How to Get Into Medicine As A Mature Student With No A Levels // Access To Medicine Full Guide

[Music] so hi everyone my name's rebecca i'm a second year mature medical student studying at the university of bristol and i've received a lot of emails asking about the access to higher education in medicine may be wondering if you can apply to medical school if you've perhaps got poor a level grades or if you don't have any science a levels at all and the answer is yes just a few years ago i was in exactly the same position i had gcses but i didn't have any science a levels actually i had no a levels whatsoever so today i really wanted to share my experience studying the access to medicine course in manchester the universities now really want medical students who come from diverse backgrounds not just the typical a level student and they actually welcome applications from students from non-traditional backgrounds i'm going to be sharing some content today that i hope you will find useful if you're new to the channel then welcome if you're returning then welcome back please remember to subscribe like the video so with that being said let's get straight in what will i be covering in today's video so i do have my notes i think this is a really important video and i don't want to be forgetting any content so if you see me looking down at my notes at any point it's just because i want you to get all of the information that i've prepared for you so we'll be covering what the access course is now i studied the access course in manchester in 2018 um so i'll be referring to my experience the syllabus may vary if you choose a different college so please bear that in mind but overall i feel that most access courses will will be delivering the same content so i'll be giving you a breakdown of what you study on the access course so not just the four subjects physics biology chemistry and maths but i'm going to be going further into detail and really giving you a breakdown of what will be covered under each topic i'm going to be talking to you about the cost of the access course as well and common questions that i've received recently like can you work at the same time how difficult is the is the course how did you study what resources do you recommend what are the entry requirements to get onto the access course so if you feel that this content will be of benefit to yourself or anybody else please feel free to share the video first thing to cover really is what the access course is [Music] an access course essentially is a level three qualification it's studied over the course of one year you don't cover the entire a level syllabus it's not two years of a levels in one um it's probably about 50 to 60 percent of normal a-level content later on in the video i'll be giving you a breakdown of exactly what you'll be covering on the course an access course is not the same as a foundation year an access course is designed to help those who do not have a levels or the right grades to get into medical school when i was doing the access course a few years ago one thing that i learned was if you're in a position where you're at school and you don't get the grade you can't then directly go on to the access course straight away there has to be a gap of three years between the a levels and the access course because it's not designed for students who potentially get b's or c's and at a levels and they think right i'll just do an access course instead it's designed for those who didn't get an opportunity when they were younger to either sit science a levels or maybe didn't come from great backgrounds or didn't go to good schools or for financial reasons they didn't get a real shot at sitting a levels and getting the right grades so you have to be 21 years old to be able to enroll on the access [Laughter] [Music] course [Laughter] a bit of terminology that you'll probably hear quite a lot if you're doing the access course is widening participation if you're looking at the medical school guide and every single medical school's entry requirements you'll probably see a section at the bottom which is widening participation one of my main concerns before applying to medicine was will medical schools even look at my application because of my background um as i've mentioned many times before my background is definitely not one of a typical medical student and it shouldn't make us feel like we don't have a place in medicine so medical schools have a set number of places designed to help those who would make good doctors but again haven't come from a typical background so don't let that put you off regardless of of where you grew up or what type of what kind of childhood you've had or what life is thrown at you that's fine just just know that you can still apply to medical school [Music] so the access course is basically split into four different subjects maths chemistry biology and physics jump into it and i'll give you a breakdown of each topic so let's start with maths [Music] so if you're studying algebra and you've had a good foundation at gcse it's basically a step up from [Music] them [Music] so when i did the course a few years ago there was a real emphasis of making sure that the physics that we studied was based on what we would need at medical school so medical physics essentially [Laughter] [Music] again at manchester we were required to to go to college two days a week i know from having looked at different colleges a few years ago that a lot of access courses require you to go to college five days a week one of the reasons i chose manchester was the fact that it seemed very condensed so we were required to go to college on a monday and a thursday now i lived three hours away so for me you know i couldn't justify moving to manchester because i had my work and everything where i was living and i thought i can just do the commute so two days was fine and we had three hours of one subject in the morning and three in the afternoon so for example three hours of math in the morning three hours of physics in the afternoon and then chemistry and biology on a thursday [Music] the whole course has to be passed at distinction level now the way that it's broken down is each exam or assessment is worth three credits at level three you have 15 exams and assessments that are graded over the course of the year and you are graded based on either a pass a merit or a distinction 99 of medical schools who accept the access course require the 15 exams and assessments to be passed at distinction level bristol medical school is where i attend medical school as far as i'm aware is the only medical school that will accept a merit in physics or maths but not biology or chemistry when i was researching this and i have to make this clear because it has to be you know realistic you have to know what you're going into if you achieve a pass or a merit in chemistry or biology no medical school will look at your application you have to get distinctions what do you need to get distinctions 85 or above in the assessment or exam i'm not saying this to put you off because it is possible if i can do it without a solid background with the help of the teachers and and the other students and resources that i'm going to give you you can absolutely achieve this and remember that the