Official Thread: (Undergraduate) Medicine 2023 Entry

This thread has gone off track in a very interesting direction!

My oldest son is hoping to be a neurosurgeon, and my younger son thought he was not interested in medicine because he has no desire to be a surgeon, which is the role he equated with medicine from listening to his brother for the last few years. He realised that he wants to be a GP halfway through Y12. There is such a wide range of options in medicine, which makes it difficult for a 15 year old choosing A level subjects to see the right job is there for them.

Reply 62

qwert7890

Loving the analogy :rofl:

Reply 63

Original post by qwert7890

Loving the analogy :rofl:

Wait until your tutors use it 20 times in Welcome Week :wink:

Reply 64

qwert7890

Original post by becausethenight

Wait until your tutors use it 20 times in Welcome Week :wink:

AHHHH 😭
Also on an unrelated note, do you happen to know if med schools in London plan to conduct lectures in person come September? I would hate for my uni experience to be virtual :/

Edit: I just realised, I’m preaching to the choir lol. Your year had it worse lol, at least we get some face to face small group sessions

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 65

username3822514

17

Original post by qwert7890

AHHHH 😭
Also on an unrelated note, do you happen to know if med schools in London plan to conduct lectures in person come September? I would hate for my uni experience to be virtual :/

Edit: I just realised, I’m preaching to the choir lol. Your year had it worse lol, at least we get some face to face small group sessions

We have had some small group in person and have in person again now. I don’t know about lectures - my guess is even getting all tutorials and practical sessions in person will be lucky next year

Reply 66

Original post by qwert7890

AHHHH 😭
Also on an unrelated note, do you happen to know if med schools in London plan to conduct lectures in person come September? I would hate for my uni experience to be virtual :/

Edit: I just realised, I’m preaching to the choir lol. Your year had it worse lol, at least we get some face to face small group sessions

Hate to say this, but based on what my first year mates at UCL tell me, they've had something like 3 in person sessions in 2 terms? So anything more than that will be good for you :tongue:

I'd expect you guys will have more in person tutorials and skills sessions, maybe anatomy, but I'd be really surprised if lectures are in person as they're so huge and even pre-COVID students would not go and watch the recording. Imperial is considering threatening us with no return to in person lectures ever but I think that's unlikely :shakecane:

Reply 67

username3822514

17

Original post by becausethenight

Hate to say this, but based on what my first year mates at UCL tell me, they've had something like 3 in person sessions in 2 terms? So anything more than that will be good for you :tongue:

I'd expect you guys will have more in person tutorials and skills sessions, maybe anatomy, but I'd be really surprised if lectures are in person as they're so huge and even pre-COVID students would not go and watch the recording. Imperial is considering threatening us with no return to in person lectures ever but I think that's unlikely :shakecane:

My guess is that people going into first year may get lectures in their second year in person if there ever is a return. Just speculation though

Reply 68

Original post by DGeorge13

My guess is that people going into first year may get lectures in their second year in person if there ever is a return. Just speculation though

Yes, I think that's probably the earliest in-person lectures will come back.
Maybe for next year you could have a blended model where a few students can attend in person and it's livestreamed for everyone else? Some of the other Imperial departments did that this year I think.

Reply 69

TCL

Original post by becausethenight

Yes, I think that's probably the earliest in-person lectures will come back.
Maybe for next year you could have a blended model where a few students can attend in person and it's livestreamed for everyone else? Some of the other Imperial departments did that this year I think.

Yes, if you wanted distancing in lectures, but the opportunity to attend in person, they could either say that the first x people to sign up could attend in person, or could split it by surnames - A-L on Mondays, M-Z on Tuesdays, rest on line.

Has anybody looked into how the different medical schools have managed this year? It may be something 2021 offer holders should consider when deciding which offer to accept. Would be interesting to know who got F2F teaching and which students were most satisfied.

Reply 70

username5366706

hiya i saw a lot of comments on how u can overprepare for bmat/ucat? surely practice makes perfect? like if u did a little every week and built up?
why?

