So, if you're applying to medicine or dentistry, I'm going to show you the things that move the needle the most and you should place the majority of your focus on to maximize your chances and build the most competitive application. Not only that am I going to do that, I'll show you the order in which to do them and the context of what's going to be going on in your life that is going to that you need to navigate so that you can make it as stress-free as possible, but also free up the focus to give it the attention it deserves to get it to a really high level level to be more competitive than all the other people applying.

Because the mistake that most people make is that they think that it's a two or three month sprint. Whereas your people who are getting into, you know, your Oxford, your Cambridge, your King's College Londons, and your other competitive universities. These are the guys who are starting their preparation at the start of year 12. Or if they're at uni, it's in their penultimate year. As that year is starting is when they start their prep.

And it's not a 2 or 3 month ordeal. It's a 18 to 24 month ordeal. If you're starting in September, around the time you start year 12, you'll be going on into the summer of not the year after, but the year after that, by the time you finished your interviews and are getting ready to kind of realize your offers. So, I'm going to show you where to place your attention, but the first thing is give it the respect it deserves. Give it the time it deserves.

And if you want to get into a competitive medical or dental school or these days it's so competitive that any medical school, you need to give it the respect and the time that it deserves to build a strong application. And not only it's about doing activity, it's about allowing the activities that you're doing for time that you're doing them to accumulate because whatever experiences you're doing, you need to allow time for those experiences to accumulate. You know, if you're doing a volunteering role, if you've been doing it for a year, that means that you've racked up a lot more hours. And that means that naturally you'll have a lot more things to talk about, a lot more wisdom, a lot more exposure to the profession, whichever it is.

And that is going to help you build that knowledge and that understanding. And this is what forms the foundation of a good application because people have lived it. They've experienced it. And they're not just trying to black it with a quick sprint that they did to kind of try and gather as much information as they can. That's what makes people the real deal.

Okay. So, what to do and when to do it. I'm going to break it down into five things. The very first thing is what we call CV building and work experience. And throughout, I'm going to link you to some other videos that are going to go more in depth into that thing because instead of kind of overwhelming you with everything now, I'll just tell you what you need to pay attention to the headline stuff and then you can zoom into each one as and when you get to that stage.

So, as I say, first thing, CV building and work experience. Now, this forms the foundation of your application. If you do this well, first of all, you'll have racked up loads of experience. So, you'll tick that box when it comes to them seeing whether you've proven that you have the understanding and the commitment to that uh subject that you want to study. The second thing is it will help you understand ethics and some of the things that come up in some of the exams that they test, which I'll talk about later, but also it will help you have more to write about in your personal statement, which we're going to talk about later.

And when you the biggest thing is when you come to interview you will be the real deal if you get this right. Now it's important to start this preparation and start thinking about this like I say when you start year 12 at least at least do it in the kind of December or January coming after that. So as you go into the new year after starting year 12 or if you're a grad your penultimate year of university. Now to build a good CV you need to think of really a few things. One is experience.

So exposure to the profession and the second is building character traits that would make a good doctor or dentist. So the work experience umbrella kind of covers three maybe four broad things. The first is shadowing where you are a fly on the wall in a hospital or a dental practice and you are observing a doctor at work to gain an understanding of it. The second thing is volunteering. That's to show that you have you know that you're caring have a caring nature.

You're self-sacrificing. you're willing to give back to people and kind of show those traits that they want to see in people who are going to be future care providers. The next is paid work. Now, paid work is brilliant for showing responsibility. Those other two things you kind of it's great that you're there and it's great that you're doing them, but they're not kind of relying on you the same way that somebody say if you looking after a shop or if you're a waiter or waitress, you know, whatever that is.

That third one is demonstrating a lot more responsibility than the other two because as a volunteer or maybe as a fly on the wall shadowing it doesn't really you don't have the responsibility where you have to be there the same way that you have a job where you're looking after an entire shop for example. So responsibility is a really big thing to demonstrate with paid work. Then finally something like research or some sort of academics kind of falls under this umbrella. We could call it wider reading as well. whether you're attending talks or conferences.

This is another thing on the academic side that it shows that you have interest in the profession. Now, alongside all of that, what I'll call broadly work experience, we have our CV building and that's really extracurricular activities. And think of this as traits. So, what kind of traits make a good doctor? What kind of traits make a good dentist?

Is it working in a team or is it leading a team for example? So, if you do a sport and you're the captain, these are good examples of that. Is it dedication to something? So maybe you have played an instrument for you know five years and you can show that you can commit yourself to something like a fiveyear career for example a 5year degree that goes that extends way beyond that or maybe you are learned a second language. Medicine is basically and so is dentistry.

It's basically all Latin based and you learn about 30,000 new words just from starting that I think it's in the first year you learn that much. So, can you show that you can understand another language and function on that level? So, we've got an entire playlist both for medicine and for dentistry for everything you need to know about work experience, what it involves and how to arrange it. Also, on the future do website, we've got a free resource for tracking your work experience and understanding whilst you're going through it what you need to get out of it. Whilst we're on the subject of future do, if you would like our help with your application to medicine or dentistry, we have a program that takes you start to finish through the entire application to make sure that you manage it not only in the most stress-free way that you can, but you can avoid overwhelm.

You can understand what a really good application looks like and have someone keep you on track throughout so that you can, you know, be as efficient with your time as possible so that the rest of the time you can focus on your school exams, on enjoying your life. So that basically you give your best yourself the best chance of getting in with last year being the highest number of people taking the UKAT ever. A really important exam. It is more competitive than ever. And the difference between people who do well and who don't is the people who start early and get the right sort of help.

Once we run out of places, we'll be operating on a wait list only. So worth applying now so that you can avoid missing out and get that help that you need to get into your chosen medical or dental school. So like I say that work experience and CV building should start really all the way far back as starting year 12 or starting that penultimate year of university and it kind of carries on all the way throughout your application acquiring all of that experience. Then there's the second phase of the application which is what we call pre-exam prep. Now you'll have two things going on at this stage and this is kind of around end of February sort of time that we really need to start shifting our focus.

why it's important to have that other stuff squared away. We want to shift our focus towards exams. Now, these are both UKAT and the academic exams. So whether it's you sitting your A levels or your university exams, we need to be prepared so that we can focus equally in turn on both of those. Now, what's going to happen is the UKAT is probably one of the most important things.

If you're a grad, you'll also be sitting the GAMSAT, which is around March sort of time, which you should have been preparing for in that period whilst you're doing all that work experience stuff. But the UKAT is kind of mid July to the end of September. So if you haven't heard of it already, the UKAT is a big deal and a big exam that has everything to do with the application. So I will show you a guide for how to prepare here. But safer to say we need to start doing that early.

Now what happens you prepare for the UKAT in three phases. So what we call firstly basically our familiarization then we want to get good at answering questions and then we want to get good quick at answering questions basically. But the first bit the familiarization we can start doing now just like because the UKAT is kind of like an IQ exam done at very fast pace. So the same way that you wouldn't do a sudoku at pace, but you would still do it as practice to get good at doing a sudoku, you can start doing that sort of stuff now to get familiar with it, understand, and start really getting your brain used to that way of thinking.

Because what we want to do is almost apply that base layer. Imagine you're painting a wall. You apply several coats. You want to get that base layer in so you've got that familiarity starting and you're starting to understand it before we then shift gears to focus on uni or school exams because at that point you'll start to have maybe some end of year exams or you'll have stuff that might distract your focus away which is why it's so important to have started all of things these things working along in the background before we have to shift focus and kind of have no choice but to get distracted.

That's why it's so important to start early to have this stuff going on before we shift focus to and get pulled away by exams. So then once our academic exams are out the way, we're back on focusing on exam prep for the UKAT and we're probably racking up a lot more experience and all of those other things that we're talking about. Then eventually we come to phase three, which is the summer, which is what I call crunch time. Now this is when everything is going to be happening. So, we've talked about two of the important hurdles already, which is the work experience and the exam.

This is when you're actually going to sit that UKAT exam, but also at the same time, you need to start preparing your personal statement. Now, I do a great video here for how to how to write a really good personal statement. Still important despite what people say. Yes, some universities don't use it, but they will use it sometimes at interview those universities. So, it's really important to write a good one still because people think that, oh, because they don't use it for the selection, then it doesn't matter.

But you could write a terrible personal statement and get through selection because they've not looked at it, but then get to interview and then they go, what the hell is this? We're not letting this person in. So, don't listen to those people who say that you shouldn't pay attention to it. It's really important. Most universities use it.

But even if no one ever looked at it, it's important for you formulating your own experience, getting clear on why you want to study medicine or dentistry. But also, it's good practice for when you go to interview and you need to explain all these things that you've done and what you've gained from them and why they make you a good doctor or dentist that you've formulated those in your head and you understand clearly so that when you get put under the scrutiny of an interview, you can say it in front of them with confidence. So don't underestimate that. And then the final thing is that we're putting our application together.

So that means choosing universities. Do not underestimate how important that is. We have many people who come to us on the future do program who have not got in for so many years. So they've come to us for help. They maybe had, you know, two, three, four failed attempts and they've come to us to finally get in.

And choosing the right universities is so important. We have a whole database on like all the little nitty-gritty things that make a person's specific situation more suited to certain universities. But if you have a certain university in mind, you need to, again, this is why preparing early is so important. If you've got your heart set on Oxford, if you've got your heart set on a particular graduate entry university, you need to start tailoring your application to suit what they like early. Because otherwise, this is what so many people do and why this last year so few people got in and had so many people that should have got in that didn't is because they leave all of this to cram into the summer and it becomes really stressful.

it means they don't have the time or the attention to focus on each of these individual elements and then they you know have to compromise and sometimes it means that they don't get to go for the really um competitive medical schools. Sometimes it means that they jeopardize their chances of getting in at all and then they have to either go through clearing which is really stressful or reapply or you know go via the grad route which is much more competitive. So this is what I call phase three which is crunch time. So that is like I say sitting the UKAT, it's writing your personal statement, it's submitting your application.

So those three things and if you haven't done the preparation before, it might mean having to in a hurry complete some work experience during that summer period where you've got all of that other stuff going on. And you can start to see now why there's a clear correlation between how early people start and the level of competitive university they tend to end up in based on that. So then in early September to mid October is the window that UKCKASS opens that you can submit your application. So that's the culmination of all this stuff and then you submit your application but alas the application isn't over. It is so important not to underestimate those interviews.

I see it very often where students do really well in the UKAT and they get invited to all four out of their applications. They get invited to interview but don't get a single offer because they've ignored all of that stuff. Now the interview firstly not to be underestimated and you need to be ready and that can go anything from kind of November all the way into May. So it's important to prepare and be ready to perform. You will get very little notice when the universities invite you to interview.

It might be a week or two. Again so many people who haven't thought about this aren't doing the prep ahead of time. They get kind of caught off guard. They're scrambling around. and they're panicked and they go into their interview not very well prepared and don't do well because of it.

On the future do program as soon as October the 15th usually is the deadline for UKcast. Soon as that hits we start interview prep and it's really going all the way into April to make sure that people are at their peak because you know you have to be in the top 10% really to make sure that you get your place at university. But again, this goes back to the preparing early thing because your interview, how well you do will be dictated by how much experience you've gained. For me, when I applied, you know, I went I got into King's College London and to Cardiff for dentistry for Kings and medicine for Cardiff.

And when I got to interview, I had loads of questions that if I'd have spent two years preparing, I would have never thought of. But I relied on my real life work experience to tell stories and and draw on experiences that I genuinely gained from putting in the hours that helped me get through that. And I could tell the moment when those interviewers said, "Okay, I think we're going to offer this guy a place because I could see that when I was telling them these stories, they they, you know, they could tell that I was the real deal." And that's how we build a really strong application.

So look, the moral of the story is that these things deserve respect. They are over a long period and starting early will maximize your chances. If you want to get a free timeline that we've made, the future program, if you go to our free resources page on our website, you can download the timeline to help you understand and start planning. But if you would like some help with your application to make sure that you stay on course, you focus on the right things at the right time, and you kind of make it as stress-free as possible, you can check out the future program, and you can submit an application here.

We have limited spaces and as since we announced that we are capping the number of people on the program, we have nearly almost sold out and then after that we'll be operating on a wait list. So come early to make sure you maximize your chances of getting into your chosen medical or dental school. But if you do apply and get a place, we would love to have you and help you write your own story. Thank you for watching and I will see you in the next

so if I was applying again to Medicine in 2024 before we get into the technical stuff the very first thing that I would do was understand my why now that seems a little bit woo woo but it's really important to understand why you're going into medicine because it's the thing that's going to help you stay motivated it's going to help you direct all of your work experience and all the things that you do so such an important thing and often really overlooked even if you just spend 5 minutes just deciding exactly what it is you want out of a career in medicine and why you are driven to go towards it that will help be

your True North at times when you're struggling which is inevitable as part of the medical application now as I go through this I'm going to start with the broad Concepts and then Whittle down and get into the nitty-gritty of the more specific stuff as we get to it but these are the tactics that I used when I got into both medicine and dentistry and completed both degrees and it's the same technique that I teach all of the students that are on our program that we've got over 93% success with with getting students into their First Choice Medical and dental school at the first attendant so the next thing is to get a Ru idea of

what universities you want to go to the reason for that is because you need to understand where the bar is and basically when you're applying you're going to have one of two outcomes you're either going for a specific University usually a very competitive one like maybe the London universities or an Oxbridge or just maybe a Russell grp University but if that's the case then you need to understand what ukap score do I need is there a different exam that I need to take what kind of work experience do they want all of the really important stuff and you need to know that as soon as possible so that you can start preparing your application to

satisfy the needs of that specific University now the other goal or the other bar that people aim for is that I just want to get into medicine or just want to get into dentistry and I don't care where I go as long as I get in so there we start need to start understanding the minimum requirements generally for basically some of the less competitive medical schools they're all very competitive it is still very difficult to get into but it's just useful to understand what is the minimum or maybe the average that I need to aim for for a typical student that will gain access to a medical or dental degree course now the third broad

concept before we get into the nitty-gritty is that I would recommend that you get your parents involved unless you are kind of in your late 20s and you have your own career and you're supporting yourself I would really recommend that it really helps to have your parents involved because they obviously want you to do well and I'm sure they will support you on this endeavor but there are are lots of things that they can do to help support you in little ways or at least understand the areas of focus that you need to place your attention on so that they can kind of point you in the right direction and in fact we've done a

free course specifically for parents to how they can support their children who apply to medicine so if you want to check that out here there are no gimmicks it's completely for free it's about two and a half three hours worth of material that they can just watch at their own pace they can watch it at Double speed so it's very easy to get through and and that way they will know exactly what they need to do to support you and maximize your chances of success so then specifically I'm going to talk you through in order what you should do now this is the proven process that like I say I take all of my students

through and has that success rate that we talked about earlier so I'm going to talk you through the steps that you need to do to assure you gain success now the very first one is strategy I sit down with students for a very long time for hours to map out the exact process or the exact set of steps that we're going to do to maximize that student's Chan of success and it's a very personal thing and it's very bespoke in that sense that it's not kind of like a cookie cutter approaches you have to look at what your strengths are what your weaknesses are where you want to go and all of the details that

make up and the ingredients that make up the recipe of a really fantastic application so really think strategically about how you're going to approach this application one of the best things that you can do is get one of the free resources off the futurock website which I'll link to in the description descrition below and we have a timeline that you can download for free that tells you exactly what's coming up when the steps are and so you can plan exactly when you need to start preparing for each step and what you can be doing at each stage of the year to make sure that you're maximally prepared now the next thing that you need to

do is gain outstanding work experience and you'll have seen me speak in other videos particularly this one here where I do a deep dive on work experience that there are three types of work experience so you have shadowing where you're typically in a hospital or a g P practice following a doctor around then you have volunteer work to show that you can give back to the community and care for others and then you typically will have paid work where you really demonstrate those transferable skills of responsibility you might be in charge for the keys or handling money or you might be doing all sorts of things that kind of draw parallels with the skills required

to make a good doctor so check out that video to find out exactly how to set up your work experience in the best way possible then the next stage is all about the aptitude tests now at the moment when we're filming this they have just got rid of the bmat which was the exam required for Oxford and Cambridge and about five other universities on top of that and still to this day at the time of recording we don't know what they're going to do to replace it but what is almost certain is that you will probably be sitting the ukat and if you're a graduate that might be accompanied by the gamat as well and

again depending on what's going to happen with this bat whether they're going to replace it or universities are just going to adopt the ukat instead we will know whether there is an extra exam that we might consider taking however what we need to do is make sure that we prepare well for the newat and as I always say to students the ukat is both Sim simultaneously underestimated and overvalued it is an important part and maybe the most important part if not in the top two or three however it is not the only thing that makes up a good application the other things that I'm going to talk about here make the balance of a really

well-rounded solid applicant so don't think that all it's all about the ukat and nothing else don't ignore all the other things that I'm talking about because it's really important to maximize every single bucket of the application now paradoxically although the ukat is overvalued it is equally underestimated people don't realize how much work they need to put in to make sure they get a score that's going to at least get them over the threshold required to be invited to interview they don't understand the kind of work and time and prep that it requires to ingrain all of the techniques the speed of the exam and just get to grips with the basics so that they can

put themselves in a position to score highly and kind of improve on a good trajectory now I would recommend that you check out this video here where I talk about the three phases of ukap preparation and give you a bit of a revision plan and an idea of when to start how much time to spend and really there we're just laying out a plan for how you're going to succeed with that exam now the next thing you need to do is nail the personal statement now there is is up in the air as to what they're going to do with the personal statement again at the time of recording that essentially what they're thinking of

is breaking it down into five or so questions which essentially is just structuring the personal statement how it should be for you whereas you know when we do this with our team we basically make sure that those questions and areas are covered anyway but it's still essentially the same thing now there are some universities yes that don't look at the personal statement maybe they'll look at it at interview stage but it's still really important not only for the universities that are going to use it but also to organize your thoughts your experiences all the things that you want to put forward of yourself as a good case of being a doctor or dentist to make

