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Original post by Anonymous
ask me anything

Hi!
I really want to attend Manchester University to study medicine in 2021.
I was wondering how much work experience I need as I haven't been able to do as much as I wanted to due to us being in lockdown.
Furthermore I've heard that some Universities lower grade offers based on the EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) only if expected an A or above. Is this true?
Also regarding this what must I do in order to stand out against other candidates.
Sorry for so many questions!!
University of Manchester
University of Manchester
Manchester
Reply 2
im 3rd year as well and was wondering do u think is it weird to stay in uni accommodation ??
why are you anonymous ?
Reply 4
hey and no I really think its not. I know people who have stayed in uni accommodation who are in my year. All in all you are living your own independent life and should move and make sure that you are in a space that is comfortable for you
Reply 5
Original post by Crazytiger
Hi!
I really want to attend Manchester University to study medicine in 2021.
I was wondering how much work experience I need as I haven't been able to do as much as I wanted to due to us being in lockdown.
Furthermore I've heard that some Universities lower grade offers based on the EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) only if expected an A or above. Is this true?
Also regarding this what must I do in order to stand out against other candidates.
Sorry for so many questions!!

sorry for the late reply.
- to be honest work experience is something that can be at any length. I know people who volunteered at care homes or and Gps for days to even months and they all got in. What is important is that you are able to say what you have learnt from your experience in your personal statement and in the interview. I do think tho it is important to have some sort of work experience tho I do appreciate that with the lockdown this is more difficult and I would expect unis to count that in. Remember that work experience isn't just GPs and hospitals. Its care homes, special need schools, pharmacies anything that you can use to show you caring or working well in a team.So the short answer is there isn't a quantified time you need to have work experience for as long as you can say why it will make you a better medical student/doctor. The lockdown and changes because of covid will make it difficult but I encourage you to talk about teamwork experiences in general that you have done in the past that may not necessarily relate to healthcare.
- I actually don't know about the EPQ thing but know that widening participation is something that (more) universities are getting involved with. Don't hesitate to call the medical school admissions team and ask them yourself there is no harm in it and it can actually be very useful. I called up schools I applied to when I had a question because who else to get the answer from than directly from the source.
-In order to stand out I think Manchester in particular really want to see students who are interested in more than just medicine in terms of having an illness and treating it. Thinking about the importance of psychological impact of disease, looking at how their illness will affect their quality of life. Thinking about health in communities and inequalities. Personalising treatment for the patients etc. essentially looking at patients as people with a disease rather than just a disease to be cured.

I really hope this has helped. best of luck for your application; you're gonna smash it!!!!! :biggrin:
Reply 6
Original post by stereotypeasian
why are you anonymous ?

personal preference
Reply 7
Original post by silaozer
im 3rd year as well and was wondering do u think is it weird to stay in uni accommodation ??


hey and no I really think its not. I know people who have stayed in uni accommodation who are in all different years including people who live by themselves . All in all you are living your own independent life and should make sure that you are in a space that is comfortable for you
Original post by Anonymous
ask me anything

What were your study habits in A2?
Reply 9
Original post by Anonymous
What were your study habits in A2?


Essentially the big difference between year 12 and year13 studying was that I focused on past papers. Did them multiple times each and kept repeating them until I got at least 80% on each one.
I think the key for it that people don't usually get till its too late is that you need to learn through the mark scheme and then go to the book for reference if you don't get it. So I essentially stopped studying the book so much and then do past papers when I was finished and just did papers and then if I really didn't know what the mark scheme was talking about I would go through it from the book. There was even a point when I stopped writing notes from the book and just read it wrote a few things on sticky notes and moved on.
Don't use the excuse that you haven't finished the syllabus to start doing past papers if you don't know what the question is talking about and its a later chapter still look at the answer and when you eventually do that paper again you will recognise it. If anything just calculate you percentage as a whole for the paper and then a percentage of the questions you could answer.

