The Student Room Group

My journey to get to medical school

Introduction

Hello,I'm starting this blog post to share my journey to get into medical school to share my experience with others and perhaps motivate myself to work harder.I'm aiming to get A* A* A. Any useful revision tips and resources would be much appreciated to help me achieve my goals.Also any tips regarding medical school, BMAT,UKCAT,interviews and other things, would be great :smile:.I'm also in year 12.

Medical schools I want to apply to:

-Cambridge A* A* A
The reason I want to apply is not the fact it's one of the best universities but because I like how traditional the course is and how it focuses a lot on the science behind everything.I believe a good doctor is also a good scientist, but that's just my opinion.I also like how there is not too much patient contact at first as I would get too overwhelmed and wouldn't benefit as much from the experience as I wouldn't know enough about medicine yet and if I do I would be like oh that's the thing we learnt in year 1, so I would be able to see what I learnt in action.I'm nto sure if my view of the course is accurate but that's the impression I get from the course.Also it teaches you a lot of research skills I think by focusing a lot on science, so I would be able to go to research and academia if I ever felt it's what I wanted to do but right now I'm just focused on practicing medicine.

Imperial A* A A- I been to imperial lots of times and I really love the campus and atmosphere and I think it's a great environment and it's a place I could see myself in.I like the course as well and the location is great.I like how an aspect of research is included in the course.Even though the course is integrated I can bare that I guess, since research is involved.

UCL A* A A- It has a traditional course and is located in London.I been to a lecture there once on alzheimer's, even though it wasn't great as I couldn't understand a word of it,a friend went there and they really liked it.

For the 4th option I thought of applying for 1 UKCAT university: Maybe Edinburgh ( AAA) or King's College London (AAA) but I'm yet to decide.

I knwo some people would disagree and would say i should apply to 2 UKCAT universities, but I just really like the 3 BMAT universities above a lot.

GCSE's

I did some of my GCSE's in year 9 some in year 10 and some in year 11:

Year 9:
Religious studies: A*
Art:C

Year 10:
History:A*
Geography:A*
Polish:A*

Year 11:
English Literature:8
English Language:7
Maths:8
Computer science:A*
Biology:A*
Chemistry:A*
Physics:A*

I went to a comprehensive school that was not that bad but had a very terrible maths department, the science department was okay, the humanities department was really good.At the end of my GCSE's I decided to move school for sixth form and I went a grammar school,which is very different from my old school in terms of academic achievement and environment.

A-level
I first started off by doing history instead of economics, but then I realised how much content you need to knwo and with my 3 other hard a levels I decided to change to economics as it's easier and I only really want to do 3 a levels but my school forces us to do 4 a levels :frown: .I thought about changing to physics instead of economics, because it's more useful and trialled some lessons for physics but at the end I went back to economics because I missed the whole topic of electricity and my head of sixth form thought it's better if I do economics and because I wasn't doing so well in my other subjects, picking up physics would make my situation worse.Even though I think physics is so much more interesting.

The a levels I am doing:

Biology- it is quite difficult and there is a lot to remember and we have to do a lot of independent learning.The teachers are okay, but one teacher annoys me as she makes us write notes from the textbook which has a lot of waffle and often uses the wrong wording that the exam questions want us to use.Im struggling a lot with the lack of online resources online for biology, the only resources I found so far is Mr pollock and bio fact sheets, I would appreciate it if anyone could tell any other biology resources online preferably videos.At GCSE I used freesciencelessons to do well in my science GCSE, but freesciencelessons only has a few a level videos, so I am a bit screwed.

Chemistry- I really enjoyed doing chemistry at GCSE a lot, it my favourite and best subject,all thanks to freesciencelessons and I found it relatively easy!A level chemistry is a completely nightmare when compared with GCSE chemistry, that saddened me a lot as I was really looking forward to the a level :frown: I think this is due to my teachers and their bad explanations and the textbook being bad and no freesciencelessons. I find chemistry really hard and especially the calculation questions as they are so much harder then what the teacher taught us.