sure that you know in your head when it comes to interview and they're asking you these sorts of things that you have them at the Forefront of mind at the very least and obviously at the other end of the spectrum it is a massive Factor you take places like kings that really value work experience and that is the way that they ascertain that through the personal statement so it's so important that you present that in a really well written well structured and just great way to kind of put you in the best possible light personal statement is something that you should start cooking about may now it's a bit like catching a fly you don't

want to get there too soon you don't want to get there too late but the personal statement you want to time just right because most likely you are accumulating experience as you're preparing your application so you want to leave it late enough so that you have done those experiences so you've got lots to talk about in the personal statement but at the same time you don't want to leave it so that you're rushing because the main thing with that with the personal statement is getting other people to review it our students the ones that really rush it and come last minute and ask for our advice and our you know our input and they're doing

it last minute don't make the most out of that opportunity of having someone who can put some fresh eyes on it give some advice because when they're having to rush to implement the advice and action the recommendations from that they really don't give themselves the best chance to make it as good as it could possibly the next important step is choosing the right Medical schools now this is probably arguably the most underestimated one because choosing the right medical schools for you for your individual strengths what you got in the ukat how good your personal statement is how good your work experience is how well you think you can interview all of these things are a

unique formula for you as an individual that are suited to certain universities literally every year on our future. program we get people who come to us who have maybe failed to get in maybe two three times and we look at them and look at some of the stuff they're doing yes okay the personal statement isn't quite where it needs to be yes they''re not prepared properly for the ukat and they could do that better yes they probably could do a better work experience but often a small detail that is so simple to change but so effective is those four Medical School choices or four dental school choices if you're applying to Dentistry but these are

the things that make such a big difference and it's so nuanced and personal to you that choosing those Bo is critical to get you in front of the interview panel the way I see it with my students is we basically want to do two things and I know this is very simplistic but really goal number one is get them in front of the interview panel and I'm so confident in our ability to train people that once we've got them in front of the interview panel all we need to do is just impress the interview panel enough or the MMI circuit or whatever the equivalent is enough to then be offered a place so you know

it's very simple just do what you need to to get in front of the the medical school and speak to them an interview nail the interview to get the offer and it's when you break it down it's that simple but obviously there are lots of stages to make sure that each of those two steps en nailed properly because that brings us on to the final step other than getting the grades obviously to get in with your A Levels or degree or whatever it is is actually getting through the interview now this as far as getting an offer is concerned is the final hurdle and again a massive mistake that I see people make is thinking

that the interview is all about just cramming in the two weeks before the interview is the culmination of all that preparation that you've done before all your work experience all your reading all your exposure to medicine or Dentistry as you're going through this process and the reflection that you're making on that it's such a critical factor and so like I said another massive mistake people make is to think it's just all about a quick preparation just to get through and tick the boxes it's about using that time before to become the real deal so that when you get in front of the interview panel or get on that MMI circuit they can just tell that

you are the kind of person that will make a fantastic doctor and that is more about being rather than trying to like I say glag it or pull the W over people's eyes or trying to convince people it's that becoming by putting in the work in the 18 months prior to that like I always say to my students if you're if you're starting Medical School let's say September 2027 you'll be submitting your application in September 2026 and you should begin preparing around September setember 2025 so it's something to bear in mind that you really it's a kind of 2-year ordeal and especially the year prior to submitting your application you really need to be ping

the work in to build a very strong application if you'd like to find out how to build what I would call the perfect application and maximize your chances of success I recommend you check out this video here which will tell you a little bit about our program and how we got 93% success last year with getting people into their First Choice Medical School at the first attempt and the same method that we've had year on year to get over 90% every single year with all of our students so thank you for watching and I'll hopefully see you in one of those videos

i'm going to teach you kind of everything that we need to know at this stage for you guys who are going to be submitting your application next year right so i mean if you are submitting your application this year then you will find things that are useful for you but this is more targeted at what you can do because what you do between now and next september when you submit your application is critical and a lot of people have maybe heard a little bit about it could be the the aptitude tests or it could be a few things and they might think well it's all about the ucat and that is a big mistake that

people make is thinking that it's just about one thing and actually what happens is the preparation that you do now will lay the foundations for you doing well later down the line because really the proof is in the pudding when you sit when you finally get to that final hurdle which is to be sat in front of the interview panel and actually say and they ask you questions and it's based on all the stuff that you've done in that year and year and a bit in the run-up to it so in the chat so what questions do you have about the med school application um what is your biggest worry about applying and just a

quick one um so are you applying in september 2022 or september 2023 so put or maybe even later 2024. so just in the chat if everyone could put 22 so oh it's always september so 22 24 23 when it whenever it is for you okay so we've got one and you can message everybody in the in the group it's um that's fine she's a couple sent to me privately um someone was rejected by all four medical schools yet that i'll we'll talk about that shortly 2023 okay so someone planned 2022 i mean you'll still benefit from this there's stuff that you can understand but um okay so most yeah mostly 20 22 23 sorry perfect

okay um so and then people are worried about work experience okay sure cool okay so i think now that everybody's here yet worried about the you cat of course a lot of people are so let me um so i'm just gonna admit people as we're going and so let's get going with the presentation um so i just admit the last few people here cool so well firstly uh my name is dr hilton um please you just refer to me as ashley i uh i i don't need any of the formalities but just to give you kind of a bit of a background as to why i'm teaching this stuff because i graduated from medicine in

2013 and i decided very early on in my career really my first job my first few days as a doctor working that i really liked surgery i just loved the fact that you see a patient in front of you i was working in general surgery which um is the most probably the most life-saving surgery or the kind of fastest pace alongside maybe neurosurgery and trauma surgery but people are very ill you do an operation you completely turn it around for them a lot of the time or often you can really save their lives with one procedure and i found that absolutely amazing i thought it was just so impressive how one you can do one

thing and more often than not really fix the problem for people so surgery was kind of the thing that really gripped me now um i then had to choose what surgical specialty i wanted to go through and i landed on something called maxillofacial surgery now uh just the first time i went into that i was just i just absolutely loved the surgery because it takes a bit of everything a bit of neurosurgery a bit of plastic surgery orthopedics ears nose and throat and just blends them really nicely to combine all of my favorite procedures from there so fixing people's faces if they have had a car crash and they've messed their face up being able

to fix young babies cleft lip and palate then you have your simple lump lumps and bumps clinics big head and neck cancer dissections so really varied surgery and you know you can have the really long 12-hour operations or you can also have the little quick 20-minute procedures and bang through a load of those and really mixes it up nicely for me so the so during that time so actually while i was at medical school so this is back in kind of 2010 sort of time about 12 years ago now um i actually started helping people get into medical school and it started with me having a friend a housemate in fact who had a younger

sister who was an international student now if any of you are international students listening you'll know that it's one of the most competitive ways to get in because it's about a six percent success rate for internationals so i just helped my friends younger sister as a favor and um yeah so we we managed together to get her in that year despite those really difficult competition ratios and then she asked oh would you mind helping a couple of my friends so these were also international students i was like okay sure yeah okay fine go on then so i help them as well both international students both got them in as well and that's when things started

getting out of hand and loads of requests started coming in and kind of futureduck was was born then really and since we've turned it into an online platform we've had really really good success with getting students in so what i'm going to teach you now is some of the stuff that we teach on our program and what has worked for us now the the reason i kind of took that side step is because off the back of that i then became an admissions tutor uh an interview panelist so i sat on the interview panels for people um applying to medical school and i founded the company like a future doc like we said and because

i wanted to go into maxillofacial surgery in the uk because it's face and mouth or head and neck face and mouth you have to hold a degree in dentistry as well so and the proof was in the pudding really because uh in 2016 i had to go back to to to study to go into dental school and there i actually basically applied all of the lessons that i'd been teaching for the last several years at that stage and got into king's college london which they were the only at the time they were the only course that allowed you to do what should be a five-year dental degree in just three years and it's incredibly competitive

kings is the number one dental school in the world and that course was only for doctors so doctors wanting to study dentistry and it they had they only had 10 places and it was ridiculously competitive um so yeah more than 15 applicants to one place for and who are all highly driven doctors and yeah applying the methods and and teachings that i was teaching my students i managed to get in myself so that is kind of how what has led us to where we are today but really what you want to know is how we're going to get into medicine next year so i'm going to start with a few facts you may have seen

these already but um it's just important to get an idea of the landscape because medicine unfortunately is getting more and more competitive it's the most competitive it's ever been and it has year on year got more competitive each time now unfortunately well we have recently had news about the medical apprenticeship and i'll tell you a little bit more about where we you can find out stuff about that but i think still you know i'll hold on reserve my opinions until a little bit more information comes out about that but i still think that the most sought after way to get into medicine will be via the conventional route and the traditional route of going um

for five years of medical school now like i say it's getting more competitive year on year unfortunately the places at the moment are not going up in relation to the demand of the aging population and the requirement for doctors so places have remained at nine and a half thousand for quite a few years now and we are opening new medical schools but it is remaining quite stagnant while the need is going up but not only are the places staying the same the number of applicants is going up so last year we had a three percent increase from the year before and the number of re-applicants went up by 28 so it's really now we really

have to be as good as we can at um building the strongest application and like i say the earlier you start with this sort of stuff the better you will do and it's just i can't stress that enough to you that really the work to get in starts now so what i want to kind of help you understand is the journey to medicine is just a game the the application is a game and you have to play the game really well and that's all we have to do and like it's when i what i say to my students on my program is that i you know i'm i'm aiming for a hundred percent top score

and when you are you know hitting 100 you're not worried about the competition it's not when you when you you're so good that you don't have to think about the competition ratios because you are the top of the pile then you kind of take control of the application and put things much more in your hands and control your destiny much more so here of course there's a little there's a lot to it but i'm in this talk i'm going to kind of try and briefly guide you roughly where you should be putting your focus to help you with the building a application that is kind of a 100 out of a hundred so let's what

we're gonna do i'm just gonna keep it nice and interactive because um so i know i know there's kind of a love-hate relationship for people with breakout rooms but just to kind of kick things off and wake everybody up i know it's a saturday and um we're probably feeling a little bit sleepy so i'm going to put people in breakout rooms just for a couple of minutes and we'll just do a minute each and what we're going to do is just three basically answer three things um let me just assign these um did you do so this how many of us are 30 so let's do let's do eight breakout rooms and so what i

want everyone to do is just very briefly introduce yourself tell people where you'd like to apply even if it's just a city gen if you want to go to london do you want to go to oxford or oxbridge sorry so oxford or cambridge do you want to just get in do you not care where you want to where you apply as long as you get in so do somebody someone keep time and we'll just do a very quick minute each and maybe and as a final question answer what you think the most important aspect of the med school application is so we're going to create the breakout rooms now and yeah just have a quick

chat and just get to know one another let's resume so does someone want to unmute or post it in the chat what do they think was the most important aspect of the medical school application so what do you what do we have if someone wants to unmute that would be great otherwise um yeah so the interview firstly the entrance exam personal statement and motivation personal statement personal statement okay a lot of people thinking personal statements the most important you cat an interview you cat enters an exam and applying strategically uh i think the ucat right now most unions have a really higher cut off what makes its heart makes it harder for people to get

in in some cases um interviews personal statement okay same we've got yeah so same sort of things getting the degree level required yeah grades okay perfect okay well so really the truth this is a slightly trick question because they're all important and no one each university varies in what they put waiting in but no one thing is the most important and no uh you can't get by with just one area being strong so actually um i came up with kind of a well i was watching master chef and i was thinking about well i was watching masjid a lot during lockdown actually and instead of actually trying to cook the recipes i i came up

well it made me think that it's actually very similar to the med school application because there are a few ways that the medical school application or preparing a meal and preparing your medical application are similar and i say this is kind of the process that people go through when they cook a good meal they think about the ingredients it's about well a good meal it constitutes good ingredients good quality ingredients the way you can get good ingredients but if you prepare them badly or if you don't do them in the right way then the meal won't be good the presentation because the again just use the cooking analogy they also say that you taste with

your eyes don't you if it looks very appealing that's going to contribute to your enjoyment of the meal and but also who you serve it to if you serve a meal high in dairy to a lactose intolerant person it could be the most wonderful meal but you know they won't particularly enjoy it so how does that uh compare or how does that draw parallels with the med school application so i'll show you in a second but first what i want you to bear in mind is the timeline of the application so i've actually got an updated version of this which i'll show you how to get a free copy of uh later or i might

email it to you guys after in fact but um yeah so here is um so here is the timeline of the med school application so everything stems around you starting med school right so let's think let's think so we're in september of 2022 of course so what we think is we if you're applying next year so in september 2023 you will be starting med school in september 2024 so i kind of think of the start date of medical school and then work backwards from there so that means that if you're applying in if you're going to be starting medical school in september 2024 you'll be submitting your application in september 2023 and a lot the

lion's share of the prep will happen between now and then and like i say the earlier you start with these sorts of things the better you will do so really a way that i would recommend this now these again this is why i've got an updated version of this because these have changed slightly um due to covid a few of these exam windows have changed but the main thing is that in the run-up in the year running up you should be thinking about getting all of your exposure now i'll talk about in fact let's yeah i'll come on to the what exposure means but it's essentially talking about work experience and all the other things

around that and work experience is the foundation upon which you will build your application because it gives you all the insights into medicine it is really if you've watched my my youtube channel at all you'll see how i how i placed a lot of importance on being the real deal and coming across as the real deal because although we want to make sure we do well in the exams which i'll talk about in a minute to get to interview and be sat in front of the panel the thing that's going to actually get you into medic medical school and get you past that interview is showing that you really know what you're talking about you've

done the work and you've done the exploration required to show that you know what you're getting yourself in for and are the kind of candidate that will make a good doctor um your work experience and your knowledge about the medical school or medical profession will shine through in the way that you answer questions in the sjt of the ucat it will you'll need to demonstrate understanding of when you write your personal statement and you'll be grilled explicitly about these interviews so that prep starts now really so in the run up to stuff we want to be focusing on getting these things arranged the experiential stuff which i'll like say i'll talk about in more depth

in a moment then we have some exams to sit now again we'll talk about what exams those are but they are typically the bmat the ucat and the gamsat and there are windows so again for the bmat the window this year they've only done february and an october sitting but previous to covid to the pandemic they did have four sitting so um thinking about how you prepare those the gamsat is usually in march and september which that's a grad exam and it's important to know that you know these some of these exams if you do them later in autumn you won't have the result when you submit your application so doing them early in some

instances like the gamsap for example if you're a grad is a really valuable thing because the gamsat is the only one of these that you can repeat multiple times within the same um within the same application window again this is only for grads but that means that you can have a few attempts at getting a really good score and you can if you do it early enough you know the score that you've got going into when you make your medical school selections which is a big part of it as well um so um then we've got the ucat um and then we've also got the application where we actually so set usually this year it's

the 7th of september it's always the 15th of october that it closes then after that we've usually either got one more setting of the bmat which is like we say is october this year october 18th then we've got our interviews and then after that if all goes to plan we get our offers in may have our exam results in the summer and then start medical school so that's just a brief overview there's obviously a lot more to it than that but i would say that there are the way i break it down and i make a video i've got a video that talks about it's called how to get into medical school in 2023 uh

i'll give you the link actually now just for you guys to so in the chat here's the link to um to so i'm just gonna i'll answer questions later um but so yeah in the the chat now that that's where you can find uh videos on my youtube channel but there's one of how to get into med school in 2023 um and it will talk through these four phases of prep so let's say phase one is experience building so work experience extracurriculars and any of the additional exams required maybe you haven't got the gcse requirements and need to make sure that you get a level six in english language and maths maybe you're an international

student and you come from a non-english speaking country and need to get your ielts or toefl um would it so the to the right grade so normally that's 7.5 in the ielts then phase two is the exam preparation so talking about those exams which i'll come on to in a bit any school exams we want to make sure that we're planning our aptitude tests around the um around our school exams to make sure that we're not letting our school work for but also giving ourselves the best chance and the most space to do well in the aptitude tests then is phase three which is what i call crunch time which is what we're in now

for the people who are um applying this year to start next september and this is probably the most stressful time for people because it's very busy summer of actually sitting the exams completing the work experience that we've maybe arranged and some because sometimes that's the only window that we have to do it making the right university choices finishing off our personal statement getting references submitting the ucas application so a lot going on in this phase but this is why i say to my students this is why the sooner you start the better you will do because if you what tends to happen with people who aren't successful and don't get in is that they don't

compartmentalize these and actually this phase one will bleed into phase two which then has a domino effect and bleeds into phase three then when they get to this stage when there's a lot going on they're disorganized and they don't have everything done so they're scrambling all over the place to get things finished at the crucial time when they should be focusing on for example the ucat if this is when they're actually sitting it um and then it's it becomes very overwhelming and naturally when you are super stressed you won't do as well or be as focused as you can be so this is all down to how well you've done these two phases before so

like i say starting early and being prepared and aware of what's to come is going to be the things that will help you then phase four and mainly about interviews and making sure that you're prepared for the final hurdle now the key again if you have a look at my youtube channel there's loads of stuff to help you prepare but the way that i train my students on on my program is that we make sure that we are well drilled but not rehearsed because being rehearsed means that you remember canned pre pre-rehearsed canned lines that people try and crowbar into certain situations whereas what we we do what i i encourage is we make sure

everyone has the core knowledge that they need as well as when they get difficult or common questions that they know the salient points that they want to make but they are adaptable so that they can change those answers based on the question that they're being asked now um that so that's that's a really important thing um is to be like say well drilled um but not not rehearsed um okay fine and then obviously four goes to plan we're celebrating at the end um there was one thing i was going to say about interviews but that will come to me again in a moment i'm sure uh okay so like i say so here so like

just back to this analogy so we want to make sure we've got the best ingredients in the way the the things that we've got the the plus points in our arsenal of application then the way that we put them together is really important the way that we present them is really important and who we present them to so the ingredients i've kind of broadly categorized them so firstly attributes now grades grades will affect where you can apply but grades are not the bill and end all i would say that they contribute about 20 to your application personal traits are really important they want to show that see that you've demonstrated that you are the kind