assessments and the exams are not just made up of that particular exam but you have a lab and then you'll have you know other things that will contribute to that grade so it is absolutely possible applied to bristol medical school because i actually got a merit in physics and i'm not i'm not ashamed of this you know i absolutely gave it my very best shot and physics was just a really difficult subject for me to get my head around and it was on the very first exam that we had i was i was struggling with physics and i got a merit and i was absolutely devastated because i thought wow this is just the end then it wasn't the end it definitely reduced my chances of getting into medical school but i knew that bristol would still look at my application and you know that was the only medical school at the time that would even consider a merit but just bear in mind that you can get a merit in math or physics but because of the competition just aim for straight distinctions you will also have um exams and assessments that are either pass or fail yes so we had three exams in maths and two in physics that were pass fail so not the standard past merit distinction it was just pass or fail and you have to pass those as well so in total you have 20 exams or assessments over the course of one year the 15 exams assessments that are graded past merit distinction you have to get distinctions and then the pass fail you obviously have to pass i really want to be realistic and not make it out to be something that it's not but it's really intense it's very very very intense in terms of the limited amount of time that you have to learn the content so you'll cover for example the cell in biology for let's say three to four weeks and then you'll have two or three days to learn all the content or you learn it as you go and then you have an exam bam and then you move on to the next thing so it's modular it's not you study everything for a year and then you have a big exam at the end it's basically study as you go sit the exam get the distinction move on to the next step and i think the combination of the pressure that the feeling that i know that if i don't get a distinction in this chemistry exam that i'm sitting right now it's game over and that's what i found really difficult is is just keeping myself or convincing myself every single day that i could actually pull this off so in terms of pressure and stress i found it to be difficult um in terms of the content i found it difficult i did and i think it's like anything it depends on what gcses you have the time that has lapsed between gcses and doing the access course how good you are generally at things like maths physics chemistry and biology for me i'd never been in in a lab before it was the first time in chemistry for example that was learning to even prepare and it was a steep learning curve i enjoyed it a lot i mean i learned so much during that 12 months and definitely having the gcses before going onto the access course in science and maths definitely definitely helped so it is difficult but with that being said it's doable [Music] around four thousand five hundred pounds but if you compare that to let's say sitting a levels as a mature student it's around four thousand per a level and you need three to get into medical school so in comparison to a-levels it's a lot cheaper and one thing that i learned and i really want to share this with you and not keep it a secret and i hope that i'm allowed to actually say this but when you take out an advanced learner loan to pay for the course a few months after the course started i was told that if you finish the medical degree so if you finish the five-year degree your advanced learner loan from the access call from the access course gets written off completely and that's something that i only found out maybe six months into the course if you finish the medical degree you will not have to pay the short answer is yes however if you do not need to work and you're in a position where you could afford to take you know a year off to just focus 100 on this access course that is what i would recommend um i wasn't in a position back then to not work i was living three hours away from the college i needed to pay rent i needed to pay for petrol and that was costing me like 300 pounds a month it was just insane thinking about it now how was that even possible and i think i aged about 20 years during that year but i managed to pull it off i don't know how but basically at the time i was working two jobs i was also volunteering at the local hospital and i was doing the access course so on a monday i would go to manchester and go to college basically which was a six hour round trip so i'd get up about four in the morning tuesdays and wednesdays i was working for a telecommunications firm in like a call center type thing thursday i would go to manchester again to another six hour round trip friday morning i would go to the local hospital from 10 until 12 and be a tea lady so i would give out tea and coffee on one of the wards and i wanted to do this because it was it served as a really good reminder of why i was on this access course and just being in a hospital environment and seeing myself one day as that person who could um could do more than make a tea and coffee if that makes sense that kept me going and i also wanted the work experience so i did that on the friday morning and then on a saturday morning i was working both as a spin instructor and a personal trainer at the gym so i would teach two spin classes back to back on a saturday and then immediately after i would have four or five personal training clients back to back i would finish i'd go home take have a little nap and then study and then on a sunday i would work at the gym from eight until twelve again personal training clients back to back and then in the afternoon i would just study monday back to manchester and it was like that for a year seven days a week no days off apart from holidays but then during the holidays i would do more personal training clients and it was it was so intense that i think halfway through i thought i this is just not sustainable but i just had to do it for a year that i needed to work because if i didn't then i wouldn't have the money to pay for the petrol to get to the college and i just wasn't going to let that happen so it paid off in the end but yeah you can work is the short answer but if you can just work just one or two days a week then do that because the course is really intense in terms of resources you've probably if you've watched the video that i did about sitting gcses in your 30s i recommend the same resources and these are cgp revision books but instead of gcse revision books get the a-level ones so cgp a-level revision it doesn't really matter which syllabus so whether it's edxl or aqa but i think these are brilliant because they break down each subject or each topic into simplified way of understanding them and what you'll cover in a three-hour class for example about something about differentiation you can then review and do practice questions so i just used cgp revision books khan academy is a good one as well for chemistry and again i did refer back to mr hegarty i don't i don't think i'll ever not watch mr hegarty because he makes maths or the most