Especially now that CGP books exist and you can get peoples revision notes online its literally a waste of time reading the whole book. This especially applies to biology.

For subjects where there were more calculations like chem, physics and maths you need to do those papers and practice ,reading the book on how to do it over and over again is pointless. When you don't understand how something is worked out ask your teacher or put it aside for now if you are really stuck and do something else and come back to it when someone is available to explain it to you. A lot of the time the answers are somewhere online so you can even search it and look for explanations.
Also, make sure you show your working out clearly ,one of my teachers was an examiner and she said when they mark if they can see what you have written clearly then it is a lot easier for them to mark, if anything they will skim through it, if your working out is messy and the page just looks a mess they won't spend ages trying to find you marks and decode what you have written- remember they have hundreds to questions to mark so make their job easier for them. Sometimes I would even write my working in steps because I had done so many papers I knew what the marks for the questions would be and literally pointed it out for them by numbering my steps.

Also the specification for the subjects are a good checklist. and in some ways it summarises the chapters so make sure you read that especially for biology. I read each one and made sure I knew how to answer it and recognised what it was talking about it. Look at them like they are exam questions. would you be able to answer it? Theres was also one part about ribosomes in biology that I remember reading in the specification and it wasn't in the book to my knowledge and it was the first question in the first biology paper I took I honestly couldn't believe it.

In summary
- do past papers
- don't waste time making notes if they don't help you much look at the CGP book, other peoples notes and CERTAINLY don't just rewrite the book - that's literally the worst thing you can do.
- do past papers- I wrote the dates for the exam and always put my overall percentage and you can see how you progress
- look online- someone somewhere has answered the question, or even ask on here. I did that a lot for physics
- watch YouTube videos
-do past papers!- after you have done so many you realise the questions repeat themselves and are just changed a bit. Logically they can only set you a finite amount of questions with the finite book that they give you.

Hope that helps and good luck- you'll do amazingly well !!!
Original post by Anonymous
Essentially the big difference between year 12 and year13 studying was that I focused on past papers. Did them multiple times each and kept repeating them until I got at least 80% on each one.
I think the key for it that people don't usually get till its too late is that you need to learn through the mark scheme and then go to the book for reference if you don't get it. So I essentially stopped studying the book so much and then do past papers when I was finished and just did papers and then if I really didn't know what the mark scheme was talking about I would go through it from the book. There was even a point when I stopped writing notes from the book and just read it wrote a few things on sticky notes and moved on.
Don't use the excuse that you haven't finished the syllabus to start doing past papers if you don't know what the question is talking about and its a later chapter still look at the answer and when you eventually do that paper again you will recognise it. If anything just calculate you percentage as a whole for the paper and then a percentage of the questions you could answer.

Especially now that CGP books exist and you can get peoples revision notes online its literally a waste of time reading the whole book. This especially applies to biology.

For subjects where there were more calculations like chem, physics and maths you need to do those papers and practice ,reading the book on how to do it over and over again is pointless. When you don't understand how something is worked out ask your teacher or put it aside for now if you are really stuck and do something else and come back to it when someone is available to explain it to you. A lot of the time the answers are somewhere online so you can even search it and look for explanations.
Also, make sure you show your working out clearly ,one of my teachers was an examiner and she said when they mark if they can see what you have written clearly then it is a lot easier for them to mark, if anything they will skim through it, if your working out is messy and the page just looks a mess they won't spend ages trying to find you marks and decode what you have written- remember they have hundreds to questions to mark so make their job easier for them. Sometimes I would even write my working in steps because I had done so many papers I knew what the marks for the questions would be and literally pointed it out for them by numbering my steps.

Also the specification for the subjects are a good checklist. and in some ways it summarises the chapters so make sure you read that especially for biology. I read each one and made sure I knew how to answer it and recognised what it was talking about it. Look at them like they are exam questions. would you be able to answer it? Theres was also one part about ribosomes in biology that I remember reading in the specification and it wasn't in the book to my knowledge and it was the first question in the first biology paper I took I honestly couldn't believe it.

