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11/06/2011 by Einstein719.
Both of my parents went through UK medical school and went on to become GPs and their accounts of the application process made it seem frankly easy, indeed my dad got in with A level grades: BCC. So I relaxed myself on the notion that I would get in with no trouble at all - what could have changed in just 30 years?
How wrong we were. Competition for places has increased so dramatically, with nearly all applicants with at least AAA at A level and a long and impressive list of both work experience and voluntary work in the medical related field. Ive been told that they don’t even consider you unless you`ve done a lot of voluntary work.
Im currently in Year 12 so will be entering university in September 2012 and applying in a couple of months. I have at present done no work experience or voluntary work in the field, except for the work experience I did through school which was at the local dentists - so slightly related. So I went onto the www.do-it.org - which is an absolutely fabulous website and Iive now got an interview tomorrow to see whether I’ll be suitable for a voluntary placement with a charity that looks after people who have just been discharged from hospital. So all smiles on that front.
As for work experience im hopefully going to do some over the summer holidays. My parents are no longer GPS but my uncle is a consultant at Edinburgh hospital. So theres a possibility I might be able to go there. If not I might just go to our local general practice.
Now onto another aspect of application - entrance exams. The medical schools I wish to apply for are: Oxford (would be absolutely lovely to get into this one), Imperial, UCL, Durham and Liverpool. I was going to apply to Warwick but I dont think they accept undergraduates for medicine. Now for Oxford, Imperial and UCL I need to sit and do well in the BMAT, whilst for Durham I need to sit the UKCAT and Liverpool mercifully requires no entrance exam. When researching this I thought for a while that I was also goiug to have to sit the 6 hour GAMSAT exam, but thankfully thats for graduate entry only. The BMAT seems quite easy, but the UKCAT has some really bizarre sections in it, one requires you to interpret codes and the other is abstract reasoning. Anyway I’m sitting that in July and have bought a practise book.
I havn`t even considered interviews yet - that will be a future hurdle.
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