It's that time of year again - at my old school students started back this week and even though I'm missing that back-to-school feeling (which is really weird, I leave in a week eeeek!) I remember only too well how I felt last year at this point in the UCAS application process for medicine. It's likely that you might be lucky and come from a big school in the UK, where quite a few students are applying for medicine, so that you have people going through the same thing to empathize with you. I was the only person in my VI form applying to study UK medicine, and it sucked. If you do have classmates going through the same thing, get talking! Sharing experiences and ideas can only help the both of you throughout the application process.
Anyway, if you haven't started or finished already, this is the time for you to begin your personal statement! What is that, you ask? A collection of paragraphs comprising 4000 characters or less in which you attempt to convince admissions tutors who have been reading thousands of personal statements trying to do the same thing as you that you are the candidate they should consider for a place or interview, even though they've never met you, or seen your face. Sounds fun, right?
The toughest part is definitely getting started. A helpful tool to set you off is to have a mooch around the website of your top choice university and see whether they have any guidance on personal statement structure, as each uni differs slightly in what they expect in a personal statement. Oxford is a good example - I used their medicine statement template to help me get started on mine. I'll post segments of mine here in a minute (bearing in mind that this blog gets a lot of views, and universities know it exists, and plagiarism could void your application ;) ). What I did to start off was to make lists. First, I made a list of reasons why I want to do medicine. This is very important, as from the offset you should be asking yourself this! If the only answer that you can come up with is 'for the money' or 'because my parent/s are doctors' or 'I want to help people' then you are going for the wrooooooonnggggg degree. I'll explain more about that later when I write about interview questions! Really think hard about the base reasons why you want to do this. If you come to the point where you honestly can't think of any, and you're not even sure if you really want this at all, then you should reconsider your application. I'm saying this to spare you a lot of difficulty and heartache later, haha!
The next list you make should be one of your achievements. If you got particularly good grades in a set of exams, or received an award for your exam grades, put this down, and think about any other exams you might have taken in extra-curriculars such as singing or music. Have you achieved anything noteworthy in sport or drama, or any other hobby? Have you done any part-time work? Stick it aaaaaaall down. Everything. :)
Then after that, make a list of things you'd like to achieve in your career, and things that you have done to research into a career in medicine (not only, but primarily, your work experience). Then make a list of things you LEARNED during said work experience, and by that I don't mean just the procedures you saw. You need to describe how these procedures affected the patient, and what you learnt about medical practice.
Done that? GOOD. ;)
Okay, now I'm going to go into personal statement structure. You must bear in mind when reading this that originality is THE most valuable thing you can have on a UCAS application, so these tips are ONLY a guide - please run with them and make them your own!
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Sunday, 1 September 2013
Which medical school to choose?
Okay. Before I go into this, I would just like to stress that getting into medical school in the UK first time is an achievement. No matter whether friends that have applied before you have got in to 4 places, 1 or none at all, do NOT begin choosing your unis on the assumption that you will definitely get in anywhere, and do NOT apply to places based on a friend's recommendation (unless they're talking about interviews...I'll explain later).
The most important thing I found about choosing my four medical schools was that, in the end, they HAD to be places that were right for ME. I had to do the research myself. My friend P who had applied before me chose UCL as their top choice, and naturally due to its credentials I thought I might put it down as one of my choices. If it weren't for a visit to the UCL Open Day and a week's work experience in London, I would have put it down as a choice and regretted it. So before we start, bear in mind that you should try and visit as many open days as you can, and if not at least try and visit the city/town first.
Now that's over, let me tell you that I didn't visit any of the places I applied to before I applied there, because I'm an idiot.
I also went in with expectations that I would get into a couple of places, as P had got into 3 out of 4 when they applied (which let me tell you is, firstly, extremely rare, and secondly absolutely bloody brilliant), and ended up getting into one, which was originally my last choice.
So don't do what I did, haha, and you'll spare yourself a whole lot of difficulty later! ;)
Right, let's get down to it. Here are some different factors to consider:
Type of course: Thing number one to think about: What type of course suits you? There are three main types in British medicine:
- TRADITIONAL: A traditional course is usually offered at the older medical schools, such as Oxbridge. It involves a teaching method based mainly around lectures and tutorials/seminars.
- PBL: This stands for problem-based learning, and is offered (last time I checked) at universities like Manchester and Plymouth. PBL is no longer used on its own as a teaching method, however there are unis such as the ones I just mentioned that use PBL as a main learning tool alongside others. It involves the presentation of a medical scenario to small groups of students, so that they can learn through adapting their knowledge to the problem and coming up with a solution.
-INTEGRATED: The majority of UK medical schools offer courses of this type, which combine a multitude of teaching methods including elements of traditional and PBL courses.
It's difficult, obviously, to know which of these will suit you, as you've spent your whole learning career in a school-structured environment, but the main thing to remember is that all of these involve a great deal of learning in your own time. I would say, however, that I decided PBL wasn't for me because I know that I learn better from taking notes in class, lecture-style, than I do being given a problem and learning from that.
Achieved Grades: Okay, now if this hasn't helped very much perhaps you should start thinking about basing your choice on your achieved grades. By this point in your application cycle you will have your AS grades, or you might have taken a gap year and have your A-Level grades ready. However, please please please take note of the fact that having high grades does NOT mean you have to apply to Oxbridge. It REALLY doesn't. A lot of people with all As at AS-Level feel pressured to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, but you must remember that you ONLY have four choices, and you must be entirely happy with all of those choices, or you might find yourself in a situation where you only have offers from the choices you aren't happy with. Oxbridge is always a risk, as they are SO selective, and everyone that is applying will be just as good or better than you. However, if that IS the route you want to go down, good for you, and I'll be recounting my Oxford interview in detail later for those who are considering the big guns!
