2:2 + MRes+1st yr PhD in Ecology, could I do grad medical

[ecoboy]

Dear all

this Is my first post on the site.

Right here goes,

I wanted to do medicine since I did my GCSEs 10 GCSEs grades A*-B inc maths, English, Bio, chem, phys.

Did my A-levels fully intended to do Medicine, Bio (B), Chem(B), maths (C) Gen studies (A) French (E). However as you can see I didnt get the grades required so decided to go do biology and maybe later go back and do medicine. I went to A good uni to do biology (top 10 uni) but because of several problems settling into uni and drinking far too much I got a high 2:2 (0.8% off 2:1 and wasnt offered a Viva), so I thought my chances was over, I decided what the hell I will do an MRes in ecology (I like the mathematical theoretical side, not the tree hugging thing so get that out your head)
So anyway after my MRes with merit most medical schools said grad places not accept an enhancement with a masters, and any way I had given up all thoughts of ever doing medicine, so thought why not do a PhD. So I am currently at Imperial doing a PhD in theoretical epidemiology.

Know here is the question, I have looked around and a few places say that PhD may enhance likelyhood of getting a place at grad medical school.

However, because I was an idoit and moved out of biochem, physiology style biology will my chances be hindered.

I know that I will be 27 when I complete my PhD, but still thats young enough to do a grad med (isnt it?).

How do I over the next 2 years or so enhance my CV to make it look like I still wanna do medicine for admisssions guys.

Would it be better just to jack all the PhD enhanced route and just go back do my A-levels, get straight As and entrance examination and start as an undergrad.

I really want to do medicine, but dont know where to start and what the best thing would be to do,

any ideas or suggetsions will be welcome

regards
ecoboy

[ecoboy]

just been reading http://www.sucs.org/~alexism/maturefaq.doc brilliant. but further info also welcome.

cheers

[Mac5800]

your chances are slim. So: dont be picky where you go; speak to ALL uni's via snail mail; and get good work experience. Its getting increasinly tough every year to get in with a 2.2 full-stop. In a few years i suspect that none will be accepted, hence the need to speak to them now.

[ecoboy]

cheers for that advice.

I will get on that now.

[nikopol]

I was in a similar position to you - just completing a PhD but not really wanting to work in research for the rest of my life. Despite having a IIi and finalising a PhD I got no interview from the first three med schools I applied to but on the back of a good Gamsat score got an interview with Derby/Nottingham and was offered a place... If you feel you can perform well at the gamsat, I'd say try that route as the IIii is no longer an issue.

[ecoboy]

I was in a similar position to you - just completing a PhD but not really wanting to work in research for the rest of my life. Despite having a IIi and finalising a PhD I got no interview from the first three med schools I applied to but on the back of a good Gamsat score got an interview with Derby/Nottingham and was offered a place... If you feel you can perform well at the gamsat, I'd say try that route as the IIii is no longer an issue.

HAy Nikopol,

thanks for the words of encouragement.

Couple of qs

1) when in your PhD did you start enquiring about medschools and whether they would take you, or did you just fill out the UCAS form and hope for the best.

2)When did you start your prep for GAMSAT? you see by the end of my PhD it will have been 5 years since I did any useful biology so would really need to scrub up. Also for reference what is your GAMSAT score so I have an idea if I could pull that off.

3)What was your PhD supervisors responce when you told them you didnt want to stay in research, really scared mine might give me a bad ref if I annoy him.

4) What work experience did you get, im sure you appreciate doing a PhD is pretty time intensive. How did you fit in adequete experience? I was considering taking a year out after my PhD work in severel care sectors, shadow etc and then apply for the year following my PhD, but time is a real issue (I dont care how old I am, but admissions tutor will).

Cheers Nik

[yazoo]

1) when in your PhD did you start enquiring about medschools and whether they would take you, or did you just fill out the UCAS form and hope for the best.

2)When did you start your prep for GAMSAT? you see by the end of my PhD it will have been 5 years since I did any useful biology so would really need to scrub up. Also for reference what is your GAMSAT score so I have an idea if I could pull that off.

3)What was your PhD supervisors responce when you told them you didnt want to stay in research, really scared mine might give me a bad ref if I annoy him.

4) What work experience did you get, im sure you appreciate doing a PhD is pretty time intensive. How did you fit in adequete experience? I was considering taking a year out after my PhD work in severel care sectors, shadow etc and then apply for the year following my PhD, but time is a real issue (I dont care how old I am, but admissions tutor will).

Cheers Nik

27 not too old.

My advice would be

1. Get HCA job one day at w/end for good experience. Or do voluntary work with patients.

2. Find out as much as poss about GAMSAT, look at past papers, gauge for yourself how much work you need to do.

3. Don't tell your PhD supervisor. At least not yet! Start raving about your new job/voluntary work. Do it over the next year or so. Then think about telling him/her. Won't come as such a shock then!

[nikopol]

1) when in your PhD did you start enquiring about medschools and whether they would take you, or did you just fill out the UCAS form and hope for the best.

the latter - retrospectively not the best of moves so I wouldn't recommend it. I could have possibly had more interviews if I'd talked to the schools I was applying too but I'm a bit of a last minute chap.