of person that would make a good doctor and we'll talk about traits all of these i'm going to go into a little bit more depth about second thing is exposure so i've broadly categorized that now exposure is a lot of people think about work experience now in work experience there are um three areas really that you should think of and those are shadowing which is what people think of when they say the word work experience where shadowing is when you go into a hospital and ideally follow around a doctor for a week or two weeks and there you are basically a fly on the wall and you observe as much as you can and take

take in as much as you can of what life the life of a doctor is now um i would so i mean we don't have the time really to go into exactly the breakdown but i would recommend about two weeks hospital and gp or to hospital maybe surgical and medicine the important thing about that is to keep a diary the other element of work experience is volunteering which depending on how old you are and what you're able to do it really is um variable as to what you can do if you can volunteer in a care home that is a fantastic way of showing that you are self-sacrificing and looking after people if um but

really what they want to see is are those things that you are self-sacrificing that you're willing to give back to the community and there are many ways that you can do that and being um being kind of creative with it and following what you're passionate about is a really nice way to set yourself apart there and the final thing is paid work because especially for the younger applicants who are applying as undergrad so when you're 16 17 if you have a job early on and you're showing signs of responsibility they can trust you with maybe handling money or closing up the shop and giving you keys maybe you're if you're a waiting staff in a

restaurant and you have to deal with complaints because occasionally people aren't happy with the food well you know what in me in hospital people are often very unhappy with the fact that they're in hospital or something doesn't go to plan with their care that happens all the time in medicine knowing how to deal with that these are transferable skills that you can pick up from one and move into your career as a doctor and exposure as well i've kind of broadly categorized this as knowledge of medicine and that is things like learning about the profession attending talks extra courses you know our program goes through all of that stuff of kind of the ins and

outs of the career and different um aspects of the career different specialties and all that sort of stuff and developments and all the interesting things around medicine but also the core what they call hot topics things that you really need to know that we make sure we cover very thoroughly so professionalism medical ethics all the medical laws so all the things that will come up an interview that you need to make sure that you you have a good foundational knowledge of then so like i said before the aptitude tests now just just actually in the chat just briefly could people tell me what they know about the aptitude tests so don't you don't have to

write a big sentence but maybe say do you um how shall i phrase this on a scale of 1 to 10 how well do you think you understand the aptitude test so one being i have no idea i've never even heard of the aptitude test that you have to see it 10 being i know pretty much everything there is okay so people seem pretty clued okay so a couple people know um okay great no problem so again what i'd recommend is going on my youtube channel again i'll post the link again here um and so there's loads of of course free videos on there where you can find out exactly what um each of those

exams is i've done a you know what is the new cat what is the bmat what is the camsat etc so you can find each of those individually but very very briefly the ucat is so there are 40 currently 44 about to be a few more um medical schools in the uk now all minus so for the undergrad for the five year course for people applying um out of school all but eight take the ucat so most people it well it's rare that someone doesn't sit the ucas but there are some but most people will sit the ucat when they apply to medical school now this is a two-hour exam and it's kind of like

a combination of uh so it's five sections and it's kind of like a combination of an iq test with other bits as well like there's an ethical element so there are five sections one is called the verbal reasoning and that's to test your ability to extract important bits of information from the text and understand what's going on at speed the second is quantitative reasoning to see that you can handle numbers and because obviously when you're doing drug calculations you need to quickly be able to process numbers to do those sorts of calculations then we have abstract reasoning which is more like an iq test with shapes and patterns and they want to see that you

can identify stuff and then what else do we have the the decision making section which is more like of the logical component and they want to see how you link things together logically in your mind and then you have a final section called the situational judgment which is essentially a test of ethics now that's an incredibly fast-paced exam and like people say that the the requirement is getting higher and this is why you know getting understanding what you need to do is key for um success with getting into medicine because schools are the schools schools are getting better and university some universities will just literally have a cut off and um like for example newcastle

they have a cutoff of something like 2820 it will change this year when they release that data but anything below that they simply won't look at the application and those all go in the bin and then they start with the people who've met that threshold other universities and again on my youtube channel i've got some what to do if you get a low ucat score um and what other universities who are less heavily dependent on ucat will do but like i say i'm when as we said at the start my ethos is to train people to just be the best they can bloody be so you know we're aiming to give you an idea for

those who are new to the ucat you get ranked in deciles now the maximum score is three thousand uh three thousand six hundred and the lowest you can possibly score i always forget this i think it's one thousand two hundred is the lowest so i'm kind of not looking at that end of the scale um so yeah i think it's either three yeah 300 per section is the lowest you can score now they have they break the scores down into deciles now the average last year was four hundred and ninety nine so that two thousand five hundred now so that's the average so you're in that kind of fifth decile the top decile is around

two thousand eight hundred that will usually get you in the top decile in a typical year i am thinking when i'm training my students that we want to aim for a 3000 plus because that way we take control of the application and we can be more selective with where we apply and i'll talk about tactical application later but um this is just one thing that's going to make our application powerful and give us control now the bmat is a similar test it tests it well the the so the they're all aptitude tests right so the bmat does have similar sections to the ucat and they have a spatial one which is more like the abstract

reasoning and they have a verbal one which is more like verbal reasoning then they have an essay question and then they have some tests on biology chemistry maths physics now that one again if you the the bmat is the exam that oxford cambridge university college london and imperial college london require um to get in and they require good scores as well and the oxford you need and cambridge you need incredibly high scores to be um to be successful with the application the gamsat is a five-hour exam so these two are both two hours the gamsat is a five-hour exam for graduates it's actually an australian exam that some universities have adopted for graduates applying to

the four-year course so if you are a graduate if you're in in university you can apply and i would recommend well it's a very complicated one again youtube channel for some videos explaining this in more detail but if you're applying to medicine after your degree chances are you'll be going for graduate entry which is a four year course instead of five and half of the um universities that do a graduate entry program will require the gamsat so like i say that's a five hour exam and it does require a lot of prep and it's something that with um with good practice you can do very well on and this is the one where you get

multiple attempts at and your score is valid for two years and they take the highest score and then you can just obviously select that so you can keep doing it until you get the score required to get in to give you an idea that you need a kind of average of about 60 to do that and like i say with a lot of people who've gone through our program we've managed to get their scores from previous attempts where they've not done particularly well maybe got a 49 848 to a 60. so yeah definitely a train all of these ignore what people say all nearly all exams are trainable you you get used to practicing something

and you get better at recognizing patterns it's just it would be impossible to vary a test so much to the point where it wouldn't be trainable it's just it just doesn't work right otherwise they would have to change the test every single time so the test is consistent so you can recognize patterns to get better at it and like i say all of medicine is just sorry all of applying to medicine is just a game and you just have to learn how to play the game and this is one one of the big not the most well not the single singly most important but a big element of the application now finally we want to

see things to stand out if you're applying to oxbridge you're they want to see people who are academic-minded so they want and they want to see people who are exceptional the word that they will use in medical school applications is well-rounded because what they want to see is that you have a variety of skills and your transferable skills but also if you're well-rounded it means that you're interacting with all different people from different walks of life if you're that means that will help your ability to get on with everybody because as a doctor you need to build rapport with everybody from society so you know all different backgrounds cultures and and a whole mix of

people so extracurricular involves stuff like standout achievements and we'll talk about that in a bit further reading and just all things that are going to help you separate yourself from other people so this again is somewhere where you can get very creative and really you don't have to be too purposeful with this it's just follow this is where you can just take the things that you're already doing and enjoy and you know push them to a level that's um that's gonna make you stand out so to continue with this chef analogy uh the cooking analogy i don't know i don't know how uh what people think of this but i think it's quite a good

parallel and so preparation is kind of actually executing all of these so we've talked about shadowing we talked about paid work and volunteering and what they do reading about the career and finding out about it so this is just all of the you know when we were talking about the um the way that you do all of these so shadowing is really important to get the right kind of shadowing um paid work as we said there are certain types of paid work that will put you in a better position and look better on your application the same with volunteering it's really important during the preparation phase that you understand about the career and have that

knowledge built up and your studies are obviously super important and how we plan all of these and how we make space and time for these is really important as well um and then we talked about aptitude tests and hobbies and achievements so this phase one is when you're building all of this stuff and how you present those ingredients that we talked about so how you all of these bits how you kind of present them and the kind of preparation that you you do for them um and in terms of the hours that you put in the experience that you gain and the way that you prepare for the aptitude test for example is going to

contribute to how well you do so then we talk about presentation so all these bits that you've put together you'll then need to submit your application so what happens in literally this last week is when ucas applications open for this application cycle and what people then do is they have usually they have their ucat score by this stage they some have their bmat some don't depending on whether they sat in february or planning to sit it on the 18th of october some will have the gamsat score which if they sat it earlier or if the the window this september was the third to the fifth of september so they won't have their results by the

time the applications close on the 15th of october so what you submit at this stage is so you you have your subjects that you're doing you maybe might want to submit your previous well you definitely will submit your gcses and previous grades you might want to submit your predicted grades you might have your a levels or a degree level or predicted degree level coming up you will submit your university choices which we'll talk about later that's the next phase of who you serve this presentation to you'll need to write a personal statement now the personal statement is a big factor maybe again in terms of importance it's up there maybe not the most important thing

but very very important now this is where you have 4 000 characters or they say 47 lines to present why you want to study medicine now in previous talks you can find um well when we do the workshops on on the program we talk about all the stages of um well the stage isn't the way to present your personal statement so with your personal statement it's usually best to divide it into sixths and you talk if there's a few six that you talk about the why medicine and there's then you talk about your work experience so work experience encompassing shadowing um volunteering paid work and um any further reading or whatever you've done then we

talk about extracurriculars and we do that in an in a certain order that makes it flow really nicely start we start with y we end with y and then we do stuff in between to kind of really demonstrate all of the experience that we've gained that backs up why we want to study medicine and what we've seen and what's that what that's led us to do and all the traits that we possess that make us a worthy candidate of medicine and then what we've done to develop that or what we've done to show that we're a standout person and the kind of person that like i say is worthy of one of those precious places

at medical school then if all goes to plan um you will be invited to interview and the whole my whole um because interview is the most important part and this is the bit that people think like oh yeah yeah so so people who come to me uh to to join to join us have and who have not got in the year before a lot of them have underestimated the interview so they've done all of that stuff they've done all the prep they've done um a really fantastic personal statement and they've kind of gone like oh yeah but i'll be fine with the interview and a lot of them fall at the interview stage because they've

underestimated it now like i say the preparation for the interview starts now it's all about your knowledge and your experience and really showing that you're the real deal and like i say we will show you how to do that but um the interviews and so but my ethos for kind of how i teach is i want to prepare everything to get people in front of the interview panel so all my really all i want to do is get people having all those things that we talked about earlier on point so that they get invited to interview they're in front of the panel and then the way that we train them we make sure that they

convert that opportunity into a place because once you're at interview you have the opportunity the destin you know your destiny to some extent to up to a large extent is in your own hands so that's the point that i want to make sure that we're really well drilled to convert that opportunity into a place into an offer sorry oh well a place and an offer so um who do we serve it to that is the kind of final thing is there are like i say about it to be more but 44 med schools in the uk and they all value different things some value the personal statement more some like i say will have a

cut off for the ucat and what they i believe is the most important so i'm just gonna spotlight myself quickly um okay um and then actually is that can you see better now with me spotlighting myself or is it is that better taha can you can you see the video and me oh yeah i can okay perfect good good so let's leave it at that okay cool um it's the same okay great um so yeah who we serve it to is really important because different medical schools value different things some have a cutoff for the ucat like i say that they won't see you before some like cambridge have actually quite a high um a

high level of people that they invite to interview about 80 percent of applicants get invited to interview and the cutoff is after that so that's a large part of it um other ones value experience more like warwick others um you put a lot of it like i say on the personal statement um a lot of them and then a lot will look at gcses or a levels but a lot go for gcses more some will use a hybrid or a point system so it really depends and it's really about knowing yourself and your strengths and what what you are best suited to in terms of your application a big part of it and again another

kind of overlooked part is is your the universities that you choose and choosing those that are really suited to you and you know the first thing that we do on with with my students is we sit down and have a really long strategy session to work out you know where are you strong where where do we need to increase where do we need to improve if we want to be say if you want to go to a king's college london like where are we now and what do we need to do to make sure we improve that to bring it up to snuff to be within a chance of getting in so that's a big

part of it so i've got tactical application here which is essentially what we were talking about choosing the right universities to suit you and actually the last video that i released on my youtube channel which um i'll link well you've got the link to in the chat i'll maybe put it again but um the the last video that i released was about this about tactical application and if you have a look in the description there is a link to a guide that i've made that will help guide you as to which universities to choose and for the some of them the future doc members that are here um i've sent you a even more detailed

one so we've gone into even more depth with the research and um that one's actually going to be ready in the next couple of days but we'll only go to um future.members so um yeah for those of those of you who are members who are looking out just um keep an eye out for that one because that is literally two two days away from from being done cool so then attributes obviously they want to see that people are academically able and they want to know that you can handle the intensity of med school studies um you if you have studied a degree or have studied um a levels just be prepared for a shock at

the volume and depth of volume that you need to go into with all of your medicine my biggest advice is don't waste time making neat little notes and having it all in your nice little handwriting is not worth the time that you spend writing notes you could have read it and ingested it four times so really um you don't it's there's so much to know that um it's uh it's it's it's just not worth wasting time writing notes i learned that the hard way and then they want to see that people have certain traits and the the best place to find that is the gmc the general medical councils good medical practice guidelines and this

is kind of partly your bible for applications but really for the sjt of the ucat and the interviews because these are these are themes that come up regularly and have just having read this um you will know a lot you know this is the thing that they recommend junior doctors read because they're about to start their first um their first medical job and certainly something that i brushed upon when i was about to start my first job as a doctor um so exposure we talked about that talked about getting yourself out there getting the work experience getting shadowing in and getting some volunteering and just how important all of that stuff is to help you

unders know what you're getting yourself in for showing that you're the right kind of person developing those traits and just really proving to the selection panels that you are the kind of person that will go on to make a good doctor the aptitude test we talked about this so um the best thing i would recommend uh is to have a just have a look at um my youtube videos on this but the thing especially for the u-cat and to some extent the bmac the timing the the speed of the test is the most is the thing that slips people up the most and the question is that if you got an infinite amount of time

you could answer well and answer accurately but it's actually trying to do them at speed because they want to test that these people who are applying to medicine have got the you know have got the grit to and the ability to hack the pressure of doing things at pace but also maintaining accuracy while doing so so yeah there are i would say i talk about the phases of preparation for um the aptitude test and the first is to familiarize yourself and understand kind of questions that come up so there are online courses for that i mean i i have an online course which is quite popular and then then you want to start doing practice

questions untimed and then start because you kind of enter the last four to six weeks in the run up to the test start doing increased so time timed practice and just increasing the pace to get used to it that's particularly for the ucat the gamsat's a slightly different story and um to some extent the b matters as well but like i say i referred you to those videos to kind of have a bit more of an in-depth look for now all you need to know is that you'll have maybe one one maybe two very very rarely three exams that you might have to consider over the course of the next year um yeah extracurricular and

further reading is again these are these are areas where you know you can very naturally set yourself apart from other people and there are things that will come to you and not be too much effort because the things that naturally you should enjoy so think of things that when you're thinking of especially your extracurricular activities the things that they are providing in terms of the traits that they're developing in you and you know if you've been doing i don't know brazilian jiu jitsu for 10 years that will help you stay calm under pressure and it will help you show dedication commitment and discipline so lots of things like that if you are maybe on a

basketball team and you are the captain of the basketball team you have learned skills of leadership and also teamwork which are really important when you think about medicine when you're working as part of the team then things i think a good rule is usually a language an instrument and a sport is a good way to think about these and like i say don't be too purposeful with how you build them do them in conjunction with you know what you enjoy and what you will naturally just gravitate to and want to spend time doing um but if you feel like you don't have anything you can very quickly in a few months develop a hobby and

have if you dedicated to it can progress quite well i wouldn't say that this is a high priority and should you should sacrifice your edu your school grades or your preparation for the application too much for these but at the same time they are nice things that are enjoyable to do and actually do um they will say they will ask questions as to you know is this person well-rounded what and they'll ask you explicitly what do you do to unwind how do you manage your time and showing that you are able to maintain these um hobbies alongside a challenging degree course and challenging career it's just a sign that you're the kind of person that

they want to see that's going to be able to handle the pressure of being a doctor then further reading it's just always good to keep up to date with what's going on in the health news so the student bmj new scientist and bbc news are really good sources for that personal saving interview kind of talked about already um so i'll i'll skip past that and tactics of course like say where you apply is so so important and it's about learning where your strengths are or where your strengths need to be if you've got a certain university in mind and um and just you know playing playing to that hand like i say like i said

at the start applying to medicine is a game and you just have to learn to play the game really well so um if you're interested um we have a few places i i have about i think i had seven i think i just i sold one today so i think um i think we have six places left for our future doc academy um i tend to we tend to do about typically about three a week um it's application only um around a third of people who apply are successful but so we've got about six places at the moment and um yeah so i'll give you some details about where to apply to that if you

want to basically have me and my team help you one-on-one on your journey to applying to medical school so um yeah i actually have a couple of ex-students who are here today right on time so let me un-spotlight myself and unshare this screen so i'm gonna just i'll quickly just get um josh and daisy to very quickly talk about their experience of applying to med school and um how how they were successful and just their experience of the future dot program and then we'll take some questions after that if anyone wants to ask me anything about the application and what we've talked about today so i see josh first on my screen so just joanna

hello by the way josh has literally just started his first week of med school and tell them tell them a bit about yourself uh hi i'm josh um yeah i've literally i've literally just finished my first week at med school wasn't at all overwhelming um so i am a mature student i'm technically graduate entry i'm on an undergraduate course it's the only one of its kind it's like there's 22 of us on the course it's a very small cohort um so i worked as a paramedic when i left school i had a gap year decided i wanted to go into healthcare after my a levels weren't great and i ended up becoming a paramedic going

