Access To Medicine WORKS !

**Mamba** · 11-10-2009, 12:21 AM

Hi,

I have noticed that there seems to be a few miscoonceptions about A2M. What it is, who its for and what the chances are.

Access to medicine will bring people from all walks of life to give them a foundation of knowlege in order to bring them to a standard of knowlege that will see them relativly prepared for university. It basically covers A and AS level science and maths and some english. Eligibility is wide and varied. Moist applicants will have good social experience, be mature in age and have GCSE qualifications, some with various A levels. ( I had none).

Colleges are looking for 3 things, a passion for medicine, an academic ability and a determination to see the 6/7 years through. Colleges are a business and they have stats in mind. They will choose you on whether they think you can succeed in application to medical school. Thats it.

Access to medicine seems to be a tagged on department to most colleges. Its a new scheme and is still developing. There isnt alot of money for education in this regard so expect a basic classroom enviroment and alot of self directed learning. Before you huff and puff and grimace at the idea of this, this is the nature of the medical degree. So if it doesnt appeal now, neither will 5 years of self taught medicine. For example I am in Cardiff, we are given dissection days twice a week. We have to know the whole human anatomy having taught ourselves at home, the dissection days are a means to solidify in our minds what we have taught ourselves at home.

Dont be scared by the idea of self directed learning, nobody loves it. However we all get used to it and it gets easier the more you do it. Maybe now you appreciate the benefit of A2M being so self directed.

Access to medicine is NO GUARANTEE to medical school. However you have to be in it to win it. Also alot that were rejected reapplied the next year and got in, seriously alot were successful this way. All applications are marked via a points scheme, so usually its not the access course that lets you down but your personal statment in your university application and your WORK EXPERIENCE (very important, if not the most important aspect and overlooked by applicants too often!)

Access to medicine is an amazing scheme if you have poor qualificaions from a misguided youth or if you took a different path and now want to pursue the greatest and most satisfying job on the planet ! (bias slightly)

To me Access To Medicine is a GOLDEN TICKET. The hardest part of medicine is getting in. I will aslways owe my access course a huge debt for giving me this opportunity.

Dont expect too much it is what it is. Its hard to believe when you are sat in a cold classroom with the heating broken and the plaster on the walls flaking off, an under motivated lecturor having a bad day, the library with its handfull of old books, you lost in some physics equation that you swear will never make snse...... it is hard to believe that it will result in a medical school place.... But it does !

Go do.

Mamba

**Woolpack** · 11-10-2009, 01:23 AM

It goes without saying that moist applicants will have good social experience

**Mamba** · 11-10-2009, 01:44 AM

LOL I wasnt talking about party and vodka games when I said SOCIAL experience !

In all seriousness I think its a valid point. What else do the applicants have ? They are lacking in qualifications hence they are attending access. They however have maturity and with it social experience. Not all do though, and I imagine the ones that didnt get into A2M also lacked social skills. It being our greatest asset at point of A2M entry I felt it worthy of note.

Access brings people with interesting and valuble life experience and prepares them academically for medicine. Why ? There is enough smart A level students to fill every medical school seat twice over. Tommorows Doctors from the GMC is very clear that the modern physician must have good communication skills and appreciation for the human being before them. They have twigged that our maturity brings with it a ready package in this regard. Well developed social skills. I noticed a post here complaining about A2M, its what inspired me to write this whole post. The complaint included the fact that the students were of a great and varied academic ability. This is the case, BUT as I said, A2M has the job of academically levelling you ready for Uni.

All we have at day 1 of A2M is the age on our pasport and the life lessons we have learned on the way.

Afterall If we had everything else we wouldnt need access...................

**learna** · 03-03-2010, 01:11 AM

hi mamba you say that u didnt have any gcses did this effect your application to uni ??

**Catkin5627** · 01-04-2010, 05:10 AM

Hey, can I just vouch for A2M - I came from a professional background with good GCSEs and ok (not med school standard, or med school relevant) A levels.
I think the work load is manageable, and has given me a rather smashing insight in to Chemistry especially. I haven't finished yet (so havent experienced BM5 workloads), but I think that it gets you back in to learning, which is quite something, my brain actually hurt for the first week, and it gets you back in to the discipline of learning. As mamba said, there are enough school leavers to fill every space (especially this year!) but A2M students do get in, proving that a bit of time out of education can sometimes be seen as a rather big plus (YIPPEE!)