2)When did you start your prep for GAMSAT? you see by the end of my PhD it will have been 5 years since I did any useful biology so would really need to scrub up. Also for reference what is your GAMSAT score so I have an idea if I could pull that off.

I started work on it around October - my chemistry and physics were non-existent but science was always going to be my worst given that my a-levels equivalent (French baccalaureat) was very arts orientated. my overall gamsat score was 67 - 70/70/63 . Nottingham have two ways of calculating the final score btw - one with a dual weighting of science and one without, with the highest score being the one the use. Check out the GAMSAT wiki in my signature btw.

3)What was your PhD supervisors responce when you told them you didnt want to stay in research, really scared mine might give me a bad ref if I annoy him.

Well a lot of PhD students do not end in academia. My supervisor seems to have been the model they used for the character of House - a very prickly character but things panned out OK. I think if you're honest, they can't really fault you - a PhD ususally is the test to see if you are made for full time academia/reasearch. I still have an interest in research but was aware that doing it full time was really not playing to my strengths.

4) What work experience did you get, im sure you appreciate doing a PhD is pretty time intensive. How did you fit in adequete experience? I was considering taking a year out after my PhD work in severel care sectors, shadow etc and then apply for the year following my PhD, but time is a real issue (I dont care how old I am, but admissions tutor will).

On the pure medical front, I didn't have that much - one week shadowing in a GP's surgery and two days shadowing in a hospital in Africa. I've heard reports that experience abroad is not necessarily seen as pure experience - what they are looking for is NHS experience it seems. On the volunteering front, I had a fair amount - I've been a Samaritan for years, been a student warden, worked in a children's home so maybe that helped strenghten my application.

[mez]

I was considering taking a year out after my PhD work in severel care sectors, shadow etc and then apply for the year following my PhD, but time is a real issue (I dont care how old I am, but admissions tutor will).

Admissions tutors will generally not care about your age (up to a point) and 27 is probably slightly younger than the average age for admission on to graduate entry programs. There are a few people on this forum who are in their 40s (one late 40s!) and are holding offers for entry this September.

Lack of work experience could be the biggest barrier you have to overcome. Remember that it's not how much you've done, but what you've learnt from what you have done.

[Little White Dragon]

Not Nikopol, so hopefully you'll forgive me for butting in.

1) when in your PhD did you start enquiring about medschools and whether they would take you, or did you just fill out the UCAS form and hope for the best.

Initially I applied in the final year of my PhD - I think that this was a mistake because I was suffering from traumas of experiments not going well and was not overly blessed with confidence to take into an interview situation. There were 2 of us in the lab who were looking at medicine, but the other guy met a local girl and decided not the pursue the application at that point. I didn't get in that year - took 2 more application cycles.

2)When did you start your prep for GAMSAT? you see by the end of my PhD it will have been 5 years since I did any useful biology so would really need to scrub up. Also for reference what is your GAMSAT score so I have an idea if I could pull that off.

The maturefaq (which you found) gives the cutoffs each year for GAMSAT - usually in the lower 60s area. I found that you don't need to know much by way of specifics for the Biology - it's much more data analysis, but it helps to have some chemistry knowledge. That said, my revision centred around A level revision books and text books. The hardest bit of the exam (to me that is) is the number of questions in the short amount of time that you have available (believe me 3 hours is short when you have only 1.5 minutes per question!), so it is worth working through practice papers to get the timing right.

3)What was your PhD supervisors responce when you told them you didnt want to stay in research, really scared mine might give me a bad ref if I annoy him.

One of my PhD supervisors was really supportive and even arranged for me to follow a colleague around the hospital for a few days. The other was less so, but in retrospect his reservations helped me to understand the weak points of my application (i.e. was this something I really wanted to do, or was I falling into this because academia wasn't going well). The really difficult problem was with my current boss (also an academic) - I forewarned him by telling him about some voluntary work that I was doing at the local hospital (and I needed a reference to get it), but he wasn't happy about the idea that I might want to leave the lab to do something that didn't pay peanuts! In some respects the drawn-out process of the applications helped because he had 6 months to forget about the reference that he gave me before I announced that I was going back to the UK for an interview (I did use up all my vacation time on interviews, read papers and wrote grants whilst I was away, brought back Thorntons toffees, English Breakfast tea and crumpets, but it was still a touchy subject). In some respects, life was made easier by my boss' wife, who is a medic herself and she was very supportive (she specifically came to find me to congratulate me the day after I got my offer!), as are other members of the faculty here. My experiences in this respect show that it depends on the person and you have to play it by ear to some extent, but looking back, I think that the softly softly approach works best.

4) What work experience did you get, im sure you appreciate doing a PhD is pretty time intensive. How did you fit in adequete experience? I was considering taking a year out after my PhD work in severel care sectors, shadow etc and then apply for the year following my PhD, but time is a real issue (I dont care how old I am, but admissions tutor will).

Judging from the forum, 27 isn't really that old in terms of applications. Getting work experience whilst working in the lab was good for me in 2 respects - (1) that I got to see some "different" sides of medicine and got to see whether I would enjoy it or not and (2) that I got out and away from the lab for 4 hours a week, which allows for a bit of recuperation time. I used the time in between submission an viva and between viva and getting leave to supplicate (which I had to have to take up my job here) to get some experience too, although in my case because of some administrative problems, this probably took longer than most people.