to university and studying that i was paramedic for six years in london absolutely loved it but after pandemic i felt like i wanted to do something else i started looking at other opportunities and oddly enough my fiance is applying to medicine um and she said she i was sort of going through the process trying to support her so i understood what she was going through i ended up quite enjoying it um had a chat with dr ash and he seemed to think i'd be a good candidate despite the fact that i didn't uh and after a year of really hard work uh i ended up getting a place at newcastle which is where i am

at the moment so apologies if i move around and there's boxes everywhere literally just moved in um it was tough uh working like full time alongside my application for medicine wasn't easy um i i really heavily relied on the mentor that the futuredog program gave me charlie was fantastic she was really supportive and obviously she's been there so she knows what she's doing uh i haven't seen the rest of talk but i've had been to this talk two years ago and saw her speak so i get the gist of what he's all said and ultimately yeah the hardest part for me was getting to an interview because my academic history isn't great um but you

can strategically do a lot of things with your application that make you look really good and then it's just about the exam i'm one of the weird people that really enjoyed the u-cap most of the stuff on the ucat i would do for fun i like puzzles and word games and things so i i quite enjoyed revised but it wasn't at all you know it wasn't it's all easy it was a lot of hard work to get a good score but you know it it's the for the sake of your whole career six weeks hard work is pretty reasonable adjustment to me uh since then i've obviously gotten into med school uh i had my

interview and had some great interview prep with the future team it got thrilled it was horrible they made me feel very uncomfortable uh but it was it made my actual interview much much easier i got there i was like oh they're being nice they're being they're not trying to intimidate me or make me uncomfortable my actual interview was lovely everyone was really well you know you prepared me for the worst and yeah yeah that's the same the more you the more you sweat in peace time the less you bleed in wartime exactly and it is so true my uh the the program and all the work i did um i i was preparing myself for

the worst case scenario and it really does pay off as you start if you go into the start of your application thinking i've got prepared for the worst um it does make the actual process a lot easier one thing i would really suggest and having spoken to quite a few applicants to medicine for the next year although it's not nice to think about the worst case scenario there is always the possibility that you won't get in straight away and that puts a lot of stress and pressure on yourself so i came up with a whole plan for what i was going to do for the next year if i didn't get into medicine and then

whatever i really liked my plan i thought this would be awesome i could do these things and have a really awesome year of building up my application um and then that took the pressure off so like okay cool if i don't get in this year i'm working to an even better application next year um so that is a one thing i would really recommend it has helped a couple of students that i've spoken to because you do notice like the second you have that plan of just your scores and your application and stuff does just start getting a lot easier sorry of disappoint that you got in and and i know i had a great

year planned out and everything i was going to go off and do mountain rescue loads of fun stuff but no uh my first week of uni has been absolutely fantastic it's uh i'd say it's a really small cohort so the a100 program is your normal undergraduate program i'm on what's called an a101 which is the so this course is specifically for healthcare professionals and graduates in science um so normally there's like 300 students on a program and there's only 22 of us and we are doing the first two years of a medical degree in one year so just saw our timetable and that's going to be a fun year but in all honesty you know

my year of my ends of medicine that was my focus i sacrificed a lot and in all honesty it paid off tenfold already like being here meeting these people starting work it is really worth it if you do just put the effort in and make sakura i'm gonna start rambling if i carry on no no thanks jess that's great and yeah um i do have some sympathy for you with the two years in one but actually when i was telling these guys earlier about when i went to dentistry and did the five-year dental course in three years and that one we did the first three years in one year so i i don't feel that

weirdly enough there's a um there's a sorry to keep chatting there's a dentist on my course who's going into medicine to do max facts as well yeah yeah so he's like he's just he's been a he's been he's an sho in um in max facts and he's like i've got to do a medical degree and he's just been working for like three years he's already come back to do another four years yeah that is dedication another nutter yeah you crazy people um but yeah so thank you josh yeah i mean it's exactly what i was saying at the start you know we the application is a game and we are here to smash it and

do you know like if you to give it a score out of 100 we would we're aiming for you know as close to 100 as we can get so then we're not worried about the competition because we're so you know we're just so on it and so at the peak of it that we're not worrying so much about the competition but more about how we can maximize our application and you know giving ourselves the best chance so um oh um question from so cost wise firstly you guys have to apply and once you're um you know once you get through then we can talk about that but it does depend on a few factors and

um a few little bits so we'll if you think i'll show you where you can apply if you want to a bit later and we can talk about that on the core um so we have one other um graduates who went through the program last year and applied and said well i won't i won't spoil the story i'll i'll hand over to her but daisy is uh another one of our lovely students who has um gone through the program and also about to start medical school so um daisy i'll hand over to you yeah hi everyone um yes i'm about to start at newcastle as well next week on the a100 program um so i'm

moving up next week so i'm currently just packing um yeah so i've been on the future talk course for yeah about two years i think i joined in year 12. um so my medical school application was actually quite standard i joined the future program because nobody in my family was in was uh even gone to uni so i'm quite sort of um i have no knowledge on the application i have no knowledge on how to do a personal statement so this is actually sort of where i kind of began so i went to future dog for help and i got a tutor they basically started by absolutely you know they tearing apart your personal statement

which is fine um but you know you think you've got like oh i've done well i've got my personal statement and you get absolutely ripped apart but um dear future don't help me with that and then it sort of came to sit in my ucat i came up with quite a good score so i decided to go to dr ashley to ask for help on where to apply to because obviously it's all about strategically applying um i got four interviews and two uh offers and a wait list and obviously i chose newcastle i wanted to do medicine for a while from like maybe the beginning of secondary school but my school wasn't particularly very helpful

i mean i had like a biology teacher who pushed as far as he could but obviously he needed that little bit of extra help especially where i'm so like inexperienced i need a little bit more help so i went to future doc and i got kenji he's my tutor brilliant shooter he's great um so i got him and i also got the videos if i don't know if anyone on his on the course but um you get like a load of videos basically walking you through every single part of the application so from your personal statement to your new cat to bm i mean i did the beam and the interview so they help you

through everything um so yeah that's that's my self-application journey thank you daisy and um yeah i i mean we're not uh a funnel for newcastle university this is just a coincidence so we've got two newcastle uni uh uh entrants but um yeah i mean i mean it kind of talks speaks to we was talking about newcastle early actually and how they are one of the universities that have a very high cutoff for the ucat and actually both of these guys after going through the program got um and obviously by their own accord as well got over 3 000 in the the ucat and that puts you in the top you know five to three percent

depending on the year and this is when you know you take control of the application then and you really take matters into your own hands and you can really just control you can you have so much power with your application once you get to that stage and then it's just about kind of going through um going through the right steps and making sure that you do well at interview to convert that opportunity into a place um so so what we'll do is we'll just open up very quickly so and i don't want to keep you guys too long i said would be about an hour and a half so we've got about 15 minutes if

anybody wants to unmute and ask some questions now would be a good time you can ask you can direct them at me you can direct them at um daisy and josh um whatever you want to do i've got a couple of private questions that people the best if you can i'd recommend putting the questions just for everybody because then i can answer to everyone and it's a bit more beneficial for people but um yeah does anybody have any questions so when do we know the details of the 2023 ucat would it be risky to start preparing it now as it could be alterations in the format so don't so firstly don't prepare now it's too

early um um i you know we start our ucat prep around march april of of the year now i unless there is a major overhaul i would predict that the ucat will be similar to this year you know people get alarmed about oh my god the ucat changed this year but it was literally a few timings and a couple of questions it was not it was not the style there was nothing that changed about the types of questions they asked it was just literally a couple of sections they took a few questions away uh a couple others they added a few questions and um it just made men that some were a little bit um

you had a little bit more time and some you had a little bit less it really didn't affect people's preparation the window is likely to be very similar it's usually start to mid of july to the end of september so that will unlikely change much in that in between now and next year but you know i i could be wrong things could happen i i don't have a very good crystal ball but um generally that's that would be my prediction and that has been my prediction for a long time um so let me see [Music] um so i've had one question so let me just answer this one question because i was trying to write

a response but um it's hard to like say multitasking is not my forte um so i've got one person asking me they've got their youcat on the 29th and they're saying have they still got time well actually i would say yes um so you've got two two and a half weeks basically um i'll say yeah yeah about two and a half weeks um and that still gives you really the ucat the intensity that you can do the tail end of your preparation will have a big impact on it what i'd recommend is i mean if you haven't already you can check out my youtube playlists of each section and those are going to give you

the kind of bare bones if you want to go a bit deeper i've got that course that you can check out which has helped a lot of people but um yeah i think what you want to be doing very soon is to start increasing the intensity at which you do the mocks and i would use either medify or the free marks that are available on the ucat um on the ucat website and really the the main thing that i would try and instill in you is that the ucat is not like a knowledge test it's a performance so the same way you'll have probably seen me talk about the analogy of sprint training and it's

the ability to do the intense exercise on demand under pressure on the day so the more that you can practice simulating that test and being able to deliver uh the better you'll be able to do and that will as time goes on include more and more um mocks really in the run-up to it anyone these guys both did really well do you guys want to answer that so basically um 29th got the exam feel like the school is not going well what would you what would you recommend doing they've been helping a lot of people these two have been helping a lot of my students on the program who have had these kind of last

minute panics uh i would start by saying i started asking how much you're doing because like dr says that whole sprint trading thing is really true and i found even when i was practiced and i knew what i was doing doing more than two hours of ucat in one sitting was just a waste of time like your brain can't approach it it's not a like little process it's not a knowledge exam training the way you think and if you're pushing your brain past that sort of two hour marks for me anyway it's just it makes you worse uh your brain gets tired you just can't function so i always recommend doing if you're just revising

time questions do two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon um and then in between those sessions casually realize so do things like basic math puzzles word games that sort of thing anything to just keep your brain from like thinking and functioning um but without pushing it to its limit so if you're on the train for half an hour just do a logic puzzle or something like that um in between your two hour sessions um and yeah i don't do big chunks because i let people come to me saying i'm doing like six hours of vision in one go and it's just not working that's why because you can't physically do that

your brain doesn't function like that it won't improve that way you need to think you need to revise sensibly um and you can you can learn facts like that quite easily like a level revision i can remember doing six hours since and that was fine because it was content it wasn't logic or the way your brain works um but the ucat doesn't work like that so you try and break up your revision uh and monitor your progress as well um so do regular mini mocks just to see where you're at and then do a couple of big blocks a week that's what i did yeah thank you josh i'm i'll be in a second daisy

but um um yeah sorry i didn't kind of fully that analogy of sprint training i've said so many times i i forget that people are hearing it for the first time but yeah the same way that you train for sprinting if you sprinted non-stop for an hour obviously your speed would reduce and your performance would would suffer because of it so when people train for sprinting what they do is they'll do one sprint which will be like you know they might not even do a full 100 meters they'll do a 70 meter or a 50 meter sprint and they'll do that you know if they're good within a few seconds and um then they will

rest for like three minutes until they do the next sprint so it's short intense bursts with long rests so that's that was the point i'm trying to say um again so to keep i'll keep banging the the youtube channel drum but there's loads of free resources on there that you guys can find and actually i'll show you on i'll in the post email i'll send you um some stuff we've got a new website launching this coming week and um we've got a free resources page on there that i'll i'll send you to i'll direct you to as well but i'll just again just for posting that youtube link on there if you guys want to

uh follow that channel um so sorry daisy you were gonna give a part two to that answer i'm just gonna grab some water while you're speaking yeah i was gonna say i completely agree with josh and i think it depends on how much you you've been doing if you've been revising for six hours a day and you'll say i'm not seeing an improvement well then it's like that's exactly the reason why you might be looking at it the wrong way you might be overwhelming yourself um i think it's very easy to get stuck in this like cycle of i'm doing six hours but i'm not improving so it must just be me so i'm not

gonna bother so i'm gonna passively do questions and then give up and i can't do it and you get stuck in it um i think if that's where you are right now then maybe it's time to kind of take a step back and look at it a different way maybe start to change your um your method for your questions maybe that might help you improve like some people they stick for a way in verbal reasoning and they can't get their rhythm but maybe all it will take is for you to go on to youtube have a look at some resources of anywhere and see if you can find a better way that will work for

you i also think that something i found that lots of people tend to not do and i say it every time is always review the questions that you do i find that people often do mocks and they will do like three mocks a day but they're not learning from their mistakes because they just keep making the same mistakes but they don't go over what what they do um so i think if that's you and if you're not reviewing them then i really do recommend to start reviewing your ucat questions and if it helped i mean i did it write down anything you do wrong so say if you're like really bad at syllogisms in decision

making write that down and practice just syllogisms or maybe go on youtube and have a look at some videos on syllogisms to see if that will help you because often people will keep doing questions but if you're not if you're not improving and if you're not finding a way to do them then you're just doing for with no almost have no purpose um so i recommend that yeah yeah absolutely and um you know it's a lot of tinkering as well you have to be willing to tinker around with how you do things and find what's working well for you because what works for one person might not work for another but then they'll find another

tactic that will actually increase their score dramatically and exactly what daisy says the review is so important you know on our program what we do is we'll do a mark and that's a two hour test maybe um extra 25 if you need th have the extra time but then we will spend i think the sessions where we do the mock test ends up being five hours of review so we will go through all the questions and it will take us over double the time that we've spent revising so doing the test revising the answers so you know that's a really important point that daisy touched on there um sorry taha you've had your hand up

for a while i apologize um go ahead yeah so originally like my question is for josh and daisy but if i could also just quickly chip in for the uh improving the ucat because i did actually improve my ucat like significantly uh between like my like the couple days before my test my actual ucat and i would say it's definitely approvable especially if you focus on the things that you know you're good at uh and because you can't really improve any more on like for me personally it was like verbal reasoning that i was sort of like you know i was slowing down that it was like plateauing and i couldn't improve anymore but my

uk my ar score went from like 700 to 870 so i feel like if you find what you're good at and sort of focus on that the closer it gets to your actual exam you might you might see some like really good improvements there yeah doubling down on on your skills so you know there i'm sorry i feel like every other thing i'm referring people to a video but there's a video on youtube where i talk about these tactics of like it really depends on your goal there are some universities that i would aim to get at least a 500 in everything obviously but there are some universities where it doesn't as long as you

don't get less than 500 in um in one given section they just take your highest combined your total combined score so you know if you can if you're just spending hours and you're not going higher than 550 on verbal reasoning but actually if you spent three hours on quantitative or any of the other sections and that's going to increase your score by 100 points well then it makes sense because basically time invested will make up for the lack of points elsewhere and actually like taha says in some instances not this isn't the case for everybody but in some instances doubling down on the thing that you are good at will lead to a higher overall

score now again this depends that's that let's say in that example where you know you're struggling to get a five 550 and let's say you're applying to nottingham where nottingham actually they count the vr score twice so they they give their selection process factors all the sections but factors counts the vr as double then obviously then it would be in your interest to um to focus on that section but it really depends what your goals are what what universities you're thinking of are you just trying to get the best score possible you know it will be this is where playing around and tinkering and kind of knowing what you want is a big part of

it um okay so sorry um could i uh just like my question towards josh and daisy yeah um was so both of you are going to like the newcastle and that is something that i'm also considering with my ucat score so i was just wondering what made you like pick newcastle out of your option like your offers and could you josh me because you tell me a little bit more about like the medical facilities because you've been there for a week can i go first i mean i'll probably be shorter because um it's not difficult for me so um i have applied welcome before i applied to newcastle manchester sheffield and bristol and the two

officers i got from newcastle manchester it really is just personal preference um i actually first ruled out newcastle because i'm sort of further down south so it's very far away from me um so i didn't really want anywhere far away but in the end i decided to branch out when i got my ucat score and i considered other places and i considered newcastle because of the school that i got um but obviously i'd heard it was a lovely place it's a nice little city it's not too big for me i didn't really want london um this just a big place and i'm not a big place person um so i had a look at newcastle

manchester i visited both of them i really do think it's down to personal preference i preferred what newcastle offered um manchester the only thing i preferred about manchester was that they offered um i think they offered dissection which they don't really offer that many other places but as an actual area it just boils down to that i liked the city of newcastle it's the first thing that kind of attracted me when i went there um the course itself you get a vibe um it's the only way i can explain it when you do your interviews i found that also the people in my newcastle interview were really welcoming and it made me feel a lot

more at ease manchester um i think they did mmi so i found it quite difficult to kind of grasp the people and i know you can't say like judge but judge a book by its cover you can't judge it by the first thing but you often get like a feeling and i just liked newcastle i like the people of newcastle that's one big thing i really liked about newcastle the people are so lovely there um so yeah yeah it is a cliche um newcastle is it you know that whole northern people are lovely um but newcastle is a really friendly city like coming from london it's a massive change it's a really nice place uh

my i don't trust people when they say like how are you like what's your angle yeah yeah yeah someone in london says you're at me and you're like what do you want do you like me um i live there it's fine by the way yeah he's one of the dodgy people that you wouldn't trust um my reasons for choosing newcastle are a little bit less lovely um so i don't have a bachelor's degree so although i'm considered a postgraduate i am not a postgraduate because i've only got a level five foundation degree and like i say my a levels weren't great and only three universities in the country would let me apply to medicine with

them so exeter plymouth and newcastle exeter in plymouth needed the gamsat um which i did not enjoy uh and then newcastle needed the ucat the entry grade for the course i'm on was very high but i applied to both the a101 and the a100 so the normal entry as well and they encourage you to do that if you do want to go to newcastle and you're eligible for both um but i mean i wanted to move to the north anyway my uh fiancee and i were looking at moving to around like the yorkshire area or up into the proper north because we love mountain climbing and searching rescue medicine and things like that we've done

a lot of courses around that we've made quite a few contacts up here so it just made sense for us to want to come up here and then i got offered a place i was like oh right we actually do need to find the place up north so it all just fell together really um it wasn't so much a conscious choice for me as for the facilities at newcastle we've had a full tour we've done i think we've done everything in something in every room except the dissection room uh because the lead and anatomy lectures aren't there yet uh the facilities are fantastic so you've got i mean the med school in newcastle has been

