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Hi there, it sounds like it's been a frustrating few weeks. I just want to clarify that although you may be disappointed with your current grades, you are not a academic disappointment.
I'm also a y13 med applicant who's doing mocks - and yes it does suck. I've done 2/4 of them, where biology went decently but further maths is the lowest I've ever had. I have chemistry next week and I've been trying to catch up on all of the work I've missed from having interviews, UCAT, work experience, the application itself which has made me miss soooo much over the last year!
That is something that I hope you realise when looking at these mocks. As a med applicant you have had some horrible months trying your best in interviews and ALSO trying to keep up with school work. Apart from healthcare applicants and theatrical students, no one else our age has to prepare for multiple interviews and auditions, some where we have to travel, all of which are important, whilst studying a levels full time. Naturally we may fall behind a bit.
And it hurts I know, especially as you know before that you have been fine academically. You have had an awful few weeks with the unfortunate news, and so naturally with these stressful few months where school hasn't been your sole focus, and likely your current mental health, you may underperform compared to your expectations.
I'm not sure if this helped or not, but I wanted to let you know that I can relate. This is an uncertain time and school being more difficult compared to what was usually fairly easy is very scary. It's making me overthink if I'd even be able to cope with the medical degree - but then I think about all of the factors that have lead to my current status, and I am still managing to pass?? And it's only February, there is time!!
I'm sorry that you are going through a tough time - keeping my fingers crossed that you recieve an offer soon as I can see you really deserve it

academic disappointment.
i don’t know what’s happening. it started on the 23rd of Jan, when i was rejected from bristol, cambridge followed suit on the 30th. then i had a week, just a week of intense revision,where i didn’t have to focus on interview prep, before my mocks. my last ever set.
the mocks where i was supposed to show everyone and myself that despite the fact that i was rejected from cambridge, my grades were still incredible , i was still at the top of my game, and i could still reach the high academic standard that cambridge would have demanded from me. 3 A*s would be mine.
and then i sat the exams.
the first biology paper was fine, good even. then came the first maths paper, which was by my standards, horrific. i knew i hadn’t done as well as i wanted to do, as i needed to do.
i then had a day’s break to recover, brush it off and focus my efforts on the next lot of exams.
inorganic chemistry and a biology paper inauspiciously titled ‘communication, homeostasis and energy’; which is what i assumed to be a module 5-focused paper, given we hadn’t finished all the content. fine. i could deal with that. except i couldn’t, because the universe (or rather my teachers) had decided to play two cruel jokes on me that day.
firstly, in my inorganic and physical paper, i found myself racing against the clock, heart pounding as each number blinked away. by the end, my calculations were a jumbled mess of numbers and my handwriting was an unintelligible scrawl. i barely finished the paper. turns out, we had been allocated a measly 90mins to do a paper that was supposed to last 2 hours. a simple mistake that anyone could make, but one that seriously dampened my mood given how much time i had dedicated to revision for this subject. i was later reassured by an apologetic teacher that grade boundaries would be lowered appropriately.
‘at least there will be no more surprises today’, i thought, ‘my next exam is a biology paper, all about module 5’. given my future aspirations, the topics in module 5 are a favourite of mine.
i walked to my exam desk, ready to go, only to be greeted with an aqa a level biology paper. ( i do ocr) my heart sank. ‘why, why, why would they do this?’ i had studied all the key marking points and all the content i needed to know, for the ocr a level biology specification. giving us this paper as a mock exam was illogical and unfair. still, i would attempt the questions. what choice did i have.
the first question- specific points about viruses. i seethed, we didn’t need to know this, we hadn’t learnt this. ‘not on our spec’ i scribbled on the side in block capitals. (in the light of maturity, i later decided against this decision and rubbed it out). so, i found myself stumbling through a paper with sections of unfamiliar content and strange phrasing. i knew it hadn’t gone well. (how could it have, given i hadn’t ever studied that specification!!!) i later spoke to a pretty unapologetic biology teacher who made the excuse that it was to deter people from cheating and promised to lower the grade boundaries appropriately.
‘what’s going on?’, i thought.
and then today. maths paper 2. a paper that was alright, by all accounts, but that i’m not convinced i scored highly enough on. silly mistakes. we’ll see. i just hope it makes up for the first paper.
and tomorrow i have chemistry (organic and physical), an exam that i have been warned i will not have enough time to complete. great. however, to mitigate this issue, the chemistry cohort has been given the luxury of crossing out 25 marks worth of questions, so the paper is only marked put of 80. there are soooo many issues with this idea, that i’m not going to go into.
i just feel like these mocks are going really badly, due to factors that are mostly out of my control. my subpar performance in maths is just down to me. i think i’ll probably come out with an A (80%) which would be disappointing. i think i deserve A*s in biology and chemistry, but given all of this i don’t know anymore.
the reason i’m so upset is because academia has always been a sort of safe place for me. an area in my life that i knew i could always excel in, and that i historically have excelled in. it doesn’t feel like that anymore. i think its a mixture of the fact that this half term has been hard, a-levels are hard and i am on the edge of burnout.
half term should be a break, but i have to go through the biology content we were bring taught right before exams (it wasn’t on the test so i didn’t consolidate any of it).
to sum it up, y13 sucks so bad and i really want a med offer.