Studying medicine

JuneBow

My daughter has had a difficult school career as she has been poorly for much of the time and has lost quite alot of shool time.
She has had to repeat her final year at school and will finish her A levels in a few weeks time.
She has applied for and been accepted on various chemistry courses and is deciding which one to accept.
Her lifelong ambition however, is to study medicine.
She did not apply for medicine as she thought her A level grades would not be good enough. However, it looks as though she will get straight As.
Has anyone ever heard of anyone getting on a medicine or dentistry degree during the first couple of weeks of starting another degree eg if there are any spare places?
For example if student A accepts Cambridge as first choice and then Leeds as second choice, they can only go to one Uni. There must be a spare place therefore.
Has anyone any ideas how she could go about this.
She was told by the school if you get an offer and attain the grades for that offer she are compelled to take the place, however, when I was at the Universities recently I asked about this, and it is unlikely they will hold you to it as they do not want drop outs in the first few weeks.
Regards

The_One_Who

You wouldn't be able to do that sort of thing for medicine since it is highly competitive and requires special entry examinations and interviews. It is possible to do a postgraduate conversion course to medicine though. Or she could take a gap year and reapply for medicine.

Tigersilly

I'm sorry to say this, but your daughter is one of thousands who wish to study medicine. Medicine Courses do not go into clearing.

DrFluffy

I'm a medical student, and can tell you that "swapping on to a med degree" just does not happen.

Medical school over offer to make sure they get the right number of students - for instance the medical school I attend over offer by 1/3 knowing that sadly many people will not get their grades.

Does she have relevant work experience etc that she can reflect upon? If not, then a good plan of action would be to do her best at her exams, get the grades, withdraw from UCAS, and spend the next 15 months getting the whole package together.

There are a few forums out there that she could use to sound people out.
www.thestudentroom.com has a very active medicine sub-forum. There is also www.admissionsforum.net

A good source of general info is http://www.medschoolsonline.co.uk/

If this is something she really wants to do, an extra year will not hurt. It's also infinitely easier to get in to medicine as a first time undergraduate than it is as a graduate student.

welshie84

Med student too. Even if your daughter did her chem degree and got a lst, she'd have a very slim chance of getting onto medicine as a postgrad. I'm afraid these things are just too competitive. sorry about that, but with medicine the way it is just now, getting a decent career out of it is just as competitive. After 5 years at uni, I'm beginning to regret doing it and should have used my exams to get into law or something with better career prospects.

Broke_Student

It's basically as DrFluffy put it - no chance of swapping onto medicine.

If there are any extra spaces (unlikely) then they will be offered to students who did well at interview but couldn't be given an offer. There might be an official waiting list of 'proper' applicants. There is no chance they will offer the place to someone who didn't even apply to medicine in the first place i'm afraid.

I would also support DrFluffy's comment about a gap year - I didn't get an offer the first time round and taking a gap year was probably one of the best decisions I ever made!

CloudRuler

Highly unlikely to be clearing places at the med schools with good rankings. She should take a gap year and get some work experience.
Really she should have applied to at least one uni for a medicine degree, it's not as if all good med schools require straight A's. Hull-York for example requires AAB. Had a friend get into H-Y who then decided she didn't want to do medicine.

Oldernotwiser

If she has taken 3 years to do her A levels then A grades won't be so highly thought of. How is her health now? Medicine can be both physically and mentally demanding; would it help her health to have a period away from study?