, S1, D1 etc in yr12 so if you do well in the 2 modules you can just focus on c3 & c4 in yr13 which is what counts for the A*

Just out of interest, which uni let you do medicine with ABBBBB? It would be interesting to help advise people who are worried about their AS results

Firstly there is no such thing as a "top univeristy for medicine really" all medical schools and good and quite frankly the medical school you graduate from does not matter. I should hopefully be starting my first year at medical school come september and I did at AS-Level Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, FMaths & General studies. I enjoyed all my subjects and I did really well on some of the first few mocks we did in yr12 hence why I was asked if I wanted to do FMaths as an extra AS. I accepted to do this and completed 2 modules in yr12 and then did the final module in yr13. I have to say yr12 is very difficult and time really flies. You're going to have to do many other things like volunteering, extra curricular activities, reading around medicine and reading out of the spec in your subjects a little if you want to apply to universities like Oxford or Cambridge. I would therefore not advice anyone to do more than 4 AS and 3 A2 as I found it quite difficult near exam time although the actual workload was manageable. This as a result cost me some A grades at AS, so I achieved ABBBBB and strangely enough all my Bs were 76%-78%. I only took 4 into A2 including general studies and found it a lot easier. I would advice you just stick with 4ASs as it seriously doesnt matter. If you wanted to do anything then I will urge you to sit an extra maths module eg M1, S1, D1 etc in yr12 so if you do well in the 2 modules you can just focus on c3 & c4 in yr13 which is what counts for the A*

Abbb for medicine ?

Those were my AS results btw, I was then predicted A*AA in Maths Bio & Chem and I am awaiting my results in august. I got offers from Manchester, Imperial, and an interview at Plymouth in which I got a post interview rejection as I was 0.33 from the cut off.

Abbb for medicine ?

Many Medical Schools do not take AS results into account at all-my son got 3 offers with AABBD at AS level. It is what you are predicted/achieve at A2 that counts along with whatever other criteria are important to the Medical School you apply to, eg UKCAT, BMAT, GCSEs, PS, and for some, AS grades

Do you have any sources for this? I think you'll find (very nearly) every medical school looks at AS grades. However to be a fair comparison the vast majority will only look at the best 4 so your son would've had effectively AABB which are not bad AS results.

I know for a fact that they don't! I researched every Medical School Prospectus after he bombed his AS's! And no, he did not have amazing GCSEs (they were pretty good, but not amazing, nor a fabulous PS-again, it was OK, though he did do really well in the UKCAT)

Newcastle, Durham, Nottingham, Aberdeen (the 4 he applied to and was interviewed for) all take into account UKCAT +/- GCSEs +/- predicted A2 grades. They do not use AS results at all in their scoring for interview. Many other Med Schools do not use them or they have quite a low role in the scoring compared to other elements such as UKCAT, GCSEs or PS (Manchester, Leicester, Dundee, UEA, HYMS were the others we were contemplating, though he would then have had to have resat his 4th AS as they wanted a higher grade than a D and as he told me "Ain't nobody got time for dat!". Many others are GCSE heavy (Cardiff, Birmingham, Belfast, Liverpool) but I did not research these much further as he did not have enough A*s or a strong enough PS to meet their criteria.

One of his A's was in General Studies, so that hardly counts! In his acceptable subjects he got ABBD, but could have got BBBE as long as realistically predicted 3As at A2 as we made sure the Med Schools he applied to do not score AS grades. Getting to the interview stage is all about applying to your strengths, and to know where you will stand most chance of getting that interview offer, you have to research what the Med Schools are looking for. Once you get to interview, it's down to research, preparation and a bit of luck on the day.

I'm happy to take your word for it but it's just simply not true that medical schools ignore AS results... the vast majority of them use them heavily and you've found the exceptions (rightly so, applying to your strengths is the best strategy).

You're right, General Studies is not recognised by medical schools so he would have got ABBD, but the ABB in his strongest 3 should still have carried him through, although this is probably why he applied to the nearer bottom medical schools.

