Lambeth College Access to Medicine - anyone attending the assessment tomorrow

**Shamzmix_34** · 09-02-2011, 06:41 PM

I've been waiting ages for this and it's finally here can't wait to get it done finally

**EternalRose** · 09-02-2011, 07:39 PM

Hi Shamzmix, they have given me an assessment date for 10th March. Good luck for tomorrow, would you mind letting me know what the assessment entails please. Hard? Not hard?xx

**Shamzmix_34** · 11-02-2011, 05:46 PM

Hi EternalRose, I attended the assessment day and at first it seemed that their were at least 100 people from all age groups lined up across the wall of the main entrance. The people seated at the reception area confirm your name and course and provide a sticker and room number.

10 mins later we were all called in well those looking to study Access to Medicine/Dentistry and Medical Sciences.

We were taken to a biology room and told we would have from 5:10pm to 7:00pm for two assessments, the maths and the literacy as you may already know. I can tell you now that everyone was in shock in the room when they saw how difficult the maths was, I myself am not brilliant and I knew it would be better for me to start on the literacy test first. The first question was "choose a topic of your choice and write an essay on it" they provided two pages of lined paper in the booklet to do so, The woman came round the tables whilst we were getting on with this and she was suprised to see I had started my literacy test, turns out I was meant to do the maths first but she said it was okay. The next piece of the English assessment was on HPV (virus) taken from Cancer Research UK, we were asked to answer questions relevant to the text.

I then turned to my maths and it was at first basic questions, 283.34 - 323.45 = x etc etc then it started to get harder and not at all basic. There was a sub section called Maths applied to Medical practice and the question were getting much more harder. They wanted the ratio of ml and mg of two drugs however the wording is quite hard to understand and I have A-levels in English. the maths was out of 20 marks, and the applied to medicine was out of 10 or 20 can't remember.

I did notice that when the woman called out that it was time to start on the literacy (remember I went the other way round lol) she took everyones maths and was marking this.

At the end of the test the head of Science and another lady were very blunt in saying that the Maths was particulary poor amongst the group, the highest mark being 15 (i hadn't yet had mine marked so I dont know) and that it was unlikley that anyone would be called in for medicine as you need from 18 - 20 in the maths. She said everyone should look towards other professions in Medical Science - Nursing, etc and I will tell you now people were upset one guy gave the reason for poor marks to not having time to recap on things as being adults we have not done such things in a long time.

The woman at the front merely aknowledged this and asked for feedback, I gather this to be unprofessional as they should have done this prior to giving out the assessments.

So everyone started to leave the room when I came across someone I spoke to earlier, I asked him what he wrote for his essay in the literacy exam and he said "smoking, what did you do?" I replied with my own one, he had an odd expression on his face and said "the essay was on the board everyone did the same one" !!!!!!SHIT!!!!!! I ran up and spoke to the yound girl at the front assistant the main woman and told her that for my literacy test I wrote my own essay, she was laffing and I couldn't help but not join in lol! apparently it was okay as they were testing our essay writing skills and the marker would be the other woman as she was an A-level English teacher in the sixth form. She asked me what I wrote my piece on and it was "does social status affect educational attainment" (I got B for sociology lol!) so I knew I did a good piece she said it was fine and would be interested in reading it.

Well at least I stood out and haven't yet been told I will not gain entry as they havent yet marked my paper. We have to wait 2-3 weeks for our results and if you havent passed you will being given 5 choices , progression diploma level 1, 2 , access to nursing ect ect just not Medicine or Dentistry.

Well I hope this helps

**EternalRose** · 11-02-2011, 08:30 PM

Hi Shaz, thank you for taking the time to write all that down. I emailed Lambeth today and told them that I would like to withdraw my application. I feel that I want a greater variety of places to apply too, so I will be doing Alevels this September. It sounds like it was a hectic day, it seems a little unprofessional to tell people they should apply for nursing just because their Maths score were a little low. I thought thats what an access course was for? It seems that if they want such a high level for access courses, people will be better off doing A levels. I hope you get in anyway, you said you have a B in sociology. I take it you already have A levels? Good luck with it all xx

**JSA_2011** · 28-06-2011, 09:51 PM

Well, Just a quick note on this thread. The entry test to Lambeth is actually heavily criticized for being "too easy" and in fact it is.. It literally expects you to display very basic knowledge of maths, logic, consistency and english literacy. The minimum score is 18 out 20 but hey.. the questions are really basic! Don't be put off admin mess-ups. Best of Luck!

**Born 2 b Medic** · 30-06-2011, 12:44 AM

I have taken both the MANCAT and Lambeth's Access to Medicine assessments. And from my experience I prefer the Lambeth one as it is more tailored to the medical profession through asking relevant medical issues and is as well accepted by numerous medical schools so long as the applicant has the right grades at GCSE, the right work experience, smart PS and a decent UKCAT score.
I wonder how the Math part would be deemed challenging as it is basically asking computational skills that a person applying to Access to Medicine should easily cover, if not for the time. The Math starts with simple arithmetic calculations and progresses to the rate questions, which only require a bit of understanding though the wording seems a bit complicated. Compared to what the chosen career entails, the assessment does gauge basic skills that a mature student who was away from school needs to address before enrolling to an intensive course that prepares students to the competitive world of medicine.