there since 1832 i think it was founded as a medical school university so it's very well rooted there you've got world-class lecturers um fantastic facilities you've got huge skills rooms where you do all your practical stuff it's attached to a hospital so you're where we are based so we have our own little common room area that's just for my little 22 person cohort to carry on down the corridor you're in the hospital so you are working alongside nurses doctors straight away uh the facilities are fantastic i really recommend it i would recommend coming to an open day because there's so much to look at they have a whole university library dedicated to medical sciences so

it's an entire floor on a of the hospital basically it's huge it's amazing but everything they've got is really like world-class brand new and very good but other than that it's terrible and aaron joking now it's a really it's a really prestigious school and it's really yeah i know a lot of people who studied there and and loved it so yeah and these guys are about to have a really fantastic time there so um yeah and let's go through a couple questions let's take a couple more and then wrap up but um just so uh so you know um taha do you mind do you mind sharing because taha is a current future dark student

are you do you mind are you comfortable sharing what you got on the ucat um yeah would you like me to do it as in like just total just the total number in the back um so i got 2950 in band one fantastic yeah so basically you know when you're in that sort of echelon you can you can ucat is not going to be a restricting factor in you applying to medical school so good job taha well done um thank you thank you judge and daisy as well for your information cool so um i got a low you cat score and i'm wondering whether i should do the bmat or would it be risky to

do three and well i mean so it depends how low the score so so the question is basically i didn't do so well in the ucat and um do i do i take a risk on applying to three bmat unis when you've not sat the bmat yet and are about to do it i would say it depends it depends on a few things here are the things i would think about how low is your ucat score um have a look again just so i keep referring everyone to videos but i've got a what to do if you've got a low ucat score video on my youtube channel have a look at that think about okay

are any of these universities realistic do i stand a chance and for example if you if you don't mind going to northern ireland belfast is a um is one of the universities that will allow that will give you points incrementally for everything beyond 1 900. so you're still scoring points there and then there are other elements of the application that can make up for it so it's not a simple yes no you know kind of question so think about that then think about okay well how well am i doing in the beam at right now is it something that i think i can do well in am i is my practice going well am i

getting good scores um you know how re realistically how well can you do um don't you know places like leeds uh brighton they still need decent scores uh but they do kind of tend to accept slightly lower scores than the ucl's imperials and the oxbridge universities so a tough a tough one and it's like i say it's not a simple oh yes it's low um you know it's it's not a like hi-lo sort of thing it's a how low what else is going on what what the rest of the elements of your application doing this is why i mean at the moment on the program we're doing a clinic at the moment where people are

coming for appointments and we literally go through everything about their strengths and the elements of their application to help decide which universities are the best for them so yeah i get these questions a lot and it's and it's like not a simple answer and there's a lot to it and there's a there are a lot of elements to it um okay when preparing for the ucat should i start by doing the questions first or learn the different question types and strategies first ie on my course um i would say so remember the three phases familiarization's the first phase you've got to know get an idea of what's coming up and learn the tactics to you

know the different tactics and different ways to tackle questions so that you know the most efficient speedy ones for you speed and accuracy those are the two things that you need for the ucat speed and accuracy speed i would say probably equally as important but probably slightly speed for 51.49 in favor of speed i would say um i'm more concerned about the gamsat do you have any advice for it i'm especially concerned about the essay side of the test um so again i've got a video about this and exactly how to nail each section um josh you've sat the gamsat recently do you do you have anything about the essay side that you would any

bits of advice in particular that you'd offer um there's a really good resource these an australian publishing company that do something called the golden standard of gansat that's a three textbooks they're huge they're absolutely massive but i worked through start to finish all three of them when i was prepping for the camps out which wasn't a good idea um but their essay writing section is fantastic they have loads of tests questions they have really good ways of talking through the structure and things so if you can get hold of one of those i'd really recommend it they do have online resources as well but for me it was just practice so essays was the thing

that i did best on in the gamsat and i just did loads it's getting used to because i've written like university assignments and stuff in the past i'm used to having lots of time to do things and it was getting into the mindset of right i've got half an hour to do what would normally take me two months and it's about refining that skill life similar to the u-cap the gamsat is quite time pressured in this section so it's about speed and accuracy you've got to very quickly come up with a plan that essays and just follow it through if you get halfway through and you think oh i could have done it better ignore

that impulse because you've started and you haven't got time to go back you just have to make the most of what you've got when i was practicing i was doing it by hand and then when i got there it was tight so i had a lot more time to play with um so i don't know what it is now the i think it's just typed as a sort of standard now um but that's what they're aiming for yeah yeah um but yeah for me in essays it was just getting used to that process and i would really recommend the points on the get on the um gold standard uh i think i've got them somewhere

that they're in a box i'm going to show you otherwise um but if you can find a gold standard captain it is a really fantastic resource um cool thank you and uh yeah and those the the resources that josh is referring to if you're on the academy for those who are here who are on the academy program that's included now as part of it um so the universities offer deferred entry if so what is the process i'm going to do like i need i need to we need to wrap up pretty soon so i'm going to do these last few questions that are here now and then we'll wrap it up okay um so do

universities offer deferred entry if so what is the process yes um you are you can have third entry you either um when you submit your application you say that i'm applying for so let's say if you're submitting it now in september 2022 so most people are applying to start september 2023 but you can say no i'm actually applying for not next year but the year after that's one way the second way is once you get your place you are able to ask whether you can um defer it they could they could say no in theory so you they're either like you either take it now or you you know reject your place but usually if

you've got a good reason they'll they'll say it's fine um do the a101 courses usually accept a lower ucat campaign compared to the same i've been talking to that person if it helped because it seemed like quite a directed question i've answered it for them if anyone else wants to know um it's just i'll just say uh a101s are normally a bit higher because it's a more condensed course so they need to trust that the students have got a slightly hard part yeah exactly yeah and it's more competitive so graduate entries 34 applicants to one place and the even you know josh's is slightly off kilter grad program but it is essentially a grad program

so this year it was 42-1 they told us in our induction so it is yeah and you know these things that we talked about today how to take them make it much more in your favor um how would my youcat course differ to the youtube videos the youtube videos like 10 minutes to go through an entire section the youtube course so the ucat course is like 20 hours and we do work through questions explain how to think about when you get a question like this like what should go through your brain and how you should think about tackling it um i'm thinking about applying for gym at the three countries medical school they require you

to see an extra exam called the casper if i'm offered an ins uh if i if i'm offered an interview uh would you help yes we would help with this on the future dart program so i'm going to wrap up there if anyone isn't a member and wants to apply here is the link in the chat so

if you apply to Medicine in the UK you probably already know the five areas that you need to focus on to make a really standout application so what I'm going to do now is show you a recording of a free webinar I gave recently where I talk about all those five areas and how to be in the top 10 percent of each so that you really stand out with your application and give yourself the best chance of success then at the end we talk to a student who recently went through and got into a university which had a 42 applicant to one place ratio picking up a 3160 ucat score on the way and we

answer questions from you about how they did it and exactly what you can do to replicate their success if you know anything about our Channel we are dedicated purely to UK medicine and Dentistry applications so if you don't already check out the channel maybe subscribe and turn on notifications so that you can stay up to date because we bring out weekly videos telling you about all the developments and what you should be doing at each stage of the year to make sure you maximize your chances of success but otherwise I really hope you enjoy the recording and hopefully see you in another video take care it's a nice time to be preparing for uh the

medicine application because it's absolutely freezing outside at the moment and um I I think it's a really good time to just be getting on with work of this sort because right now it's like in London it's like I say it's um it's just nice to be indoors and cozy and this is a good time to start thinking about preparing for stuff like this because um as you'll see and what we're about to talk about the the med school journey is quite long so we're going to talk about it and all the things that really you guys might want to consider between now and when you submit your application so it's always good so firstly what

we'll do before we start is I'll just quickly introduce myself because we've actually got a special guest coming at the end who is a student who recently got into medicine this last application cycle in pretty much the most uh competitive way the most difficult way you can do it he got in with a um I think it was 42 to 1 application ratio so 42 applicants to one place and he managed to get in uh and he'll talk about his journey as to how he did that but in basically the most competitive circumstances and um we're going to talk about what you need to do to be in that top well for him that's like

what two and a half percent probably in the top two and a half percent of applicants to make sure you really stand out you take control of the application and you just nail it so that you can really give you yourself the best chance of not just getting in because it's not just about getting in but it's about getting into the medical school that's right for you where you want to be because you know that is the stepping stone to a great career um so just a little we won't touch on it too much but just a little bit about me my name's Dr Ash um so I graduated medicine nearly actually almost 10 years

ago now um so my journey is um not the most conventional I got into medicine in probably the most difficult way that you can get in and then I decided that I wanted to go into a specialty called maxillofacial surgery which is surgery of the face and mouth and head and neck and to do that you have to have a degree in dentistry as well and I got into Dentistry at Kings in um I actually managed to get into a course where they do it in three years so instead of the five years they do it for three years and it's only for for Medics and I I got in that way which again was

incredibly incredibly competitive and from those the ways that I got into medicine I kind of understood I had to help myself understand really what it boils down to that makes people succeed or fail with this process so during all of that time ever since I was about halfway through Medical School I've been an admissions tutor and then I became an admissions specialist in an interview panelist and then I founded um this company which is a future doc where we help people get into medicine so that's just a little bit about me but today what I want to talk about is um uh first I want to get a bit of an idea of who we've

got with us so um I've tried to I did make some polls um let's see uh so just a quick just a quick one I'll launch this poll now just when are you applying is it this September so September 2023 is it September 2024 so when when are you applying or have you already submitted your application you're halfway through this cycle so I imagine most people will be submitting this September so this coming September so September 2023 so then go ahead and start in September 2024 that's usually kind of what we have about this time so okay great so yeah most people have submitted their answers now so I'll end that poll and I'll share

the results with you and we have about 90 91 of people are uh applying this coming September which is perfect you're in the right place that's exactly what you should uh what you should be doing and and you're going about it the right way because what I'm going to do is now show you um I've somehow managed to uh just let me and share that a second because I've somehow managed to draw all over my presentation so let me get rid of it there we go so what I also want to know is in the chat now what's your biggest concern about the medical application a lot of people hear many things and they sometimes

get worried or they hear things and some of it is valid some of it can be nonsense so I'm here to help also dispel some myths and kind of shed a bit of light on on really what you want to be um what you want to be focusing on because we just want to be very clear so in the chat if you guys say you know what it what is it that's bothering you so and I can help I can we can tailor the talk to to focus on those things so I'll have it I'll give people a moment just to um just to put something in the chat and then we'll go from there

and then I'll write another poll while you're doing that I had all of these polls prepared and then certainly Zoom has deleted them all so all right so let me just while you're doing that okay good so let's have a look what people have put in the chat so we've got um [Music] so just the the general difficulty of it trying hard not getting an offer let's see what else um not I'm not an interesting applicant extracurriculars yeah we'll definitely talk about that um things to put in my application a level results uh you can interviews interviews and bmat uh you cats yeah applying to gem with a Nursing degree yet definitely um gem is

a very competitive way to get in um work experience personal statements we want to stand out I'm not sure how well you're in the right place that's exactly what we're going to talk about today um what else reaching the grades so yeah some recurring themes perfect okay good good well even more confirmation that you're in the right place because that is exactly the kind of stuff that we're going to be talking about today so just one last poll um let's see what do people think about medicine is it generally getting easier or is it getting harder to get into so um just quickly another poll here um so bye let's have a look we've got

one person two two that think it's getting easier and then a lot of people think that it's getting harder okay I'll give a couple more seconds for people to submit their votes um I'm kind of giving you live commentary as the votes are coming in and then I'll share the results so um okay let's call it there so about ten percent are thinking that it's getting easier and uh 90 so most of you uh think that it's getting harder so let's give some answers to that so the stats are very interesting because during covid we had a big spike in applications but the thing that we've found is that the the spike has stayed high

so it was consistently over the kind of 2015 to 2020 years it was gradually gradually increasing then we had a spike in um during covid and we've kind of stayed although it's dropped a little bit it still stayed quite high now that's one thing the the number dropping but what we have found is that people reapplying are staying quite high so nearly a fifth of people who are applying are applying for a second time which is telling you that people are struggling to get in and then submitting an application you know a second third even beyond that number of times and actually a lot of people that we help on a future doc they come

for you know we get a lot of people who are on their third application and um you know we help them finally make that the one that counts because they've just been you know not probably approaching it in the best way possible and sometimes it just takes some tweaks in the application to to get it right to make sure that they get that place so yeah um it's it's it's quite nice actually because right now we're very early in the current application cycle for getting offers but we've already had a few people who have applied for a third time and had that offer so the point I'm trying to make here is that reapplications are

getting higher but the problem is that they have now there was a cap on the number of places before covid during covid They removed that so they the universities could offer up to ten and a half thousand places but now they've reinstated that cap so although the the raw number of applicants is lower the also the number of places is lower so if you look at the ratio of places to applicants it's lower than it's ever been so it is getting more competitive even in a time where the numbers have gone down so these are just things to bear in mind so um the the thing that I want to get across to you is

that you guys are here at a perfect time because the the journey to medical school is long and I'm gonna I won't this um one second sorry I'll move on to that in a second so um the generation medicine is long and I'm going to show you the um timeline in a minute for kind of how you should think about it but what I want to get across is that really if you're applying in this set if you're playing this September that would be to start medicine in in 2024 so September 2024 and really what we want to do is start our application about a year before we submit so we will be submitting in

September 2023 we'd ideally like to have started last September but there's still plenty of time and there's still a lot that we can do but the journey is quite long and I always say to those who are applying that the sooner you start and the more preparation you put in firstly the the higher likelihood of you getting in but then after that the more competitive medical schools that you can apply to and be in with a very good chance of getting into so there's a lot of work to put in but like all things I think it's really important for us to start with why we want to understand why we want to get into

medical school why are we going to put ourselves through all of this process so in the chat just very quickly just you don't have to be too personal but just generally you might say reasons why people want to go into medicine and if anyone if if anyone's feeling uh Brave and they want to unmute and and we can have a chat it um you know there's about 50 of us here today I'm more than happy to um to speak to people and and discuss so um why don't you put in the chat your reasons for studying medicine if anyone wants to earn mutant we can have a discussion I'm more than happy to do that

as well uh hello hi I mean uh sorry about my uh crackly voice I've just got the cold right now oh no I think it's going around at the moment is it is it a mean speaking yes yes fantastic hi I mean tell me what why is it you're wanting to study medicine I want to study medicine um because honestly I just want the achievement I'm a re-applicant and um I think in the first time so like this time I really want to try harder I put all my effort just so I can actually achieve the medicine Place yeah I don't even care about the money all I cared about is proving to myself I

can't get into medicine that's literally my motivation right now yeah sure so again feel free don't worry if you're not comfortable sharing but tell me what happened with you with your previous application how how did you get on with that um I think I got quite a few places uh quite a few work experiences but not clinical not hospital um I think it was a u-cup I think I I bombed the ucap that's why what did you get in the ucap I got 2600 but I know that's like less than average score yeah and for medical school it's like above 2800 you need well um not always but yeah definitely so with the students again

you know as I was saying we take a lot of replicants and with with them I kind of try and help them understand that we're aiming for a 3000 which is really high you know we're aiming for to be in the top five percent but that way you really take control of the application and that's a really important thing um because then you can almost guarantee that you'll have an interview and there are lots of things that you certainly take control of by doing well in the ucat but it's it's more about how you prepare so I'm going to talk about ucat later actually um does so but what so other than proving to you

in fact while amines telling us his reason if you guys in the chat maybe tell me some reasons why either you or my why anyone would want to become a doctor what are the reasons for for wanting to go into medicine but I mean so you said you want the challenge of applying but what what is it actually about medicine itself that makes you want to become a doctor um well I've always and there's a bit of cliche answer but I always love my Sciences and I've looked at the Medicals obviously it's five years there's a lot of clinical knowledge and biology knowledge and everything to um is just fit into that five years because

