My offer is AAA from the University of Bristol, and if I'm quite honest I've never been this scared in my life. I took four A-Levels (English Lit, Maths, Biology, Chemistry) and two AS-Levels (English Language and Spanish) and I know that I screwed up my Maths, so I'm relying on my English, Chem and Bio grades, the first of which I get in less than a week. I'll keep blogging if I don't make my offer, as it means I'll have a whole new year of application experience to go through - by which time I'll be a seasoned expert, haha - but if I do make it, which I obviously sincerely hope I do, look forward to a celebratory post along the lines of 'ASDFFGVJKRSTHNDF!!!1!1!!!' in the next few weeks.
This last week I met up with a friend of mine who I think I've mentioned before, who studies Medicine at UCL in London. The updates I usually get from them are super excited and motivate me even more to get my place, but this time what they had to say was a little different. I suppose I want to share it because it shocked me, and I feel like it's a side of the story that isn't often spoken about when you're applying.
My friend, P, messaged me a couple of months ago to tell me that they'd failed their final exams and were having to resit. They'd failed by 0.2%. Now to me this was a huge shock, because P has always been stupidly academic and achieved far better marks than me at AS-Level, so to hear of them failing anything that I'm (hopefully) about to do myself makes me a little apprehensive. However, I knew that they'd pull through their resits and come out ready to embark on year 2, and in time I was proved right. Last week, P told me that their best medic friend in their year had failed their resits, again by a small margin, and had been thrown out of the Medical School. No appeal, no chance of switching to a different course. Some of you might be thinking that she wasn't good enough for the course, or that she hadn't done enough to secure her place. I thought the same until P reminded me that UCL fail a set number of students every year, ie you could achieve an extremely high raw score and still fail if a set percentage of students have scored higher than you. UCL (unofficially, they'll never admit it in any promotional material) have one of the highest student culling rates of any British medical school, and now P's poor friend is left with a year of medical school under their belt and nowhere else to go, because what medical school will accept a student who has 'proven' that they can't complete a medical course? This is not, however, a complaint, as awful as the story is. This, to me, was a stark reminder of the competitiveness of British medicine and of just how hard you have to work at the course. UCL cannot be blamed for setting aside so many intelligent young minds, as they have so many of them, and as they are one of the top medical schools in the country, they want only the best. I can only be grateful that I made my choices in the way that I did and that P told me about their friend in order to motivate me not to make the same mistakes.
This last week I met up with a friend of mine who I think I've mentioned before, who studies Medicine at UCL in London. The updates I usually get from them are super excited and motivate me even more to get my place, but this time what they had to say was a little different. I suppose I want to share it because it shocked me, and I feel like it's a side of the story that isn't often spoken about when you're applying.
My friend, P, messaged me a couple of months ago to tell me that they'd failed their final exams and were having to resit. They'd failed by 0.2%. Now to me this was a huge shock, because P has always been stupidly academic and achieved far better marks than me at AS-Level, so to hear of them failing anything that I'm (hopefully) about to do myself makes me a little apprehensive. However, I knew that they'd pull through their resits and come out ready to embark on year 2, and in time I was proved right. Last week, P told me that their best medic friend in their year had failed their resits, again by a small margin, and had been thrown out of the Medical School. No appeal, no chance of switching to a different course. Some of you might be thinking that she wasn't good enough for the course, or that she hadn't done enough to secure her place. I thought the same until P reminded me that UCL fail a set number of students every year, ie you could achieve an extremely high raw score and still fail if a set percentage of students have scored higher than you. UCL (unofficially, they'll never admit it in any promotional material) have one of the highest student culling rates of any British medical school, and now P's poor friend is left with a year of medical school under their belt and nowhere else to go, because what medical school will accept a student who has 'proven' that they can't complete a medical course? This is not, however, a complaint, as awful as the story is. This, to me, was a stark reminder of the competitiveness of British medicine and of just how hard you have to work at the course. UCL cannot be blamed for setting aside so many intelligent young minds, as they have so many of them, and as they are one of the top medical schools in the country, they want only the best. I can only be grateful that I made my choices in the way that I did and that P told me about their friend in order to motivate me not to make the same mistakes.
I think I might start on that post concerning choosing a medical school now, as it's fresh in my mind - wish me luck for results and here's fingers crossed I'll be posting to you next week with a confirmed place at uni!
See you later!
See you later!
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