In summary
- do past papers
- don't waste time making notes if they don't help you much look at the CGP book, other peoples notes and CERTAINLY don't just rewrite the book - that's literally the worst thing you can do.
- do past papers- I wrote the dates for the exam and always put my overall percentage and you can see how you progress
- look online- someone somewhere has answered the question, or even ask on here. I did that a lot for physics
- watch YouTube videos
-do past papers!- after you have done so many you realise the questions repeat themselves and are just changed a bit. Logically they can only set you a finite amount of questions with the finite book that they give you.

Hope that helps and good luck- you'll do amazingly well !!!

Thank you so much for this! Really appreciate it. :smile:
Original post by Anonymous
Essentially the big difference between year 12 and year13 studying was that I focused on past papers. Did them multiple times each and kept repeating them until I got at least 80% on each one.
I think the key for it that people don't usually get till its too late is that you need to learn through the mark scheme and then go to the book for reference if you don't get it. So I essentially stopped studying the book so much and then do past papers when I was finished and just did papers and then if I really didn't know what the mark scheme was talking about I would go through it from the book. There was even a point when I stopped writing notes from the book and just read it wrote a few things on sticky notes and moved on.
Don't use the excuse that you haven't finished the syllabus to start doing past papers if you don't know what the question is talking about and its a later chapter still look at the answer and when you eventually do that paper again you will recognise it. If anything just calculate you percentage as a whole for the paper and then a percentage of the questions you could answer.

Especially now that CGP books exist and you can get peoples revision notes online its literally a waste of time reading the whole book. This especially applies to biology.

For subjects where there were more calculations like chem, physics and maths you need to do those papers and practice ,reading the book on how to do it over and over again is pointless. When you don't understand how something is worked out ask your teacher or put it aside for now if you are really stuck and do something else and come back to it when someone is available to explain it to you. A lot of the time the answers are somewhere online so you can even search it and look for explanations.
Also, make sure you show your working out clearly ,one of my teachers was an examiner and she said when they mark if they can see what you have written clearly then it is a lot easier for them to mark, if anything they will skim through it, if your working out is messy and the page just looks a mess they won't spend ages trying to find you marks and decode what you have written- remember they have hundreds to questions to mark so make their job easier for them. Sometimes I would even write my working in steps because I had done so many papers I knew what the marks for the questions would be and literally pointed it out for them by numbering my steps.

Also the specification for the subjects are a good checklist. and in some ways it summarises the chapters so make sure you read that especially for biology. I read each one and made sure I knew how to answer it and recognised what it was talking about it. Look at them like they are exam questions. would you be able to answer it? Theres was also one part about ribosomes in biology that I remember reading in the specification and it wasn't in the book to my knowledge and it was the first question in the first biology paper I took I honestly couldn't believe it.

In summary
- do past papers
- don't waste time making notes if they don't help you much look at the CGP book, other peoples notes and CERTAINLY don't just rewrite the book - that's literally the worst thing you can do.
- do past papers- I wrote the dates for the exam and always put my overall percentage and you can see how you progress
- look online- someone somewhere has answered the question, or even ask on here. I did that a lot for physics
- watch YouTube videos
-do past papers!- after you have done so many you realise the questions repeat themselves and are just changed a bit. Logically they can only set you a finite amount of questions with the finite book that they give you.

Hope that helps and good luck- you'll do amazingly well !!!

When did you start hardcore revision btw?
Original post by Anonymous
When did you start hardcore revision btw?

I would say January because I had learnt most of the content (I went ahead of the class and didn't want to wait to learn the new topics)
Hi, I’m considering Manchester and would like to know how much PBL you have in 1st year and how quickly did you adapt to this
Original post by Anonymous
I would say January because I had learnt most of the content (I went ahead of the class and didn't want to wait to learn the new topics)

So before January did you start any of the A2 papers? Or did you just go with the content taughy to you . Sorry to nag you I'm just anxious over A2.
Original post by Anonymous
So before January did you start any of the A2 papers? Or did you just go with the content taughy to you . Sorry to nag you I'm just anxious over A2.

hey and don't worry about it. You can ask me how ever many questions you want any time at all.

