Applying for medicine

I really am just confused. I am predicted AAB and I wanted to apply for medicine at Leeds and Nottingham. I also want to do Neuroscience as my back up. Is there any point in applying for medicine? Do I work hard and achieve AAA for my actual A-levels and try get through clearing for an available course, or take a gap year, and then reapply for medicine the year later or do I just apply for neuroscience and not med? Or continue with med and trying to get better grades if not, retake my A-levels...

You can't really apply to medicine with AAB predicted. Like I applied last year with A*A*A & was immediately rejected from Exeter for not having A*A*A* - it is incredibly competitive so you need to try & get as high as possible in all your stats. That being said, I didn't apply to Leeds or Nottingham so I don't know exactly how they weight things. If your other stats are really good, your predicted grades may not matter so much.

I think the first step would try & get your predicted grades up. Talk to your teachers & ask if there is anything you can do over summer/ mock re-takes at the beginning of U6th. If that doesn't work, maybe try to improve the rest of your application. Get involved in volunteer work over summer, try & find more work experience, write an amazing personal statement, get as high as possible in your UKCAT... If your heart is set on medicine, don't just give up over one small thing.

The gap year is an good option, as you will have your grades. You can also travel, get more work experience, earn some money etc. I'd be aware however that medicine is already a pretty long course, so you might not want to delay it.

One final tip is to really do your research. I can't really remember how the unis value predicted grades, but I'm sure some won't really care about them (they are one of the most subjective parts of your application after all). If you can find these unis, you will definitely have a good chance!

Thank you for your reply, can I ask are you doing Medicine? If so which uni? if not, what are you doing now?
I've been looking for work experience but I've had no luck getting replies back. To be honest, I'm just wondering if I should write my personal statement focusing on medicine or not.

You can always apply to biomed and then apply to graduate medicine. Just be careful since graduate medicine is even more competitive.

Were you actually rejected from Exeter purely for the reason of not having 3A*s