You say that he could've got BBBE at AS but that's not really true, one of my close friends got ABBB at AS and was rejected from UEA, Nottingham and Manchester pre-interview and all referenced his AS results as a contributory factor. Despite what many people say, predictions aren't really used by universities as many schools predict their students the standard offer or higher and it doesn't mean anything as it's not standardised

I'm not claiming all Med Schools ignore AS results, different Medical Schools use them in different ways, but many of them do, indeed, ignore them completely. And as some of them publish how they score applicants for interview, so it is wholly transparent (Nottingham, for 2015 entry, for example, publish an entire document as to how they score applicants: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/medicine/documents/ugstudy-docs/school-of-medicine-scoring-of-applications-2015-(a100).pdf
and in it they say:

"Achieved AS Levels:No points are awarded for AS levels; however AS results MUST be declared in the ‘completed qualifications’ section of theUCAS form."

Manchester also state on their prospectus:

"Applications from students who fulfil the minimum academic requirements of Manchester Medical School are examined in detail by our admissions team. We give particular attention to adherence to our entry requirements, examination grades already achieved (GCSE, A2, degree), your personal statement and the reference from your school/college, and your UKCAT score. We also take into consideration any evidence provided about extenuating circumstances. The purpose of this assessment is to identify candidates for interview;it is not possible to gain entry without an interview."

As you can see, no mention of AS grades at all. Their minimum requirements are to be predicted 3 As at A2, 4 subjects to have been taken at AS level (no mention re grades) and 7 GCSEs 5 at A/A*
So am not sure what was going on with your friend-my son was interviewed at Nottingham with worse AS results than those you mention).

And ALL Med Schools use predicted A2 results-if you do not meet the stated minimum necessary predictions (which for all bar, I think 2, are at least AAA), your application will be on the rejected pile before it is even considered. I agree Schools often inflate predicted grades, but Med Schools do look at them.


And you need to get away from the idea that there are Medical Schools "nearer the bottom". All Medical Degrees are ranked as highly as one another, and League Tables etc are completely worthless for medicine, but if you are looking at them, for 2015 complete university guide, Aberdeen was 5th on the rating scales, Newcastle 9th (Durham is scored with Newcastle) and Nottingham 14th, so hardly "bottom medical schools".

Out of the 30+ Medical Schools, at least a 3rd of them place no, or very little, emphasis on AS levels (for example, the Scottish Unis rarely use them, as do not have the same further education system as in England).

Unless you have read the Prospectuses of all of the Medical Schools, then I feel you are arguing about something of which you do not have knowledge. And if you have read them, then you have not understood them properly. I have read them, ticked off the "AS grades counted or not" box and know they do not all take this into consideration.

X

Okay, I see why you're saying that and some of what you say is true. I'm not going to have a massive debate (we could argue each side endlessly) but actually a lot of what you said is not strictly true and perhaps this is because you only got a parent's view of applications - I applied for medicine this year and at each open day there was a student-only talk in which they said a number of things that the parents didn't hear, such as the fact that predicted grades are often worthless. You can even find threads on TSR where people got BBCC at AS and were predicted 3A*s - and in many schools you are automatically predicted a grade lower at A2 than you got at AS because A2 is harder, so the highest you could be predicted is BBB; they still get people into medical schools!