Reply 71

Original post by TCL

Yes, if you wanted distancing in lectures, but the opportunity to attend in person, they could either say that the first x people to sign up could attend in person, or could split it by surnames - A-L on Mondays, M-Z on Tuesdays, rest on line.

Has anybody looked into how the different medical schools have managed this year? It may be something 2021 offer holders should consider when deciding which offer to accept. Would be interesting to know who got F2F teaching and which students were most satisfied.

Yes, I wish they'd done it this year actually (if EEE can do it why not medicine :tongue:

). It keeps the social and 'get out the house' thing which is really what we want.

I don't know if anyone's done a proper analysis or FOI'd them? Anecdotally it seems very different - Imperial has had usually 2 or 3 in person 'events' every fortnight, UCL has had about 1 per term, Cambridge sent everyone home for term 2 because pre-clinical medics don't "need to be there". I'd be wary of advising a student based on COVID response though as it likely will only be relevant for one year of their time hopefully...?

Reply 72

TCL

Original post by becausethenight

Yes, I wish they'd done it this year actually (if EEE can do it why not medicine :tongue:

). It keeps the social and 'get out the house' thing which is really what we want.

I don't know if anyone's done a proper analysis or FOI'd them? Anecdotally it seems very different - Imperial has had usually 2 or 3 in person 'events' every fortnight, UCL has had about 1 per term, Cambridge sent everyone home for term 2 because pre-clinical medics don't "need to be there". I'd be wary of advising a student based on COVID response though as it likely will only be relevant for one year of their time hopefully...?

St Andrews has also had F2F every week for clinical skills and dissection. It has been a weird second semester though, just the medics, people who stayed over Christmas and international students who could claim to have arranged their travel before lock down was announced.

Sadly, there is a fairly high chance of a third wave of Covid in the autumn, particularly if foreign holidays without controlled quarantine go ahead.

Reply 73

Original post by TCL

St Andrews has also had F2F every week for clinical skills and dissection. It has been a weird second semester though, just the medics, people who stayed over Christmas and international students who could claim to have arranged their travel before lock down was announced.

Sadly, there is a fairly high chance of a third wave of Covid in the autumn, particularly if foreign holidays without controlled quarantine go ahead.

Yes I can imagine, if they're practically the only people there! You'd hope it would give a nice community vibe though..

:cry:

I'm trying to be optimistic, but the news that cases are back up isn't helping...

Reply 74

millie673

9

Hey, so I planning on studying medicine for university. I am currently in year 11 about to go into year 12. I was wondering what sort of stuff should I do which I could write in my uni personal statement bc currently I don’t have much

Reply 75

phoebexo

11

Hi!

It's great to see you're already thinking about your personal statement. I'd say don't worry about writing it too much currently as most people do this over the summer before year 13.
With where you're at right now, I'd say cultivate things to include in your personal statement which you could also discuss during interviews. I am applying to Dentistry, which is quite similar, but some of the things I included were work experience, online courses I'd taken (i.e. on FutureLearn), articles / books I'd read and anything I could link back to my interest in pursuing Dentistry and showing commitment to this field.
I have lots of friends who are applying to study medicine and a lot of them read books relating to the medical field. For example: 'Trust me, I'm a junior doctor', 'When breath becomes air', 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' etc. You can probably find them in your school's library!
Another thing they did was complete virtual work experience online, which you can look in to.
Volunteering is another big thing - I volunteered in a care home and in my library and I was able to talk about this in my personal statement and my interviews.

The most important thing is to keep a record of everything you have done and document your experiences. Also think about how these reinforced your drive to study medicine and link it back to this at all times!
Good luck with your application, if you have any questions I can try my best to answer them :smile:

Reply 76

Interrobang

20

Original post by millie673

Hey, so I planning on studying medicine for university. I am currently in year 11 about to go into year 12. I was wondering what sort of stuff should I do which I could write in my uni personal statement bc currently I don’t have much

Moved to the medicine forum :smile:

Reply 77

username5366706