complicated things in maths seem a lot more simple than what they are english and maths at grade b a lot of medical schools if you're a mature student they don't really look at your gcses now for bristol again um the entry requirements for those coming with an access course or even a level was maths at grade a and english at grade b if you've managed to to pass an access course at distinction level in chemistry biology maths and physics then your you know your knowledge is above and beyond what you would say at gcse start dates um this may have changed but it's normally twice a year so either september or january i started in january and finished in december question refers to studying the course online or at a college and this was not an option a few years ago and i know that the distance learning college so dlc offers the same qualification online personally i would not have felt comfortable or confident to have achieved distinctions by studying this online and what you need to think about is that you get one shot you can't fail the access course and then reset it the following year you can only apply once in my opinion you will get a better chance at achieving those grades if you are surrounded first of all with teachers that can give you additional support in person and also it's important to surround yourself with people who have the same vision and the same goals because when things get really really tough if you're at home on your own with just an assessment and a laptop you're gonna get demotivated if you're surrounded by people who are also in the same boat you can all support each other so my recommendation would be to actually go physically to a college and study the access course but if you feel that you have you know the motivation and the ability to do it online and if that's easier and more affordable then definitely go for that [Music] when i was um doing the access course we only had a very short amount of time to understand the content learn it and then we were assessed so it's very different to medical school because you know in your first two years at university you have about a year to learn the content so the way that you're going to learn on the access is going to be different to when you come to medical school when i stood in the on the access course i did write quite a lot of bullet points and notes and it was just a case of um cramming for exams and that is not a study technique that i would recommend at medical school you need this information at university for a long time it has to go in your long-term memory access course it's just cram cram cram and that is the honest truth it would be nice to to use techniques such as active recall um space repetition but you don't have the time to do space repetition because you learn you're assessed you learn you're assessed so for the access course i would say write notes that summarize what you're learning in the classroom you want to start building a database on anki or quizlet remember that the topics that you cover on the access will be revisited during your first and second year mostly at medical school so in first year medical school we revisited a lot of the content that we studied especially in biology chemistry and a little bit of math but mainly biology and chemistry so anki is an app that you can download for free online i'm sure you've heard of it by now but it's a spaced repetition app where you can design and write your own flash cards and test yourself on the knowledge that you're learning i would recommend starting to write questions for yourself on the access course if you have time because that knowledge will then benefit you on the on the medical degree but in terms of study tips honestly the the time that you have to learn the content is so limited that i don't feel that recommending active recall and space repetition to pass exams on the access would be that beneficial if i'm totally honest so it is just a case of cramming and learning it as you go um and then it's if it felt like right you dump all this information on the exam but move on to the next thing but that's not the way to go about it [Music] at times you convince yourself that you can't do it just keep moving forwards don't look at what you want what you need to do next year or right now we're doing the cell all right let me just focus on the cell i'm not even going to think about what we're doing in any of the subjects i'm just going to focus on what do i need to do to get this distinction one hurdle at a time one step at a time because if you even look at the whole access course and what you need to overcome it can be really overwhelming so if i can come from a background of leaving school at 15 with no academic qualifications and self-studying my gcses at the age of 35 and achieving distinctions on the access course okay one merit but mainly distinctions and getting into medical school then you can too most important thing to say and i always say this i know but i think it's really important is don't let other people convince you that you can't do it even if on the access course you get asked like i did what my plan b is just say that you don't have one medicine is my plan there is no plan b and people in your family or friends that love you very much they may try to convince you that it's better to take a safer option and to stick to what you're doing now but if if being a doctor is something that you want then go for it and don't let anybody convince you otherwise once you get into medical school i promise you it is difficult it is hard but hand on heart i can say that it's easier it's easier than the access course because it's spread over five years whereas this is one year very intense very stressful a lot of pressure overcome this hurdle get the access course and your life will become so much easier and i'm not saying medical school is easy definitely not it's it's difficult but you will receive help in terms of you know academic support and financial support and you'll be surrounded with people who have the same vision as well thank you very much for watching today's video if you have any further questions then please just email me or send me a comment you know one of one of the things that i said at the time was when i was researching the access course it was so challenging to get information on youtube or just from colleges and i always said that if i succeed on the access then i would want to do videos to try and help those who want to follow the same path so if there's anything that i can talk about on these videos that you would find useful then please just let me know but for now thank you very much for watching good luck on your journey never give up and i'll see you soon [Music] you

Channel: Dr Rebecca Bradford

Views: 22,335

Keywords: applying to medicine, how to get into medical school, medical school, medicine application uk, access to medicine, access to higher education, widening participation medicine, bristol medical school, non traditional medical student, how to apply to medical school with no a levels, get into medical school with low grades, mature medical student, study tips, how to get into medical school uk, med school motivation, access to higher education diploma

Id: _0wEabTaWOg

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021