High grades alone are not enough! You need to show extra commitment even to get to the first stage. Then, if you are lucky enough to get an interview, you will be asked a range of searching and demanding questions so you need to be confident of your ability and well informed. So what can I do ?
You can shadow a doctor, work in a hospital or help with children or old people to show that you understand the demands of a caring profession. Did you know that you can also study Open University short courses in medically related subjects? This demonstrates that you are an independent learner with the self-motivation to study at University level as well showing an aptitude for problem based learning and providing helpful background knowledge, and it looks good in your personal statement.
Three successful candidates talk about the Open University courses they studied and what happened at interview. Bilal: Medicine, Molecules and Drugs: a chemical story. I took the course just after my AS levels and I found it useful to cover parts of the A2 course before I got there. It helped me understand the more difficult aspects and it was good to know how things worked and why, as well as their chemistry. I became really interested in Aspirin - it originally comes from willow bark - and did extra research into how it is made and used. At the interview they asked me open-ended questions. `Why do you want to be a doctor? What items of interest have you picked up in recent medical news?’ etc. I think that studying the course did give me more confidence in my knowledge and I did talk about what I had found out about Aspirin.
You too can do University level short courses alongside your AS and A2s. You enrol with the OU through your college or school. There are short courses in a variety of topics on science: Life in the Oceans, Forensics, Robotics, Astronomy and Cosmology and in the arts subjects like Writing Plays, Poems or Fiction as well as the medically related courses mentioned above. Go to the website to find out more
ww.openuniversity.co.uk/way08. Then get on touch with your head of sixth form or personal tutor and ask them to contact : E.F.Walker@open.ac.uk
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