get into medical school

Well, a temporary setback. But I’m not giving this one up yet, I’m just relegating it.

Basically I failed at getting into medicine, with four rejections and not even one interview. Basically, the schools told me that my grades weren’t good enough and like always, there was a huge amount of competition. It’s a shame, but none of the people I knew from my college applying got in either :(

However, like I said I’m not quite prepared to give up on this yet.

I’ve got a place on a Pharmacy course, which is something I think I’ll really, really enjoy, and I’m really looking forward to starting. Then afterwards I can maybe do postgrad – or who knows, maybe I’ll stick with the pharmacy. Four years is a long time to know how I’ll feel about doing something and pharmacy (particularly clinical pharmacy) is something that really, really interests me.

So there we go.

Well, I finished my UCAS application and sent it off last night. Now my tutor is going to write my reference and then my school will send it off.

It is suuuch a relief to get it all finished, though now I have to start worrying about whether I’ll get any offers. Still, there’s no point thinknig about it when there’s nothing I can do to change it any more.

We’ll see.

Wow, a heck of a lot of entries about this from me. I think I’m writing so many coz it’s good to have a place where I can sort out my mind and what I’m doing.

Well, the deadline for my application was actually two days ago (Friday and now it’s Sunday). However, the careers lady at my college told me as its just a college deadline its okay if I hand it in a little bit late, so I’m going to aim to finish it tonight and hand it in tomorrow.

I got one of my teachers to look over my personal statement and she gave me lots of suggestions which have really helped me cut it down. I’m now about 8 lines and 1000 characters under the limit, so I can probably add another paragraph, which is useful as there’s one small bit I’ve completely cut out but would like to write in again somewhere else in a different way.

Other than that, I’ve chosen my four medicine choices, decided on what I’m going to do about my back up, and only have to check the awarding body for one of my courses before my application is completely finito.

Right.

Well, with exactly a week to go until this application is due, I’ve almost finished the first full draft of my statement. I’ve decided that it must be done by Monday, when I go back to school properly and will have a chance to talk to the careers people.

Atm I’ve managed to rewrite my statement down to around 5100 characters (with spaces) which is just 1,100 over, which is roughly 200 words. It shouldn’t be too difficult to cut this much down – just a bit of chopping of non-relevant stuff, maybe a tad of rewriting to make pointlessly long sentences into shorter ones, etc etc, and I should be done.

My college booklet actually says I should only use 550 words, which is a hundred and forty-eight under what I’ve worked out 4000 characters (with spaces) actually is, but I’m going to figure this as my college being anal retentive and, as the UCAS website says 4000, stick to that.

I’ll update in the next week or so to let you know how stuff’s going. The plan is: finish rewrite by Sunday, including second opinion from parent etc, show to careers people, respond to career’s people input, then next friday it’s send to referee time.

OH, also, I’ve almost finished deciding which unis I want to apply to. I’ve got four choices and I’m fairly certain I’ve chosen 3 (so certain I’ve put them on my form) but there’s one more to make and I’m a little torn. Though I think I’ve nearly made that one too.

Kinda long, I guess.

I took another look at my personal statement just now and realised that, thankfully, I don’t have to cut it down by 3000 words, which now I think about it would have been kind of an impossible task. I had a ditz moment and thought it was measured in words, but no, it’s measured in characters and at the moment I have 7,188 and I need to get it down to 4000.

That’s like roughly five hundred and fifty or so words which is probably going to be difficult enough.

And I haven’t even written the concluding paragraph yet.

Well, I have two weeks and four days (if I’m right about deadlines) to get this thing finished, including working with a careers adviser when I go back to college in a week, meaning my proper first draft needs to be finished by Wednesday the 3rd.

I don’t have any more days off this week, except for Sunday (work tomorrow, volunteering thursday and friday, though thurs will only be a couple of hours in the afternoon) but I will try and keep on of Monday or Tuesday completely open.

And obv do some work today.

Okay, well, this is pretty much crunch time for me. My deadline for my UCAS application is in roughly just over two weeks time, so I’m pretty tense about this whole thing now.

I did my UKCAT test (Brit medical schools admissions test) recently and got pretty good scores, all high averages but nothing spectacular, and I got my AS level results back, which were pretty decent (AABC, meaning my predicted A level grades are AAB) and which mean I can at least still apply.

I also have a lot of work experience, not just including ordinary paid sales assistant work but also my afternoons in a multiple sclerosis care home and the days I spend assisting on an endoscopy ward in my local hospital, where they’ve also let me sit in on procedures.

I’ve almost finished filling in my UCAS application now. I’ve put in all my qualifications details and stuff, and now all I really need to do is to finish choosing which med schools I actually want to apply to and finish my personal statement.

My personal statement is turning out to be a bit of a bugger – I’ve written a first draft, but that’s about 3000 words too long. So I’ve got to cut that all down.

Well, that’s pretty much the update.

Well, I have got a volunteer position at a hospital near where I leave. Turns out it was a bit harder than I expected it to be as there are a lot of kids who want to do it so they can get into med school :p Had to do an interview and everything.

But I’ve done it, and tomorrow I’m going to the training day, assuming I get out of my last lesson on time and my teacher doesn’t be evil.

So there we go. Progress.

Really want to do this – love anatomy, love Science, want to do aid work… so many reasons why I want to be a doctor.

Start applying in the summer, so until then few things to do – start work experience, improve Physics grade and keep working on Biology, Chemistry and French!