why is oxbridge so special?

[Hughman]

It was typo on my part - I meant in not believing in training them!

[dsn]

Back to your original question though, sorry if I'm repeating what someone has already said, yes fair enough you should be looking at where you'll get the best teaching but, considering the fine reputation of all UK med schools, you should be looking at the best teaching for you.

To be honest I think choosing the course that fits you is a bit of a myth.

What does your average 17/18 year old know about medical education? Probably not much. You can try to decide, but you don't have much experience to base you decision on.

Personally, I applied to Cambridge thinking I'd love the course. Perhaps I would have, but I doubt it, because when I got to Birmingham I found that I preferred the lectures/ modules that were much more clinical than theoretical. Could I have known this at school? no.

Something like PBL is so different to anything you do at school that you can't really have an opinion on it before you do some. I thought it'd be a load of bollocks. Some of it is. Some of it is very useful - so today I wouldn't go for a very PBL course, but equally I wouldn't avoid it as much as I thought I would have wanted to.

Then something like dissection - is it essential? no. But I would say a good amount of either prosection or dissection is (opposed to what I got in my first year...)

Of course you can't not believe in GPs, they're needed as they're (I once heard it put) the 'gate keepers of the NHS'.

That's a very unfortunate term as it translates "they're the people with prime responsibility for ensuring that people who might quite do with being referred to a specialist aren't, in order to save the NHS money"

[Gizmo says -]

picking university is about picking fings for your stage of life.

if you spot the fings you want in a particular job, place, location, army division, offshore company, uni etc then thats where you should go.
if oyu're not doing that then you are still living someone elses life, and thus wasting your life.
theres not that many years in a lifetime - dont waste them living someone elses dreem.
live yours, every last week you got.


so first, work out what you want!
thats the only way.

[tatowen]

Hi, I am thinking of applying to Oxford for medicine next year - bbut I was wondering if there is much benefit.
My friend who got in got extra training from oxbridgemedicine.com, but if I have to go through all of that extra work, I want to know if there is actually added benefit of going there?

Tat

[tatowen]

Hey, just saw this thread, and thought i'd post here. Just saw a blog on exactly this....

Medicine at Oxbridge – what is all the fuss about?

hmmm, thought the article was interesting, but I am not convinced it really demonstrates how worth it Oxbridge is. There are a lot more essays in the first 3 years, and ultimately everyone still gets to call themselves doctor at the end.