Why is this site so obsessed with medicine?

I've just joined, so maybe it's the time of year, but it seems there are more threads about medicine than about every other subject put together?

Why?

(edited 1 month ago)

Reply 1

ageshallnot

Original post by Emily's Teapot

I've just joined, so maybe it's the time of year, but it seems there are more threads about medicine than about every other subject put together?
Why?

Is that the result of serious statistical analysis?

Reply 2

Emily's Teapot

Original post by ageshallnot

Is that the result of serious statistical analysis?

Maths? Never! But when you look it seems that way. It's the only subject with it's own special subheading.

(edited 1 month ago)

Reply 3

ageshallnot

Original post by Emily's Teapot

Maths? Never! But when you look it seems that way. It's the only subject with it's own special subheading.

Er, no it's not. Just about every subject has it's own forum.

Reply 4

Democracy

Original post by Emily's Teapot

I've just joined, so maybe it's the time of year, but it seems there are more threads about medicine than about every other subject put together?
Why?

You'd have to go back a couple of decades to answer this question properly. Please enjoy the following potted history:

At the start of the century (before the current applicants were born :biggrin:

) there weren't that many online resources for help with getting into medical school. There were also not many UK based online communities for medical students and recent graduates to chat about university and job applications - this was well before Reddit and other social media had taken off and medical influencers were a thing. Back during the halcyon days of old school VBulletin and phpBB boards there was TSR, Admissions Forum, and NewMediaMedicine - the last two have long since disappeared.

TSR was a very helpful and rather unique resource where applicants could discuss things like the (then) new UKCAT and BMAT exams and consult a wiki for advice on work experience, entry requirements and interviews. It was better structured and had more of a community feel than the other two forums I've mentioned. This might sound underwhelming to present day applicants but in the noughties there wasn't a plethora of online communities, resources, question banks, courses etc. Being able to talk to current medical students and doctors was also something of a novelty, for many applicants who did not grow up in a medical family this would not have been easy to do otherwise.

Obviously both TSR and medical schools attract fairly geeky people anyway so this was the perfect recipe for the medicine forum to grow in size and online influence (and eventually split into multiple subforums). Quite a few of TSRs volunteer staff were medical students and doctors which helped with providing relevant input into developing and improving the forum. TSR being a business was obviously happy with all of this because it resulted in more users and clicks.

Unfortunately in recent years TSR has been less proficient at hanging onto its old users and, more importantly, incentivising applicants to stay once they've got their offers which is why the forum is now pretty inactive in comparison to several years ago. The nature of social media has changed a lot too so perhaps this was inevitable (up to a point), nothing lasts forever after all.

So to answer your question, if it feels like there are more threads about medicine compared with other subjects at this time of year, there may well be and it's probably because there is still some remnant of TSR's reputation for being a helpful resource for medical applicants.

Reply 5

George&Mary

Really interesting potted history ! Thank you.

All of the above I guess.
Plus it seems med heavy at thr moment because we are in the middle of medicine entrance exams, and coming up to the early entry deadline. And with medicine it is really important to be strategic in your application.

There are forums for pretty much every subject (and no subject at all) on TSR though.