Maths- Maths at GCSE was a big struggle, due to the 9-1 GCSE's being so so much harder then the old ones which I thought were a breeze compared ot the 9-1 one.My school was terrible at maths, in year 9 our teacher was not experienced to teach maths and had to resit GCSE maths many times and she never managed to get an A* only an A.In year 10 we had a lot of teachers as a lot of them left.t the end of year 10 I was on a grade equivalent to a C grade.Year 11 our teacher also was incompetent and did not even have a degree related to maths and was struggling themselves with the maths content and had to look answers up in the mark scheme and had to self teach themselves the content as they couldn't do it themselves.But thanks to this teacher in our school who gave me lots of help after school I managed to get an 8 in maths luckily, but my foundations of maths were really weak.So a level maths is going terrible especially due to my teacher never teaching us anything and only handing out question sheets to do, expecting us to know everything.So maths is a real struggle for me.

Economics- Is very easy and is mostly logic.The way I would describe the subject is easy logic with fancy terms.I really hope my school will allow me to drop this subject in year 13 so I won't have to put up with it anymore.Some bits are interesting but only slightly, most of it is boring.Sorry if this offends anyone.

Work experience

During the summer I managed to get work experience for 5 days at the haematology department in a hospital, this was pure luck.Since I was meant to do work experience at another hospital with my mom's friend's brother but the thing fell through and they never arranged the work experience for me, so that was a bit disappointing, since they wasted my time making em write a CV and a letter.

But luckily after emailing around one consultant gave me work experience in the haematology department as mentioned above, who I am very grateful to!Some of the things I did was go on ward rounds,patient clinics,watched a bone marrow biopsy,talked to a patient and it was a very good learning experience.Im not going to go into too much detail as I don't want to breach patient confidentiality or anythign like that.

I really want to get more work experience but I have no idea where to start as the hospital near me won't let me get work experience there as my new sixth form si not in the borough even though I live in the borough which is silly.And all the hospitals in my school's borough are far away from me and don't offer any specific work experience programmes.So I'm not sure where to look for more work experience any useful advice would be very useful and helpful and appreciated!

Extra curricular

-I do young enterprises at school and I'm the secretary.
-Attend bio chem society
-Do martial arts at school which I wish I didn't as it's too time consuming and I can't go home early which is one of the only days I can due to this being after school and it probably won't benefit my UCAS application.
-I applied for prefect, but not sure if I will get it or not

Wider reading

I read so far:

-This is going to hurt:secret diaries of a junior doctor by Adam Kay

I really recommend tis book,it is very humorous and gives you a great insight into medicine and perhaps makes you think if medicine is what you really want to do.I recommend this book to anyone thinking of applying to medicine!

- Life in the frontal lobe by Katrina Firlik

Im nearly finished with this book.It is an interesting book with very fascinating stories and is making me consider going into neurosurgery and has taught me quite a bit of things about the brain.It also questions ethics a bit and makes you think of ethical implications when reading some of the case studies and perhaps even making you think of human nature. Even though this book is based on a doctor in the USA which is quite a bit different from the NHS and perhaps a tiny bit less stressful it is still a good insight into medicine.

I would really appreciate if you guys could perhaps recommend me some books for medicine and give me a bit of an overview of what the book is about,it would be much appreciated :smile:

Volunteering

I have found volunteering at a care home which I will start this weekend, which I am very excited about!!I found this care home through my sister's friend who volunteered there.Both me and my sister are going to volunteer as we are both going to apply for medicine.
(edited 6 years ago)
I went to the care home today for the first time.I helped during dinner time and had to spoon feed one of the residents their lunch and dessert. I then went to the sitting room area and most of the residents were watching tv or reading the newspaper or sleeping in their chair.I tried talking to some of them and smiling and being nice but I was struggling to have a conversation with any of them as most have dementia and speak really quietly and mumble a lot which is not their fault.I felt really guilt that I couldn't understand what they were trying to tell me and couldn't have a proper conversation with them.I really want to have a positive impact on them but I'm worried Im not having much of an impact at all :/

I didn't study today.I was talking with my young enterprise group chat about the product and I have to research for the group about what's already on the market.

Tomorrow I want to do my biology h/w and then do some of the past paper questions the teacher gave me to practice to improve and will check them.I will try and read some of my book (life in the frontal lobe) I have a bit less then 100 pages to go.After I finish that book I will read a day in the life of the brain by Susan Greenfield.
good luck!! I'll be following this thread as i'm also a wannabe medic.
so lucky you got to do some gcses early
what inspired you to go for medicine?
oh wow, those reasons are amazing!!
was the show called operation ouch by any chance?
Original post by mez_merising
oh wow, those reasons are amazing!!
was the show called operation ouch by any chance?