Before January I looked at exam questions as much as I could (I did AS papers) but of course it was difficult to do A2 papers when you only know some of the content so I skimmed through the papers certainly answered questions that I knew and looked at the mark scheme.
Before January I focused on getting through the content as much as I can , so as I mentioned before I would always read ahead and basically go at my own pace and used the lessons to ask questions and revise (what I had already learnt essentially).
Also our teachers gave us exam questions specific to the topic they could print out or even send as a word document in an email- ASK FOR THESE.

as soon as I got through most of the content I really rattled through the papers. I want to stress that you should not be shy to even have a look if in an A2 paper all you can answer at the moment is question 1-3 then do that and study those questions and see how many marks you can get out of those.

I would say latest by beginning of march or even February you should really start looking at past papers. My goal was to do a year exam paper eg 2017 biology paper 1 2 and 3, for each subject I was taking per week so I can get an average of what my grade would have been like for that year- this was when I knew most if not all of the content by then.

I know it sounds like a lot and it was and im not going to lie to you and say it was easy but it will always be worth it.I know I gave my absolute best in the time I had left and I got onto the course I wanted and id never have to do it again.

I hope I have answered your question well, if not feel free to clarify what you mean
Original post by Stylesouts
Hi, I’m considering Manchester and would like to know how much PBL you have in 1st year and how quickly did you adapt to this

in first year you have 2 semesters and do a aprox a case a week. in total you will do 17 cases in the year (and the rest of the time you will spend doing other things like projects and portfolio things)

The cases vary some weeks its a specific disease like asthma and other weeks its more generic like cardiovascular disease which contains different conditions.

You learn to adapt to pbl quickly. The way it works is you are put in groups and you all read through the case together and form questions as a group that you need to answer in order to understand the disease. Don't they give you guidelines at the kind of things you should be looking at and should have understood when studying the case. the usual standard questions are pathophysiology, risk factors, signs and symptoms etc.. So you form your questions in the beginning of the week when you meet up and go away and answer them and come back at the end of the week and go through each question and answer them as a group that way you can compare what you've found, people usually share resources and details that other people may have not known. And you have a professor who supervises you along the way.

in the beginning you are shown how it should work and you find that as time goes along you can just get on with it as students and don't need the professors help as much so they just make sure you're on the right track and answer aditional questions you may have. People don't have any problems adapting to the way it works I would say it is pretty straight forward.

Hope this helps! Manchester is a great school and place to live you'll really love it
Original post by Anonymous
ask me anything

What is your diet and lifestyle like?
Do you practice what your preach or do you drink/take drugs/smoke/eat red meat?
Reply 18
Hi, are there certain things you wished you knew before hand (subject content/living wise etc)?
Also, what are your thoughts on studying medicine in Europe, GMC approved (if no place is awarded in any UK med school)?
Many thanks in advance!
Original post by Anonymous
What is your diet and lifestyle like?
Do you practice what your preach or do you drink/take drugs/smoke/eat red meat?

- tbh my diet is pretty poor but that's personally because I never really have an appetite. I usually have one proper meal a day which is not good btw but I tend to snack a lot. My lifestyle atm is alright, I go out from time to time to restaurants and random activities. Im a stay at home person anyway so most of the time im netflixing. This is a very generic answer Im not sure what exactly you wanted me to say so I answered personally but know that if you were asking in terms of a medical student diet and lifestyle point of view its very unique to the person

-im not sure how to answer the second part. do you mean what I "preach" as a generic (future) healthcare worker? If you are asking personally I drink occasionally, don't do drugs or smoke. I definitely do eat red meat always have always will but that's just me and my lifestyle.

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