UKCAT: Another factor to consider is your UKCAT score. If this is low, perhaps consider applying to schools that don't consider the UKCAT such as UCL, Bristol, Cambridge, Liverpool or Birmingham (bearing in mind that UCL and Cambridge will require you to take the notoriously difficult BMAT test). Also bear in mind that the universities that do not consider UKCAT or BMAT scores tend to be the most applied to - for example at Bristol the applicant to place ratio is 16:1. If this is average (which is usually around 660, but gets higher every year) then you need to do some research regarding the different UKCAT cutoff marks universities use. Some use a UKCAT threshold to decide who they invite to interview, and some use the UKCAT score as a factor amongst many factors in the application process. For example, Newcastle's cutoff is notoriously high (when I was applying for 2013 entry, it was 680 to get an interview) so if you have a high score, you have the option of applying somewhere like this and having a good chance of getting an interview.
I'll update this again soon with more tips, I haven't had much time to blog recently as I've been packing up my room ready to move to Bristol! Feel FREE to message me or comment on the posts for any advice, I'll try and reply as soon as possible, and I'm planning on starting videos to accompany the blog once I get to uni - watch this space! Speak soon!
The most important thing I found about choosing my four medical schools was that, in the end, they HAD to be places that were right for ME. I had to do the research myself. My friend P who had applied before me chose UCL as their top choice, and naturally due to its credentials I thought I might put it down as one of my choices. If it weren't for a visit to the UCL Open Day and a week's work experience in London, I would have put it down as a choice and regretted it. So before we start, bear in mind that you should try and visit as many open days as you can, and if not at least try and visit the city/town first.
Now that's over, let me tell you that I didn't visit any of the places I applied to before I applied there, because I'm an idiot.
I also went in with expectations that I would get into a couple of places, as P had got into 3 out of 4 when they applied (which let me tell you is, firstly, extremely rare, and secondly absolutely bloody brilliant), and ended up getting into one, which was originally my last choice.
So don't do what I did, haha, and you'll spare yourself a whole lot of difficulty later! ;)
Right, let's get down to it. Here are some different factors to consider:
Type of course: Thing number one to think about: What type of course suits you? There are three main types in British medicine:
- TRADITIONAL: A traditional course is usually offered at the older medical schools, such as Oxbridge. It involves a teaching method based mainly around lectures and tutorials/seminars.
- PBL: This stands for problem-based learning, and is offered (last time I checked) at universities like Manchester and Plymouth. PBL is no longer used on its own as a teaching method, however there are unis such as the ones I just mentioned that use PBL as a main learning tool alongside others. It involves the presentation of a medical scenario to small groups of students, so that they can learn through adapting their knowledge to the problem and coming up with a solution.
-INTEGRATED: The majority of UK medical schools offer courses of this type, which combine a multitude of teaching methods including elements of traditional and PBL courses.
It's difficult, obviously, to know which of these will suit you, as you've spent your whole learning career in a school-structured environment, but the main thing to remember is that all of these involve a great deal of learning in your own time. I would say, however, that I decided PBL wasn't for me because I know that I learn better from taking notes in class, lecture-style, than I do being given a problem and learning from that.
Achieved Grades: Okay, now if this hasn't helped very much perhaps you should start thinking about basing your choice on your achieved grades. By this point in your application cycle you will have your AS grades, or you might have taken a gap year and have your A-Level grades ready. However, please please please take note of the fact that having high grades does NOT mean you have to apply to Oxbridge. It REALLY doesn't. A lot of people with all As at AS-Level feel pressured to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, but you must remember that you ONLY have four choices, and you must be entirely happy with all of those choices, or you might find yourself in a situation where you only have offers from the choices you aren't happy with. Oxbridge is always a risk, as they are SO selective, and everyone that is applying will be just as good or better than you. However, if that IS the route you want to go down, good for you, and I'll be recounting my Oxford interview in detail later for those who are considering the big guns!
UKCAT: Another factor to consider is your UKCAT score. If this is low, perhaps consider applying to schools that don't consider the UKCAT such as UCL, Bristol, Cambridge, Liverpool or Birmingham (bearing in mind that UCL and Cambridge will require you to take the notoriously difficult BMAT test). Also bear in mind that the universities that do not consider UKCAT or BMAT scores tend to be the most applied to - for example at Bristol the applicant to place ratio is 16:1. If this is average (which is usually around 660, but gets higher every year) then you need to do some research regarding the different UKCAT cutoff marks universities use. Some use a UKCAT threshold to decide who they invite to interview, and some use the UKCAT score as a factor amongst many factors in the application process. For example, Newcastle's cutoff is notoriously high (when I was applying for 2013 entry, it was 680 to get an interview) so if you have a high score, you have the option of applying somewhere like this and having a good chance of getting an interview.
I'll update this again soon with more tips, I haven't had much time to blog recently as I've been packing up my room ready to move to Bristol! Feel FREE to message me or comment on the posts for any advice, I'll try and reply as soon as possible, and I'm planning on starting videos to accompany the blog once I get to uni - watch this space! Speak soon!
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