No but those twins are part of that show it's when they were doing a different show it was something on channel 4,I forgot what it was about.But the tv show about the medic who went to Syria was also on channel 4 but I have no idea what it was called or what the doctor was called.I'm very interested to hear what inspired you to want to pursue medicine.
why I want to do medicine, well all of my mums side are doctors and they are big inspirations to me as we’re all so close.

also bc my grandfather was really ill with lung cancer that wasn’t found till it was at the last stage. this really upset me, and considering I was only 8, I was so driven to find a way to help others.

most of that time was weekends spent in hospital wards which I found fascinating, even though it smelt kinda weird

another thing was when there was a patient who had passed away in the room next door to my grandfathers and it just kinda shook me tbh. I could just hear people shouting and sobbing and I just wanted to do something but I couldn’t.

now however I’ve become interested in mental health as it’s being finally raised in society as an actual illness. this I’m thankful for, as before I was just throwing around words like anxiety and depression without actually knowing what it meant, and making triggered jokes etc.

it wasn’t till y9 when there was an anxiety attack literally every week at my school, where we had to look out for each other bc the government can’t teach us about the basics of mental health. it was a scary experience, but it just made me even more passionate about it, as well as caring for people.

well, I’ve just realised I’ve written quite a long essay. hope it doesn’t bore you too much😅
Sorry, I haven't updated this blog in a while, I thought the last day of half term would be a good day to do so.

A bit disappointed in myself that I wasn't very productive this half term and didn't work hard at all or smart.I managed to complete the biology sheets the teachers gave, it didn't take too long but I still have to do the biology exam questions the teacher gave me to help me improve, Im really grateful the teacher gave them to me + the mark scheme.It's really useful and it's a good reality check to show me how much content I don't actually know and haven't bothered to go over.

I finished the chemistry exam questions and the PAG questions which I always find hard and probably got wrong.

I did my 2 pieces of maths homework which were on coordinate geometry, I found the fact the teacher gave us the mark scheme for the questions really useful, as when I didn't know what the question was asking me for, I looked at the mark scheme to get an idea of what to do, I didn't copy the answers or anythign but I just used it as a guide, so next time they asked about the same thing but using different numbers I knew how do the question.I also had a question about the circle equation which also had aspects of graphs which I found very hard but worked through it,there were 9 questions with additional parts, e.g. 1.ii,1.iii etc and I couldn't do 7 parts but I did all I could and tried my best.I'm probably finding maths the most challenging and it's the subject where it takes me the longest to do the homework for always,probably over an hour per piece on most occasions.

For economics I did one piece of homework today but still haven't done the other piece and haven't really caught up on the missing work, so Im very disappointed in myself We have h/w from these workbooks that you have to purchase yourself but I haven't purchased them yet.I really wish I didn't have to do this a level as my 4th, I woudl very happily just do my 3 other options and that's it.

I have an economics test on monday and thursday and a chemistry test but not sure if it's on tuesday or wednesday. It will be testing us on everything we done so far.Im yet to start revising for these tests :frown:, I think I will try and do the physics and maths tutor topic questions on the topics that will come up.I will have to read over the economics stuff.I really should start writing notes on the stuff we covered.

I wish I could get over that barrier of laziness that I have.I have been procrastinating over this half term watching videos and binge watching white collar on netflix :/ . I have to write an article for the school magazine about science and have to do my research for young enterprises as well :/.I went to the care home yesterday and fed this resident, who kept trying to eat with her hands as the resident I fed last time was sleeping in her chair and didn't really want to wake up so I couldn't feed them.Then we ( me and my sister, mostly my sister) talked with this resident for a bit and then we went home for dinner.During my half term I also went to the cinema with my sister and her friend to watch kings man and the golden circle, personally I preferred part 1.I also went with my sister to meet this friend who is a researcher ( she is really cool) and her niece and we talked, which was cool and interesting, I really hope we will meet again soon.

Goals for 2nd term:

-Be more productive
-Go over stuff you learnt in class
-Read up on things before lesson
-Don't do h/w and test revision last minute
-Make more progress and stay out of sight from the head of sixth form
-Less procrastination
-Update blog more
Good luck 😊

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