I achieved 45 Distinctions in an Access course with the DistanceLearningCentre. AMA!

I recently completed an Access to HE Diploma in Medicine with the DistanceLearningCentre where my final grades were D45 M0 P0. I'm now going on to study BSc Neuroscience at Warwick uni.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have, I'm more than happy to answer them!

I will also be writing a review of the DLC soon and I may possibly record a Youtube video highlighting my experience doing an Access to HE diploma/how I coped with the assignments/exams and scored the top grades etc.

Did u want to apply to Medicine?

Did you feel you had adequate support?
I did an Access to Science and Health and achieved 45 distinctions but that was 10 year ago so university want current qualifications? I'm currently not in the position to reduce my working hours so I am considering online access courses

How did you get such good grades btw congrats!! What are your top revision tips and how did you balance work and your education

What are the assignments like? I also heard that they do mini exams over Skype, is that true?

-A person who's looking into enrolling

I recently completed an Access to HE Diploma in Medicine with the DistanceLearningCentre where my final grades were D45 M0 P0. I'm now going on to study BSc Neuroscience at Warwick uni.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have, I'm more than happy to answer them!

I will also be writing a review of the DLC soon and I may possibly record a Youtube video highlighting my experience doing an Access to HE diploma/how I coped with the assignments/exams and scored the top grades etc.

The assignments generally consist of long answer questions, each with a specified recommended word count. To get the top grades you need to be hitting the specified criteria points in your answers and you also need to include enough breadth/depth/detail in your answers.

The maximum word count for a 6 credit assignment is 2750 and the maximum word count for a 3 credit unit is 1650.

I did complete a few exams over skype, the exams are usually quite straightforward and only usually cover between 1-3 different topics. Usually you'll be given a sample exam with questions and worked answers beforehand as a resource that you can use for your revision - the exam itself is generally always very similar to this resource so it is very useful to use.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask

You're amazing thank you for clearing things up for me!

Also is there some sort of specification like gcse and a levels or does it differ? I heard that there isn't really a spec and it depends on the provider but i don't know how true that is. The website does go over the topics but im the paranoid type and I prefer things to be detailed

Also congrats! I'm planning to do science too

Any useful websites that helped you please ?
Congratulations 🎉

Why did you choose an Access course over A levels? Was it practical considerations, such as cost, time, availability etc?

When answering questions try and make your answers concise and detailed with enough breadth and depth, use a range of sources (textbooks, online textbooks, websites etc) and just be as thorough as possible in order to score as many marks as possible. Using the grading criteria as a checklist also really helps.

To be honest working full time is very difficult whilst completing an access course but it is doable, I used to get home from work at around 6pm and study until about 11pm during a working day and on my days off work I would wake up early and just work throughout the day. Minimising distractions in my workspace definitely helped with my level of productivity.

I am going to probably make a detailed video on my approach to the course soon to be honest

Hi, congratulations for your amazing results!!
I will be starting Access to Medicine next year and I want to get into Medicine. As you know, for getting into Medicine requires 45D in chemistry and biology. So I need to study harder in these two subjects. Do you think "A-levels" chemistry and biology textbooks will help me for self-study? Should I follow "AQA" or "OCR" textbooks? And could you please give your video links? Thank you. And good luck for the future...👍🏻👍🏻

Hi,

A level textbooks will help you immensely. I would recommend using multiple A level textbooks and collating information from each textbook - so for example, if you were writing about the Krebs Cycle, use 5-10 A level textbooks and then extract the key information for this topic from each textbook, collate it all together and put it into your own words to ensure that you have included enough breadth and depth in your answer to get the top grades. Also make use of websites (just by doing a google search) Youtube videos, etc in order to include more detail in your answers.

You can get second hand A level textbooks online for quite cheap, also if you REALLY don't understand a topic you could get an online tutor to help you out/proofread your answers, I found chemistry pretty difficult so a tutor really helped for certain topics.

I haven't made any Youtube videos yet, but if I do I will be sure to post the links in here

+ Thank you

A big congratulations! Your hard work evidently paid off! Did you apply to any other Uni's? I've been considering doing an Access Course too and I think you've managed to convince me about it. Can I PM you to ask more in detail?