I'm like really interested in my Sciences I feel like it'd be a really fun process and like you could say oh why not nursing or why not Dentistry whilst nurses are literally the backbone of you know the NHS I just feel like well NASA's cost is three years but uh to become a junior doctor is five years and then you got your two Foundation yes I just feel like there's a lot more knowledge that you need to know that's why it doesn't entice me a bit more and also Junior doctor can specialize in many different areas so I've got that variety and the broadness to it yeah absolutely yeah um yeah and that's kind of

the course itself um so in the chat we've got people saying of course the interest me by seeing different experiences of patience and how doctors help people and contribute so much to our society a well reputable job as well I want to enhance my clinical knowledge to help people in the interest of uh human anatomy Okay so we've got a lot coming through now so lovely science and lifelong learning absolutely sounds cliche but um helping others yeah absolutely um great so some really good reasons some really good whys and I want you to remember those wise because they are so important for motivating you you know when times are hard because the journey is you

know riddled with ups and downs and um having a really strong wine understanding your motivation for doing this is something that they will ask when you apply but also you will need to ask yourself because that's like I say it's what's going to keep you going with all of this so but it is an incredible career and there is absolutely no doubt that what you do is Meaningful when you know when you're a doctor every day you are doing something truly meaningful and impactful for people and it's hard to put into words really just um how valuable your skills are but when you know pretty much every patient that you're seeing hopefully you're making a

positive impact on their life the feel-good factor and like I say the meaning and fulfillment that you get from a career in medicine is just outstanding and you have such at such a young age because you know you still some people graduate medicine when they're 23 I was I think I was 24 25 and um you the some of the things that you've seen and the life skills that you have and the mental toughness that you develop to get through medical to get into and through Medical School are just unmatched to any other degree out there I believe and you know your life is always it's never dull there's always stuff going on I mean

just a couple of weeks ago for example I was on a flight and um they called they asked if anybody medical was on board so I went forward and normally it's usually something relatively minor that you can just quickly fix but um it was actually a young guy he was only in his 30s and he was having a heart attack and you know luckily there were a couple of nurses and the staff on the plane were really good and we had to divert the plane and um treat him but you know just there and then we managed to save that young man's life and um the the feeling of doing that is is unlike anything

else I can describe so just having those skills that you know I was just sitting there dozing off on an airplane then all of a sudden you called into action and you have to do something to really uh really get called into action and and switch on and you know go into that mode where you are um your decisions are critical and it's life or death is um it's something that you know you reflect back on you think I'm very glad to have those skills and to be able to be that kind of person that can can help that because obviously it's a flight of what 600 people and I I I and like I

say one of the nurse actually it was um yeah we were the only people that that could do anything to help this person so let's move on so this is the the timetable let's say the timeline that I was going to show you so this is very crowded and I'll show you where you can get I'll show you where you can get a copy of this um but as I said so you've got your um so you've got your start in September um you've got your application which is a year before you submit and a lot happens between then and a lot of the prep as well goes the the year prior and there's a

lot of stuff that goes on here but um what I kind of break it down to in this video and I'll pop the link in the chat now for you guys is the the four phases of med school application so if you have a look on my YouTube channel if you guys have not used my YouTube channel already there's plenty of stuff on there it's you know it will give you the the basics that you need to start it probably won't it'll probably direct you as to how you can go deeper but as a place to start my YouTube channel will really help you in all areas of the application um the channel is I

literally purely do med school application stuff I I'm not like uh a med tuber where I'd tell you about my life as a doctor in fact saying that I got forced to do a day in the life recently but that's the only time I've ever done anything like that so um but it's purely about how to get in there's no nonsense about anything else it's just if you want to get into medicine these are the things that you need to do so this particular video I I break it's called the four phases of medical application I break it down into four phases as if the name suggests so um here are basically the four phases

just summarized very quickly so you guys if you're playing in September you will be in this build phase here um and this is where you are starting to become the kind of person that will it it's really it's about becoming the kind of person that is likely to get into medicine now currently people who are who have submitted their application who will wait you know some of the people like I say on my program who've had never had their offers for you through our um people who are in this phase now that have submitted the application last September September 2022 and are just waiting now to either have interview hear about whether they're going to

be interviews actually have their interviews and then hear back from um as to whether they're actually going to get an offer so the thing that I want to iterate is that these guys who are here the preparation for the for that bit Starts Now starts here because what this is is not just uh no this is one of the things that the big mistakes that people make that I want to talk about today and and the the big kind of oversights that people have is that this starts this is a culmination of everything that you're doing in these other three phases this is not a okay I'm gonna prepare for two weeks for the interview

and try and black my way through it more now than ever as I say as it's getting more competitive what we're seeing is a lot of people who are getting four interviews and then not getting a single place not getting a single offer and it's because they've ignored the the three phases they've kind of just blagged it along the way here they've maybe got a decent enough ucat score to get in front of the interview panel but they've not really demonstrated that they're the kind of person that would make a great doctor so oh you know when I with people who who I teach what I say is you know we're preparing for the end

stage now and everything that we're doing is done in the right order to get you to be a phenomenal applicant and like I say the more you put in the earlier you start the because initially we just want to make sure that we're good enough to get in and then we start thinking about the really competitive universities and how we're going to make ourselves appealing to them so um those are the phases so in the chat now I was going to make a poll but like I say for some reason all of the polls that I prepared have disappeared so let's just do it in the chat so in the chat now what would you

say is the most important part of the med school application so here are some of the elements here what would you say in the chat which which would you say are the most important you can beam out we've got ucat phase one dictates the start and the rest a levels the build phase work experience ucat the execute phase ucat UK entrance exams impress interviews prepare okay great so um this is kind of a trick question because the the truth is is that they're all equally important You could argue that the build phase is probably the most important because it essentially sets the wheels in motion and and the kind of the downstream effects or the

snowballing effects of everything that you do um really kind of amplify and grow exponentially as you go down go Downstream because what happens is the sooner you start opportunities lead to more opportunities and then um those those lead to more things so you can imagine you've got more branches and the the sooner you start with that the the better things that you have that are kind of I say the more good fortune and good luck is hitting you along the way so you're just building and getting better and better so but really the point I'm trying to to make is that actually they're all equally important a lot of people fall into the mistake of

thinking oh you know I just need to get a good ucat or um you know I just need to get good work experience or as long as I write a good personal statement or all I need to do is blah blah blah and that is a mistake and that is what I was saying about people who they might do well in one area and they think okay well that's good enough to get in to get to the next phase or get to interview but then they'll fall at that hurdle so um like I say when we get a lot of reapplicants so people who didn't get in they come to us for help with the

second third fourth application and we get them in that's that's why because we make sure that we've got every element of the application completely on point so um so we talked about that so yeah like I say the answer is that that they all matter so first it's about becoming the kind of person that will make a good doctor um so in the chat again we're not going to do polls but I wanna I'd love to hear your opinions as to what you think are the most important traits of a of a doctor so no no trick questions this time that was the only trick question I had uh so empathy we've got resilience teamwork

communication compassion empathy again good communication decisive kind good communication patience okay great passionate leadership lifelong learning knowledge and compassion proactive dedication authentic yet Drive yeah fantastic yeah and these are all true yeah absolutely these are all very important you I would argue that you really need some level of every one of these because you know you can be really knowledgeable and you can be great but if you don't have the drive then you'll struggle to get through exams or difficult shifts or whatever it is if you don't have empathy are going to be very difficult for you to be relatable to your patients and if you're not relatable to your patients they will maybe not

listen to some of the treatment plans you have and then they will not take their medication or not trust you to undergo an operation that you're suggesting you know it's all they're all so important and um like I said there's not one that is more so than the other than necessarily it's just interesting to see to you what you guys think is an important trait so we're talking so the build phase is where we develop those traits so the it comprises a few things and um so there what I'm trying to kind of what we're trying to do at this stage is help help ourselves understand or not just understand for ourselves but demonstrate that

we know what the career is as in what we're letting ourselves in for it's a five potentially six-year degree that people are taking and they medical schools want to know that you've got the stick firstly you're going in when you with your eyes open and you've got the stick ability to um to want to do it not just for the medicine degree but beyond that as well and for a lifelong career and you know careers these days are lifelong careers are becoming a thing of the past but medicine will always have to be a lifelong career because of the way you you learn and um the the way that your skills grow and compound over

time and yeah just the nature of the job um so it's about work experience which we'll talk about in a minute and um it's also about extracurricular so extracurriculars when I think of extracurriculars these are the things that are demonstrating traits and the reason that I I say these in in the build phases because what they want to see is dedication to something they want to see you know whether it's a language an instrument a sport these are all traits that you can demonstrate you know dedication um just taking taking a skill and developing it to a higher level during a team teamwork or if you're a captain of that team leadership um you know

we talk about some of the things that you've mentioned here determination communication skills these are all things that you can demonstrate with your extracurricular activities um you know say if you if you're in school and you're doing it called Duke of Edinburgh award you know these are the sort of things that will demonstrate um perseverance and and all of the things that you have you guys have just listed uh yes I just have a question about yeah of course please please go ahead my family came in the room so I kind of missed uh what you said about that uh could you just repeat it please um so about work experience academics sorry no so

I'm just coming on to academics actually are you oh yeah so academics this is the time where you need to demonstrate that you have the academic ability and you're able to achieve the grades so you know medical school you know it's really Three A's at a level now there are a couple of aab universities but really we kind of need to be aiming for AA Three A's or an a star and two A's to really give ourselves a good chance if you're applying as a graduate applicant 2-1 there are a couple of universities that will take two twos but um two one or a meritup masters are kind of the requirements these days now academics

is probably the the least negotiable no matter how strong your application is there is very little leeway for unless they really really like you and you've done really well in the application that they'll um have some allowance with academics so that is the one thing that I wouldn't um Bank on Goodwill for I would really do what you can to make sure that you've got the academics and if you're applying as an international student that means having equivalence or in even if you're coming from a non-english speaking country having um English language proficiency which is usually the IELTS so just making sure that these sorts of things are being done now and are on autopilot

so that you can really when we get to the next phases which are um the preparation and really the other one is crunch time the implementation is is where all of these things that you do um you know culminate into you submitting an application the greedy standout people are the people who've been putting in the work at this time in the next phase because that is when as I say things are on autopilot you're organized you can compartmentalize things so like I said if you watch that video on YouTube when I talk about the four phases really what we want to do is take care of each one at a time put all of our

focus into it and it's almost a set it and forget it sort of thing or leave it on autopilot if we've got our work experience sorted we don't have to focus on that we can just either know that we're going to turn up to it in the future or it might be a regular thing that we're doing every week or every Fortnight if it's an extracurricular we just know that you know we've got these things that we just turn up to and it's part of our schedule so it doesn't take up much mind space so we can like I say set it forget it and move on to the next thing and of course academics

are such an important part of that as well so we need to be making sure that we're meeting the eligibility requirements so what I'll talk very briefly about work experience because this is one thing that this time of year people are concerned about so just a number you know one or above how many different types of work experience are there in the chat Okay so we've got two three um so let's see Dalia do you want to unmute you said three what what do you think they are let's see if darling's feeling brave no worries if you don't want to chat that's up so you're fine um Okay so we've got um clinical wider aspects

of volunteering clinical volunteering paid voluntary and clinical um Shiraz I would say that that's pretty much it yeah so there are three types of work experience um one is oh sorry this is a video where I talk about work experience on my YouTube channel apologies for the the thumbnails look a lot worse when they're blown up to full screen they look alright when they're just a small one in the corner of the Youtube video um but yeah so um that's the video that I talk about with work experience so well there are three elements and one of them is um what I would call shattering so shadowing is what um and was being referred to

there as I'm not I'm drawing on this somehow or someone's drawing on this somehow I don't know how okay fine no worries uh so um I think I mean I think you're drawing on this I don't know how I've allowed you to do that but uh it's okay um so what was I saying so yeah so so shadowing is what people normally think of as work experience so with shadowing um with shadowing that is when you go into hospital or GP practice or whatever it is but ideally one of those two and you're essentially a fly on the wall you're there to work out what a doctor does in their day-to-day life what life is

like for them the realities of being a doctor understanding really the demands and the skills and seeing those traits that you're trying to portray in yourself seeing them in action so that you really understand what what you're letting yourself in for that's the main thing that they want to see they want to see that you've understood what the career is about and you're going into this with your eyes open so that one you typically do two weeks so you know a full to either two full weeks over the summer or over Easter um or you know if you're a mature student you just take annual leave and do it whenever um and it's almost like

a one-off event or maybe a two-off event if you're breaking out the two weeks um and it's nice to have a mix of medicine and surgery or hospital and non-hospital so primary care which is a GP practice but just having a little bit of variety now you know I could talk for ages about how to get the most out of work experience and how to organize it but um you know if you if you watch that video on YouTube you can see a little bit more and obviously if you guys um need help with that then you know reach out to us but um the it's kind of that bit is kind of something that

you just you have it you have it you do it you keep a diary to make sure that you remember all the details that's probably the most important part of it and then you can kind of almost be at ease that you've done that bit the second part is volunteering now volunteering is showing something different this is more where you are demonstrating some traits yourself volunteering is more often than not something where you go and and be self-sacrificing and are usually in some capacity doing something caring for somebody else even if it is so typically people talk about working in a care home or handing out food in a soup kitchen but even if you're

volunteering in a charity shop you know that is indirectly caring for somebody else so those are the skills they want to see that you are willing to give back to society and you are somebody that cares for others now volunteering is different to work experience so shattering experience in that you are um in shattering you like say you are doing it as a one-off but in volunteering you're doing it regularly and it's just showing a regular commitment to something and you don't have to do too much but as long as you're consistent over time that is something that they like to see as part of your application similarly with paid work uh now again this

is very different depending on if you're a sixth form applicant and you're you know you've just turned 16 versus a mature student who is maybe in their mid to late 20s or maybe even later um and so for for these types for this type of work experience So Paid work the other the difference with this versus the other two is that volunteering okay you have some responsibility but no one's relying on you as much uh shadowing you may as well you know you're just a fly on the wall it doesn't really make a difference that you're there or not but whereas with paid work you're actually responsible you you take on some responsibility they're expecting

you to be there you might be given keys to lock up if you're doing it working a shop you might be handling money you might be handling customer complaints even if you're working as waiting staff in a restaurant you know people complain about food handling those difficult communication uh scenarios but if you're doing if you're a bit older and you've got a lot more responsibility there's a lot of transferable skills that you're demonstrating there so that again is just a regular commitment that you show you can um you can track you can demonstrate those traits and skills early on that you can transfer to being a good doctor um and you know the best thing

that you can probably do is get work in a hospital in whatever capacity because my whole journey to Medicine actually started with me I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was 16 and I actually just got a job in a hospital because because it paid well it was double pay on Sundays and you know I I thought well I like the sound of that so I went in and I was all I was doing was serving the food to the patients on the ward so I'd give them their sandwiches and their tea and it was around that summer that I Got My GCSE results and I'd done okay and I thought you

know what um I'm really enjoying this I like the hospital environment I love talking to patients I'm really interested about their diseases and what's going on and how that impacts their life and that was what made me go for it but the funny thing was is that because of that because I um had that job that then gave me everything that I needed to build a strong application so I arranged my shadowing off the back of that I arranged my volunteering off the back of that job and I I had the paid work ticked in probably the best way that you can because there's no better paid job that you can get where you're actually

you know in a way I'm caring for patience as a 16 year old that's probably the most responsibility you can get at that stage and I'm having regular patient contacts regular time on the ward seeing what doctors do seeing how things work just in even just passively just by being there you're subconsciously learning so much about the environment so that was a fantastic thing that really was a big contributor to my success with applying to medicine but also you know as I said at the start where I because I went because of some of the most competitive ways that you could do it because the reason that I went a very competitive way for my

for medicine was because at this stage like I say I didn't know what I wanted to do so I didn't have a biology or chemistry I wasn't doing those for a level so I had to really speak to the doctors and really be very smart about what the application entails and the things that make people stand out so that then you know I could apply those to get in for myself so yeah like I say these are the kind of things when I when I told you earlier that the build phase is so important is because it sets the wheels in motion for so many good things to happen just like just from that one

job for example that's a great example of how one opportunity leads to several opportunities and like I say with my with my students when they come to us we the very first thing that we do is we sit down and really just dissect everything about their application in all areas that that matter for it and we set a plan for them and then we look back in about six months and all the things that we've told them to go away and do they've done those which is great and makes the application really strong but those opportunities have led to more opportunities and and then beyond that they've branched out even further those opportunities have led

to more opportunities so when you look at a applicant about six months later they're just unrecognizable the difference in their application so um yeah doing these sorts of things and and focusing on them now will like I say compartmentalize each section of the application so that you can focus on it get it sorted just absolutely nail it move on to the next thing right so um sorry for interrupting I'm not I mean I'm Daniel I'm sorry Daniel sorry yeah it's all right I'm just wondering you know um in like an interview do they still classify um working in like a pharmacy like work experience in a pharmacy is that still useful it's for medicine don't

get me wrong everything is useful and sometimes even if it's to show you that but you've tried medicine you've tried Pharmacy and you know you've done your your investigation on both and you just from seeing how Pharmacy works you realize that you like dealing with patients but Pharmacy is not for you so um I would always say Obviously you know it's very difficult to convince someone you know you want to be a doctor if you haven't had some experience of watching a doctor in action um so I would always do your best to get some work experience in um in a hospital in a GP practice and like I say check out that video because

I did give you a little bit more detail and um yeah like I say we do help our students as well if there's you know to get the I would say the right kind of work experience but yeah working in a pharmacy I certainly uh wouldn't poo poo it it's a good bit of experience but you're not really going to get better than shattering an a doctor and seeing what yeah yeah that's going to give you the the best impression no problem so we'll move on to the dreaded aptitude tests now I would say that the biggest kind of flaw in people's thinking with medical application is that it's all about the ucat or all

about the bmat or gamstat and that's all that matters get the right score and you sorted now again it can get you in front of the interview panel um if you get a good ucat score but like I say if you've ignored all of the things that we're talking about before you will just be somebody who's kind of you know uh all shirt and no trousers they say so you might have a good score but all the other foundations are missing but that said it's another element that we do need to nail and like I say for my students um and we're probably going to do some talks about ucat and in fact I'll just

show you here but for all of these exams for ucap bmat and gamstat I've got a YouTube video for um a three-step plan for you know for for ucap 3000 is a ridiculously good score that would put you in the top five three to five percent of applicants and that's what I'm aiming for when I'm teaching my students I I want to get them to absolutely smash this so that we can because everything that I'm talking about in the run-up to interviews is to get people in front of the interview panel I a future doc we have a really good record of basically once we've got people in front of the interview panel I know

that we can train them to absolutely smash the interviews and then you know it's just like converting that opportunity into an offer but it's all about doing everything to to get in front of them and to get that opportunity so there's three aptitude tests um let me if I go through let me just go through that um so the timeline just to give you an idea so the bmat is actually being phased out and they've combined this now into one Autumn sitting which is usually around October and that's the only one now the Feb the February one that's coming up is that only for Internationals or sorry not for Internationals for other International universities like