About league tables, I know some universities jump around from the top 10 to bottom 10 every year but you just can't say that "all Medical Degrees are ranked as highly as one another". It's just not true. There are many medical schools that just don't have as strong a course as others and many medical schools that have significantly stronger courses than others, hence why the entry requirements are different at each medical school. To say that they're all the same shows a significant lack of understanding about the process of gaining a medical degree

Finally, you also said "I am not sure what was going on with your friend-my son was interviewed at Nottingham with worse AS results than those you mention". This is because universities have access to in-depth school and postcode rankings which means that they know how good your school was; this means that if your son achieved AABBD at a typically low-achieving school it shows he has great potential (as I'm sure he does) and hence why he got offers, whereas I go to a public school and my friend's ABBB just wasn't good enough since he clearly received very high quality teaching and careers advice - much of which taught me what I've just said. For example, the medicine admissions tutors of Cambridge, Oxford, UEA and Nottingham all gave talks to my school this year about the truth of applying for medicine and so we are expected to have significantly stronger applications. You may have heard of the "holistic" approach to applications which means that there aren't necessarily always clear cut decisions, and each applicant is viewed as a whole rather than just by statistics - if they were just numbers then everyone would apply to 4 medical schools which they were guaranteed places at!

I have been a doctor for over 20 years, I have direct knowledge of the admissions process for one medical school and have friends who are on the admissions panel for 2 more, I suspect I know more about it than most medical students and careers teachers!

My point was that league tables are useless. All medical degrees are equal when it comes to the real world of working as a doctor. When it comes to getting a job as a Dr, the position you rank in your year at your medical school is the major factor in determining where you will get to work, be that Oxbridge or A N Other Med School (along with the situational judgement test, but this is the same whichever Med School you are at). A bottom of the year graduate from Oxbridge will have fewer points and hence be a lower ranking for job placements than a top of the year ranking at any other Med School in the country. All courses are governed by the GMC and set to the same standard and, for Foundation Year applications, the people you apply to do not know where you have gone to Med School anyway. After that, your experience and references will do you far more good than where you obtained your Medical degree from (the exception possibly being for academic Medicine). If you want a Foundation job in a top unit in a London hospital then qualifying high in the year in what YOU may consider a "bottom end Medical School" means you will be higher up the ranking and hence more likely to get the job than being a lower year ranking at what you may consider a top end Med School.

How can that system be considered fair when evidence from centralised postgraduate examinations shows that performance between doctors differs based on medical school, with Cambridge and Oxford (especially Oxford) graduates performing significantly better than graduates from other universities?

Your information in your post is, of course, completely accurate, but I don't understand how such a system is defensible. It only makes sense to consider cohort ranking, and ignore medical school, if evidence suggests that all medical school cohorts are of equal ability.

In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite: https://reports.gmc-uk.org/views/ExamReportsUndergraduate/UtR?:tabs=no&:toolbar=no&:embed=y#1

Considering all postgraduate examinations, the pass rate for Oxford graduates is 88.5%, whereas the pass rate for (for example) UEA graduates is 59.4%. Logically speaking, it is clear that the Oxford cohort is of a higher ability, and therefore it is unfair for the FPAS system to equate coming in, for example, the 6th decile at Oxford, with the 6th decide at UEA.

How can that system be considered fair when evidence from centralised postgraduate examinations shows that performance between doctors differs based on medical school, with Cambridge and Oxford (especially Oxford) graduates performing significantly better than graduates from other universities?

Your information in your post is, of course, completely accurate, but I don't understand how such a system is defensible. It only makes sense to consider cohort ranking, and ignore medical school, if evidence suggests that all medical school cohorts are of equal ability.

In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite: https://reports.gmc-uk.org/views/ExamReportsUndergraduate/UtR?:tabs=no&:toolbar=no&:embed=y#1

Considering all postgraduate examinations, the pass rate for Oxford graduates is 88.5%, whereas the pass rate for (for example) UEA graduates is 59.4%. Logically speaking, it is clear that the Oxford cohort is of a higher ability, and therefore it is unfair for the FPAS system to equate coming in, for example, the 6th decile at Oxford, with the 6th decile at UEA.

The current situation means that people should specifically aim to get into medical schools with a lower standard of student (could use postgrad exam pass rates, average SJT score, or UCAS points on entry to estimate that), in order to help their career. That's a rather depressing situation. I think we should have nationalised finals examinations, which would help more fairly compare medical students.

X

X

X