Thai universities and Singaporean universities that use the bmat um as they've adopted their bmat as their application process so really we've basically only got one uh day in Autumn and in a couple of years they're going to get rid of the bmat altogether so but the Beamer is one for uh Oxbridge applicants so if you're applying to Oxford or Cambridge a couple of the London universities Imperial and UCL um and they haven't announced what they're going to do when they get rid of those exams but for you guys this doesn't concern you at the moment you still need to do well in the bmat if you're thinking of going to those bmat universities and because

very few people do the bmat relative to the ucat you actually do open up a lot of opportunity by taking that exam the same with graduates a lot of graduates don't want to do the the gamsat now the UK sorry the the grad application is the most competitive way that you can do it typically you have 34 applicants to one place in grad medicine and but that again you know I talk about getting a 3000 Plus in the ucat that is how and it's so much more necessary for graduate applicants because it's so so competitive and you just have to smash every element of the application to to be in with a good chance of

succeeding and this is one of those elements so but by doing by doing the gamstat which is a second so for those who are undergraduate don't worry about the gamsat because it's a graduate only exam but for those graduates considering it I would strongly recommend it because it just opens up probably another you know fifth probably about 50 of the of the gem courses a gamstat so it just opens up a whole another host of universities that are available to you as well and again because if you a lot few people are willing to do it by doing it you'll uh you'll do really well um so does anyone have any this is usually a

bit where at aptitude test is a bit where people get nervous or have questions does anyone want to unmute or in the chat ask any questions um yes there will be there will be a q a at the end um and sorry I didn't say we'll probably be done the latest midday but probably be done by about half 11 it depends how many questions we have but for now does anyone have any questions about the uh about the aptitude tests and if someone wants to unmute and ask you'd be more than welcome to uh so um so preparing for the ucap so I'd recommend watching like I say watching this video because that'll give you

a plan for the kind of three phases that we teach at um the future dark but what resources do I recommend so um I again actually I I have some really good videos for that so um we so for the ucat it's really a question of how long I want to talk about this because um so there are five sections for the ucat and uh I've got a playlist for each one now that is a good starting point but when if you watch that video the how you know the the plan a good plan for getting a 3000 plus score um you'll see that I talk about it in three phases so the first is

familiarization so just understand the questions the techniques all about the exam and how to do well then you want to start implementing it so you want to practice untimed and then finally you want to because the thing about the ucat the difficulty is that you need speed and accuracy but speed is the most challenging part of it it is very very fast so a lot of people can do the questions but when you speed up or reduce the time or speed up um the the pace that is when people really struggle so um it's all about laying the foundations early and having a really good resource to help you understand the fastest and most efficient

techniques now I do talk about that in um some of the YouTube videos if you want some free ones then I've got like an online course which I think is about 20 odd hours to give you every technique and all of that sort of stuff and then you want to be moving on to practice questions now there are a few online ones um and some some decent ones there's obviously the the ucat um they have their own official mocks and those are you know the closest reflection of what it's actually going to be like although people do say that the mocks on the website are a little bit trickier than the real thing but you

know that's all part of it I always say if we're training uh if we're training to be here we well if we want to be get the result of here we need to train to here so you know what's the saying we don't rise to the level of our expectations we fall to the level of our training so that's kind of my whole ethos with how we teach people we want to be you know aiming for a hundred percent and then you know if we're not quite there we've still got a bit of leeway to be in a very good spot to be doing well even if we don't get that 100 percent um how

long should you should you prefer prepare for well that's a it's a very subjective question um I would say the the third phase crunch time or the kind of like cranking up to the intensity phase I won't want I wouldn't recommend doing it for more than about four four to six weeks because that's the bit where people burn out but the earlier phases you can treat it more as like um because essentially the ucat is a series of brain teaser type exercises it's a verbal one a logical one uh one to do with shapes one to do with numbers and then one to do with ethics so all you need to do um is familiarize

yourself and get used to those questions and then when it gets to you know a few weeks out from your exam you really want to start upping the ante but don't do it too soon because people do hit a point of not just diminishing returns but negative returns as well so we need to time that right and you really want to focus um I mean this is what I mean by I could talk I could do an entire talk on the ecat and I probably will but um it's uh how you time it when you sit the exam uh how you prepare when you start preparing it's all very individual and you know as I

was saying with my students are featured up when they join we spend an hour just discussing all of this stuff when we start when are we going to do it how are we going to prepare what are we going to do for you individually so it's a very individual thing and that is you know why it's it's kind of challenging sometimes to answer these questions um um someone's saying do you have YouTube videos in which you walk through answering UK yeah yeah well I've um we've got a mock I've got a mock test on ucat as well um on on the YouTube channel so there's loads there's absolutely loads and um yeah um cool so

let's move on so then we hit the third phase which is crunch time so crunch time um this is where all your hard work kind of comes together to be placed into a neat package of application now you guys may have heard of ucas um I always forget what it stands for it's the university and colleges admissions Services that's right um so uh that is just a online platform everybody if you're in sixth form everybody who's applying to University will be applying through this whether they're applying to Fashion architecture medicine Dentistry whatever it is uh they'll all be using ucas so um that's when you bring everything together to submit your application but the summer

prior to the September period where you so it's uh usually the start of September to mid-october 15th of October is always when the medicine application closes other subjects will be end of January but you have to bear in mind that medicine applications close early so 15th of October is the very latest I'd recommend that you have it squared off and ready much more before that but yeah that's so like I say summer is going to be a very busy time it's usually where if you've arranged the work experience because the arranging of the work experience is the um is the laborious part but actually doing it is the fun part so you might be doing

your work experience over the summer um you will be writing your personal statement you also have to get a tutor reference um you'll be thinking about University choices and I'll talk about in that in the next slide you'll be although you'll have done your preparation you'll be sitting the ucat you might be sitting the beam out of the gamsat and then you'll be putting it all together to submit your your ucas application so I heard someone sounds like somebody's trying to ask a question go ahead I think I was unmuted for a sec but I do have a question though go ahead um because it's so hard to get a work experience in the hospital

how will we arrange that is that like part of the program or um sorry part of the coaching program oh yeah yeah I mean on that we we help people with that but for everybody who's just wanting to um work out how to do it um I would recommend watching that video that video gives you a bit of a starting point for where to go but yeah yeah for those on on the program we we help with that sort of thing and so yeah uh where was I so this so this is where you know I keep saying when you the when you in the build phase and you're compartmentalizing things this can either be

hell or it can be quite manageable and this is the bit where people tend to struggle a little bit with all of it and they you know they find it stressful but those who have been organized and got a lot of the stuff sorted and you know you guys are in that time of year where the the build phase is really important and and what you do now will massively impact how you experience this in August sort of time so the ucat window is probably it's all kind of orientated around that so that's usually mid-july or start of July to the end of September so you've got a wide range within which you can sit

the exam the bmat is fixed it's um like I say we have not released the dates yet but it will be last year was the 18th of October so it'll probably be around that sort of time again gamsat is usually the second week of September so kind of let's say the sixth to the uh 13th I think they've actually released that and it's around those sorts of dates um so yes a lot happening and um so Olivia's asking what the gamset is it's it's similar to the ucat and the b-mat it's an aptitude test entrance exam but it's only for graduates so if you're applying as an undergraduate you don't have to worry about that

um so yeah like I say the more that you have prepared and sorted out the other two steps the smoother this journey will be this is where you putting all of the bits together um but choosing your University is incredibly important as well um you know we're talking some people I get every day I'll get a message on Instagram about oh you know I applied this year and I didn't get in and blah blah blah and they give me the stats of what of what their application was and I look at it and I think well we've got students in you know on our program with those sorts of stats so sometimes I think people

are not very clever about choosing not they're not very clever that's that's mean but um they're not optimal in how they choose their Med schools and I'll actually show you where you can get another free resource for um for choose helping to choose your medical school but you know this is such an overlooked and important part of the application and with our students we'll literally sit down um for ages for hours and work out because you only get four choices right and you need to choose the best ones for you and if you want to go for an Oxford or a Cambridge again you know you need to start preparing now to make sure that

you are meeting the standards but then when it comes to September we look at all the elements all your strengths all your weaknesses uh what is good about your application and what suits what university and you know spend a lot of time choosing this because like I say this is when we were talking about what's the most important element it's like saying to somebody you know what's the most important organ is it the brain is it the heart is it the lungs it the liver it's like well you know they're all important it's again maybe not having one would kill you quicker but they're all equally important to to thrive in this analogy to thrive

but in you know with the medical application that they're all important to help you get in so don't don't underestimate the importance of choosing the right universities for you as well so uh we're coming towards the end now so this is where let me get the link for this that I'll put in the chat so um if you want to know if you want a bit of a guide to help you with your med school choices um uh here is the link that I'm going to give you um so it's just on our website you just go to the free resources section and you've got a few a few little bits here that are there

to help you um for like if you know I mean who's thinking about maybe joining we do have our own research beyond that as well that we have a lot more information that helps us kind of really get granular with this and and know exactly who who should apply to where but yeah um it's uh it's really important and you can use those guys to help you finally like I said do not underestimate the interview I again I can't stress how many people come to me who have had um a previous application who have got all four interviews so they've been offered four interviews of their four choices you know everybody's brought them in and

then they've not converted any one of them into an offer again it's all down to the phases that you put in before but um so Camille I'll come to you Camilla I'll come to your question in a moment but um yeah it's all down to the work that they've done in the phases before and people really underestimate the interview and the standard that they have to be at we you know we do a lot of mocks with students and it's really funny because they think they're fine they think that you ask them like we do an in-person mock interview day and uh and you know we do online marks and all sorts of um all

sorts of interview preparation and before we start you'll always ask the students like you know how do you feel how how ready are you for interviews and they always go oh yeah yeah um you know I think I'll be fine I think I'll be fine and then you start doing whatever it is the Mark or the interview preparation session and they very quickly realize how much more challenging it is than they think so yeah really important to not underestimate those um chameleon answer to your question yeah we do we do one-on-one um prep that's kind of the Mainstay of what we do we're very individual with how we help people um so yeah if you

want some good interview uh some free stuff my YouTube channel again I I have a brand new um interview Place apologies again for the terrible thumbnails there they seem I swear they're fine when they're tiny little ones and when they blow up ones will be like oh a bit cringe but anyway uh apologies for that um but yeah if you want some free stuff just go to the YouTube um playlists and we've got you know the basics to you know at least kind of put you in in the right give you some foundations towards helping um so so mariam's asking do you have any book recommendations to write about in personal statement um yeah um

I'm actually I've just bought a huge I've just made a YouTube video or an Instagram sorry I've actually I've just brought something out on Instagram about the three books that I'd recommend let me get you the link to my Instagram because my Instagram's quite good for like little tidbits um where it's just you know little 60 Seconds nuggets for you um so I did some on there so again in the in the chat there I've just put my my Instagram I'm also I do the same it's the same on Tick Tock as well so whatever you pref whatever your preferred platform is um so yeah like so like we said at the start the journey

to med school is long and you know it is made easier by getting a little bit of help uh I think these days because it's so competitive pretty much everybody who's getting in is getting support of some kind because you know there's so much out there from current medical students doctors lots of people that really the access is there and the access and the information is what makes a difference so we do we've just had loads of people graduate because you know a lot of people have been had offers now so they've graduated from our one-on-one coaching program so if you guys do want some one-on-one help um we do we do um uh the

future.coaching program where we help people one-on-one we've only got a few places like I say because um we've still got the cohort from last year uh but we've had it with like I say a few people have recently it's very early in the year actually for this but a few people have already got offers and graduated from uh the program because they're going to medical school now so we've had a few places free up in the last week or so um it is application only so we don't we we're quite selective about who we take on but if you want to submit an application and have me and uh you know and the rest of

the team coach you one-on-one to get into medicine um I can give you the details for that but uh so in fact I'll pop the link in the chat now um but yeah so that um that is it um we'll take questions in a minute but actually we've got a very special guest along and that is Josh who as I said Josh last year um I'll let him tell you his story but he got in to a course that was a 42 applicants to one place and obviously so like I say that puts you my maths for that for that isn't perfect but I'd say it probably puts you in the top 2.5 percent um

so yeah I have I'll hand over to Josh now he's going to have a quick chat and ex and tell you his his journey and kind of how you can replicate what he did to to help you get into medicine so Josh yeah good how are exams going no it's all not at all stressful yeah yeah first year first year exams it's always a bit of a shock to the system yeah it's yeah that's a that's a good way of facing it um I was on the future program so so I'll start right at the beginning and then work my way forwards because that makes the most sense um I was at school and I

was told I wasn't smart enough to be a doctor my score wasn't exactly nice about it um so I took a year out decided what I wanted to do and apply to be a paramedic and then do a paramedic degree which I did worked as a paramedic in London for about six years I really enjoyed it but after pandemic so a lot of work um and I thought it's not quite what I want to be doing so my fiance was applying to medicine at the time and she said why don't you do it with me so I thought oh you know I'll give it a go see how I see how I see how it

turns out um and then she found future Doc and um persuaded me to have a chat with Ash uh and at the end of the conversation Ash had a lot of confidence in me that I had never felt in myself um and said that I had a fantastic application and that you know it was quite feasible that I get into med school so I was assigned to Chooser who shall remain nameless because she's fantastic to get inundated with requests um who coached me through every aspect of the med school application I was working full-time I was doing a lot of overtime out there with other work and things uh like you know working through the

pandemic there was a lot a lot of work to be done um so the amount of effort I would have had to put into achieve everything the future doc helped me to achieve would have taken years years and years and years of reading researching um and they coached me through loads of different things they helped me with my prep for the ucats and the gam sets much preferred the UK began set was not an enjoyable experience but I understand why it is important so I had gotten so I emailed every University in England Scotland Wales in Northern Ireland that offered a medical degree and I said I've got bad a levels but well not bad

eight levels but not great but I've got a lot of clinical experience would you accept my application three universities such yes they were Plymouth Exeter and Newcastle and Newcastle offers two courses uh one is normal undergrad and one's accelerated um so the first two years are condensed into one in the accelerated program so it's the same level of content just a lot more contact out uh didn't get into to Plymouth or extra they didn't ask me an interview and then Newcastle Community and my interview prep consists of a day in person with the future doc team loads of mentors Ash Ryan whether it was there um and it was a really really good experience but

it felt horrible at the time it it's really it's very interesting you know you can do a lot in two prep with people you know and I've done that managers friends family but until you've got a panel of strangers staring at you asking you questions it is a it's a very different experience and I think that was one of the most valuable things I've done um I had a one-on-one interview over soon with Ash and afterwards he said I'm really sorry I was particularly horrible to you because I wanted to make sure you were prepared and it was it was very very uncomfortable it was it was a very real representation of what it was

like I had an interview with my mentors and again she made it as difficult as possible and when I went to my interview although I came out thinking I'd done awfully um but paid off because I was offered a place at Newcastle on the accelerated course which is what I'm on now um so I'm currently in the library uh studying because I put exams on Monday and then after that I would have finished first year of medical school and buy it over a great deal of that to future look uh but equally you know you do have to put work in yourself but I I did work to get it it isn't an easy Journey

like I says it's a long journey um and you have to stick with it but if you want it there is no reason you can't achieve it like ash says you know the the interview is becoming more and more key as far as I can tell um with scores being so high you need to achieve well in those but then it's all predicated on Unity so Newcastle for example like I said we had 42 applicants for a single space here I think we they interviewed 102 people so that's 102b achieving over 3050 I think it was this year in the UK so yeah it's I I can't oversell the importance of good experience in the

interview prep and structured you can't count that being that prep it makes a massive difference um and yeah and stressing out over the the complement pathway of the immune system which is just horrific um oh gosh I remember those days yeah um yeah it's very different they're very different to the chat we had back in what October when you were just finishing fresh this week great introduction we had some Anatomy stuff we were down in the dissecting room it was really chill and now I I don't do anything but read books oh yeah I come in for this I was like yeah yeah I need an excuse to not to not be looking at flashcards

yeah oh mate well you know welcome break for you uh happy to be of service um but yeah I mean in fact before you join Josh I was talking about this about the you know going through medical school it the character building and the resilience I mean Josh is you know in probably caveman mode at the moment while he's doing exams and it it's um it's a very I I find that although it's sometimes really challenging it it you grow so much from it and actually you know when I come out the other end of exams I I I'm always a lot I'm kind of the whole time I'm revising I'm fantasizing about all the

fun stuff I'm gonna do when I'm out of when I'm finished and all the hobbies that I'm going to do and all the trips that I'm going to make and actually I feel like it motivates me to kind of come out of it stronger and I need to do that four or five years and it does accumulate over time compared so you forget about your hobbies and and you just you keep revising for more examples yeah yeah exactly keep going keep going it's uh you'll get if anyone has any questions for me as a former student I'm happy to happy to feel them yeah but I just I mean just to it's interesting you you're

saying that um I never I don't remember you telling me that thing about the the teachers at school telling you that that's awful um so you I I a lot of I had a lot of issues during my um my dad's very selfishly had cancer three times through my a levels gosh um and each time it was about a month or a couple of weeks before my exams uh I know he was very selfish he's fine now he's um he's arguably healthier than I am um but my school didn't tell me anything about extenuating circumstances special consideration you know none of that was ever a factor and where I'd said to them you know I'd

like to do medicine they literally just said given your projected grades and how your first year went we don't think you've got the potential to do it and there was no let's work towards it it was a case of no said you'll set your expectation more realistically so I went to Switzerland for a few months and you know worked over there and skied with it and then came back and stepped to the Parramatta um yeah I mean I hear that not not to knock scores because obviously they're doing their best but I mean the thing with the thing with the scores even the really good ones that have like some some of the really fancy

scores have you know medicine entry teams and but even then I feel like I don't know it's not the same as people who are you know have who are in it who who are studying have studied medicine or study medicine really know what it's like and what's involved I always feel like yeah people sometimes are a bit let down by their schools which is a shame and it shouldn't be a barrier to to letting people get in yeah I think one of the key issues there is um organizations like that and people that are sort of talk about producing these Concepts about you know we'll have a metric team they are very formulaic and they're

not personals which person so they basically say you've got a list of criteria you have to fulfill to do this um and I think when you when you make contacts and you engage with people that are here they recognize what you need help with and what you don't need help with in a much more useful sense yeah yeah I think yeah trying to be cookie cutter approach trying to have a cookie guitar approach to it is just not um not I don't think it's a formula to be successful really but yeah um and yeah the other thing that was I mean to tell you guys about uh why Josh did so well is that he

absolutely smashed the UK what did you remind me what you got again 31 that guy was saying before you know that is probably the top well 3 000 is usually about the top five three to five percent so just probably in the top two percent of people so like you said a structured approach to it and to put that in perspective my first mark that I did for the ucat I got 2300 but it's not like there was no innate oh yeah I'm smart I can do this this was a case of training my brain to think differently um and I gave myself you know I joined the future doc program but I don't know

instead of the time I think so I gave myself plenty of time to learn to do it properly and gave myself plenty of time to engage with it yeah great um okay of course let's let's answer some questions okay um we run the risk of us just having a really nice job and forgetting that there's other people here so um is medical school exactly what you expected it to be oh god um no it's but for me I was expecting to get onto an undergrad program not an accelerated program I didn't think I had the um potential to get on here but you know when you're told you can apply you do um it's a

lot more intense a lot more intense so in comparison I was chatting with Daisy we met up the other day one of the other future dog mentors who was future future doc mentors um who applied to the undergrad programs like the same year I did we were comparing contact hours and sort of intensity of workload and then miles apart she couldn't believe how many contacts we have we are in here nine to five four days a week at nine to one one day a week um frustratingly my clinical experience is really helpful in the first year because it is all Sites so until I get an award and I can talk to patients quite well

and I can take history it's not it's not the most useful thing for assessments which is quite disappointing so I am very much part of another taking order when it comes to sort of exams and things like that it's not my field of expertise but equally when we do do practical stuff um you know it's what I did for a job so it makes it a lot easier but ultimately it sounds silly but it's more work than I was expecting I think it was going to be a lot worse but there's an awful lot of fun I'd probably describe this well I don't have children so any of my friends with kids will slate me

for saying this but it's probably like the same thing where people are about to be parents and they think ah you know I know it's going to be hard but maybe not quite as hard as I expect you know it's going to be fine and then when it gets to it it's actually a lot harder than they expected I think medical school is about to say is similar to that my brother had a baby boy just as I started and he was like we weren't chatting the other day and he was like your your life is more difficult than mine than you want like the amount of effort you have to put in that's fine

because I don't envy you that so yeah that's funny I mean most people would I'd rip you apart for saying that one mind you the sleep's probably about the same right um um yeah I mean for you guys who are probably you know worried now uh don't worry don't worry it does get easier I think medicine definitely in the first year tries to weed out the people early who who you know who you aren't good out for it but most people might by the time you get to medical school you've kind of demonstrated that you are but it does actually get better as it goes along to don't worry and Josh is probably at the

like hardest point of his entire degree right now so anyway they um they say it's not so much the work that's difficult it's the intensity and the jump from a levels to independent like like it's easier for me because I've been through uni before and I've you know I've I've got a house I've got a partner and stuff that was in it's easier for me because in a way because my life outside of uni is much more stable whereas when you're a student for the first time it's mind-blowing having that level of freedom that also plays a part in it having to think about every aspect of life as opposed to just school you know

yeah absolutely all right well I could talk about this for ages but I guess let's uh let's see what other questions if anyone wants to a mute by the way and ask Josh a question please feel free to ask me a question any anybody um if you want to do that just interrupt me but if not I'll just go through oh yeah can you hear is that Michelle yeah it's Michelle hi Michelle hi I was wondering so say you've done the application you've got a place and so you've done well in your interview but on a level results day you like you know maybe a grade off your offer would you just like automatically lose

the place so I wouldn't say automatically but um there's quite a high likelihood and then you you would either have to go through the clearing process or you'd have to um reapply but yeah like I said probably the the most non-negotiable part about the med school application as a whole is yeah a levels or your grades that's that's the bit that's you know you can if you've not got an amazing ucat score you can still work around it if you've not you've got the best personal statement you can make up for it elsewhere but if you don't have the grade more of unless you've really nailed the application and really really impressed them there's usually

not much movement for uh not much leeway for grade movement um Hamish did you were you trying to ask a question yeah yeah I was just all right um I was wondering what I'm also looking to apply for Gem I was wondering would you recommend going for the shortened course or would you say go for both and see what you get into and obviously it might be a case of just seeing which course you get on but if you had a choice what would you recommend is that Josh do you want to take that sure yeah sure um so I would recommend if you're in a position to apply babe apply for both a lot

of people on my course have said it would rather be doing the five-year course at the moment because the workload is so intense yeah right it does rely a lot on your personal circumstance like if you want to be done quicker for any sort of reason yeah um you know you want to go after four-year course just to take that extra year out then I think that's important but you'd have to I think the another thing to do is every sort of accelerated course in gem course runs slightly differently than the curriculum and see so like for me my first year is effectively held but after that I joined in third year so it's just

like a normal medical degree so my next three years should comparatively lead whereas some gem forces might run that you have a steady your workloads throughout and that might be what you want instead so it's all specifically then specific to you um [Music] you'll find in the or the exams are quite tough the I did biochemistry at University that's where I did my first degree in I mean you won't have done this you might not be able to answer but is there a lot of overlap between the two will well I mean if either one of you could answer I I can take that one if you want um yeah yeah definitely definitely there's a

lot of overlap um there's a lot of overlap between a levels um so something you'll I mean it will be like the first couple of weeks you'll recap some of the a-level stuff but a lot of medicine for the start for the pre-clinical years is kind of the the essentials of biochemistry and then you respond to the more clinical stuff and the answer to your other question Hamish so when it's like like Josh said there are a lot there's a multivariate the things that the factors the as to whether you should go for a five year four year now I'm not gonna get into it too much because it's it's wide and complex and there's

each University is different but some of the things you have to bear in mind are if you are doing a second degree financing um if you do the five year you can't yeah eligible for student loan versus yeah yeah the student loan stuff changes doesn't it big factor in it not necessarily all the five-year courses easier to get into than the four-year course is not always because um the the thing that people think is that oh yeah you know there are 200 places on this five-year course versus uh you know just 20 grad places the the 200 places are not all open to to graduate applicants because you can imagine as a graduate applicant you're

gonna you've had more life experience you're gonna have have way more time to build a stronger application than all the undergrads so they only allocate a proportion of the undergrad places to grad applicants right so just bear that in mind because that you know people always think a bit too yeah um just because there are more places overall doesn't mean yeah okay exactly so I've done a I've got a playlist here I just found uh my YouTube playlist for grad stuff so have a look at that and that'll kind of give you a good um a bit more of a detailed explanation of that sort of stuff um thank you so we've got lots of

hands raised Ellen I think I saw you first you wanna um and mute all right yeah yeah that's fine yeah I can hear um so I had kind of two questions um so I took the ucat um when I was working like 50 hours a week and it wasn't a good score it was like 2 400-ish um so I was considering doing the gamsat instead but would you recommend doing both to have a max amount of um options available the the thing with the gamsa as well is that the score lasts for several Cycles so you your score counts for two years so let's say you sit it I mean you wouldn't be able to

sit the March one that's coming up because the registration is closed now but let's say you sat the September one so that is valid for two years so effectively it's for three Cycles right so you've got the 23 applications and 24 and it still will count because you'll still be at the two year mark for the 25 application as well the other the other thing with the gamsat so to answer another question that's in the chat can you do redo the ucap you only get one stab at the ucap per cycle so you know within July to end of September you have one go at it if you don't do well and you know unfortunately

you have to just wait until the next year now with the gamsat you can do it so there's two sittings a year you can keep doing it and you just take the highest score so you can keep going until you get one that gets you in now in addition to that very few grads are willing to to do the extra work to take the gamsat a lot of people fear it but that is an opportunity because because so few people want to do it if you are one of the few that does it and does okay in it you then open up like I say pretty much the number of grad entry so I'm talking

purely grad now the number of grad entry options available to you pretty much almost the balls when you um expand to the gamsat universities as well okay and because I have a 2-1 in nursing so it's not like stem and it's not a first so I don't feel like I'm very competitive um Grant that's good to know that damn's that kind of yeah sure and you know again when the the grades are just a small part of it like I was saying you know that they're all equally important and if you can nail all the other areas then you'll be within a good chance so um yeah it's diffic I understand you know but yeah

go ahead Josh um so I set a down set partly because I had tea but um even if I didn't have to I was planning on doing it anyway because being a graduates it's it is harder like statistically it's a more challenging process for schools experiencing things like that um and I was prepared for the Long Haul so I wasn't expecting to get in the first time I applied and I thought if I could get the experience of sitting the gamsat whilst I'm starting out it's only going to be a positive thing um so if you do you can you get like you get a crack in UK and you think that they are able

to get an interview with this fair enough but if you're like me and you were viewing it as this might take longer than a year I would say I would recommend seeing the game set if you're in a position to do so because it is an interesting exam it isn't like anything many people have done before which is quite useful okay so you were saying that it would be the gamsat 1023 see how that goes potentially you Captain to 2024 kind of pathway um would you not consider doing the ucat this year that was um one of my other questions actually like would you do again Saturday you catch in the same year if you're

organized and you do like say the window the window for ucat is start so it'll Open start of July so if you're very well organized and you prepare start preparing early you can be prepared to sit it basically as soon as the window opens switch gears and then move to to um gamsat it would be a squeeze but the other thing is if you're well prepared you might even find that you nail the ucat and you actually go you know what I can maybe go just to play off this and then you can focus on the rest of the application one of the important things like the like I was saying with that with my

my program where I teach people the reason that we have a lot of success is because we create optionality and whatever your situation is we give you you know plan a plan B all the way up to probably plan F right so these are these are all the things that you can play with to kind of suit your individual circumstances and and like I say change tact and be adaptable if you need to be but yeah I think if you know if you if you're not it well if you don't want to delay getting into medical school I would definitely look at doing both thank you no problem um right uh we've got some hands

I'll just quickly answer one question in undergrad uh would you be applying with predicted degree results or a levels um yeah you'd be it's predicted first again different universities wait predicted versus achieved differently and they they Factor them in somewhat but yeah you're basically applying off predicted grades or if you're in your final year of a degree that that your lecturers will give you a predicted grade as well um kukua do you want to unmute hi can you hear me yes how are you hi I'm good how are you yeah good thank you how can I help um for work for work experience I know it's all about what you learn um and the experiences

you gather um but currently I have I've emailed a couple of places and I've got a week at an IVF Clinic lined up social work um with a social uh caring team uh with two docs doctors nurses uh social workers and and pharmacists lined up working with them three days and hopefully scheduling a GP for a weekend and um I was just wondering if that's um enough to give like a variety of experiences yeah are you are you applying as a graduate uh no I'm currently in year 12. okay um yeah I mean that's great just the reason I say is because um Warwick do some really good guidance on what the requirement for like

in terms of hours is and they usually say about 80 hours but I mean as a I think the question came up earlier about work experience in a in a pharmacy and of course seeing what a doctor does you know you're applying to be a doctor seeing what they do is the best exposure that you can get but equally seeing these other areas of care of the NHS of things that are provided Etc just to show you how the system works what are the facets there are but equally to say look I respect these and I like these professions but you know just seeing them has shown me that it's not these that I want

to do but I want to go into medicine is equally valid okay thank you it's okay um Soraya uh that's why I can hear me yep um I've got a couple of questions so that's all right yeah of course um so my first one is um I try to apply to your Mentor program um but I found the why you wanted to do medicine question really hard like I can give you loads of reasons why I want to do medicine but I find it difficult to effectively write it down Okay so could you like help me how I could answer that in an interview or like in a personal statement please yeah of course uh

so uh let me I'd probably say let me just find a video for you but I would say just you how did you answer your why medicine video and I'll find a good thing that's going to help guide you so I think there's a few different points that you should try and cover in that question to to give yourself the best chance then so obviously just raw reason so for me it was the main reason was I like helping people um but that is quite a common reason so I had to back that up with and my you know previous experience so for me it was like previous experience as a paramedic I was able

to work out a caring for people is something that I really enjoyed doing but I'd like to pursue medicine because despite looking at other other professions and things like that uh the the range of opportunities available to a doctor is far greater than that of any other Healthcare professional I've found so when you're looking at interview questions it's not just it's it's very tactical it's not just answering the question it's it's it's exploring the question and offering more information to make you look better for them basically that sort of makes sense uh yeah that's great thank you um I posted a video where I kind of tackle this question it's more in the context of

like why medicine and not nursing but there are basically three reasons why people want to study medicine it's the love of science plus the love of people uh they'll either have like a personal experience of Medicine of um being ill whether it's themselves or somebody else or some people will kind of have like what we call the Epiphany moment those are the typically the approaches that people use now not a right or wrong but by themselves uh like shallow entry points so really it's ha I always because we're you know on when I teach students to write the personal statement we'll do a workshop and I'll say like we want to that's the spark but

then what has that led to and it's like you need to what you really want to do is have the explain the kindling or you know what happened to light that that fire to make you want to go into medicine or to become a doctor and then how you've explored that path so follow that thread of like well actually it was because you know it could be as simple as like I used to watch casualty a lot and I thought it'd be a great profession obviously then I started going into hospital and work and seeing what a doctor does and it was actually that that really convinced me because I saw this case went blah

blah blah and blah blah and you know it can be them and that is a kind of purposefully silly example but it can be the most mundane thing it doesn't matter it's more about what you did as a consequence of that that tells you actually why you um you pursued it and are now in a position where you know for sure that it's the career for you thank you um also I did some work experience in Spain last summer but um I've been told that work experience abroad um isn't helpful like I shouldn't talk about it in my interview by other doctors so what's your opinion on that I wouldn't say look at the end

of the day it's you know being a doc medicine is medicine right and the the fact that you some work experience anywhere is better than no work experience but what they want to see so for like International students who are applying it's obviously very difficult for them to get experience in um in in the UK so what they want to know is that you understand how the NHS works as well and you've got a bit of experience in that now you don't also you don't have to be too like I guess what you're saying is you've got some good experience but the drawback is that it's abroad you don't really have to you know put

all your cards on the table when they say tell us about some work experience that you saw you could be like oh I did this thing and you can just tell them the story you don't you're not obliged to go oh but by the way it was in Spain so you know take some points off me for that there's no need to do that um obviously if it comes if they ask you the question you you don't lie you tell them honestly say yeah it was actually quite tricky to get UK work experience so I had to go further afield um but I also did some UK work experience and if you don't have any

UK work experience uh so shadowing experience should I say um the online ones are a really important one uh so like the Brighton Sussex medical school one that will give you really useful insights into UK medicine and then you can say you know I had to go farther afield I really wanted it and I know how important work experience is so I went all the way to Spain to get it but also I needed to do what I could to get some exposure in UK medicine so I did some online some some virtual work experience um uh courses to help orientate me to how it differs in the UK so it's more how you frame

it than than um than what you've actually done sometimes and I mean I think it's a bit ridiculous to say oh that you've gone out of your way and you've made the effort to go and get some work experience that you should almost like discount that or it's like going to work against you negatively it's just ideally obviously it would be in the UK but still it's still a good thing it's it's a plus it's not a minus told by some doctors that would be a good idea to do both the ucat and the bmap to sit both of them um what do you think about that because I've spoken to um students I have

gone into medicine and they've told me that even if I choose universities that um you know I choose let's say Kings collisions and that does um then Imperial that does bema like it doesn't matter if I do you cat I could still apply to Imperial because they'll accept me because of the new cat instead of b-mart similar to Ellen's question before about um about gamsat and ucat you can so with the bmat the way it is now is you effectively so let me start with the UK actually so the ucat you know your score you get it straight away and although you don't know how you've done compared to everybody else it pretty much is

the same throughout the year um the ucat would like say you get that score straight away so you've got an idea and you go in applying knowing what your score is the bmat's not like that you have it you go in and the score is blind because you don't you'll have submitted your application and you only find out you score after so if you if you put a bmat university um and you and you or you don't do well then uh you know you can't no you couldn't have known whether it was worth applying so it's a bit of a risk that you take now again this is something where you know we work closely

with students it's an individual decision it's not really a there's no blanket rule as to what you should do but you kind of Judge how good your ucat score is and then decide you know what you know do I think I'll get in just by applying to four ucat universities or maybe I should put a couple of ucat universities and and have a have a go at the bmat where I think I might be able to do better and give myself a better chance but no you won't get in if the bmat university is a bmat university you're not going to get in with the ucat score I don't know where they're probably that all

right that's it thank you very much no problem so um we'll take a couple more questions um I'm sure Josh is really Keen to get back to more revising um yeah coming up with questions so that we can just keep going so they can avoid any revision so uh bismar do you have a question yep hi so I have two questions so firstly would you say that work experience in a GP is just as valuable as work experience in a hospital yes in a word okay yes 100 okay and also my sister is in her first year medicine med school and she's wondering what are the most effective ways to revise oh well Josh what

are you in it um so I'm doing three I use three systems simultaneously to try and maximize my revision uh so flashcards uh there's a piece of software called enki which everyone on the cohort uses except me I hate it because I think flash cards but they are very good um so making your own flash cards producing high yield mates so most um programs are built on learning outcomes and they have boxes that they have to tick so producing high yield notes about each learning outcome and then using those notes for the third step which is mind mapping so you're taking a concept and trying to remember everything you can about that and things related

to that and before you know it you feel like a whiteboard with random stuff and it just helps with initial revision retention and utilization so it's the three aspects of the three first levels of learning yeah you think the only one I would say I would change about that is that I don't I wish I didn't write notes at the start of medical school because there's so much volume that I spend a lot more time writing notes than I could have probably read the same thing three times but definitely mind maps for sure and testing yourself so Anki or flash cards because the it's kind of like your memory is is very closely related to

emotions as well so when you when you get something wrong it upsets you you get annoyed and that that is enough to make you remember it the next time so lots of testing and making sure you're understanding what you know um because there's the um what's the what's the saying it's the difference between um I can't remember what the actual the proper term for it is but the difference between you think you know it and you know you know it and a good example is electricity so most people in the public sorry oh most people in the public will you know if you ask them what electricity is they'll say oh yeah yeah I know

I I know how electricity works but really they all they know is that they're just familiar with it because that's it it's confusing familiarity with actual actual understanding um and but if you ask the average person on the street actually tell me how electricity works and how it's generated how this light turns on they might not be able to tell you it so that's the Trap that people fall into in medicine is they're like oh yeah I know that word I'm familiar with it but actually testing themselves to a level that they can explain it and understand it well enough that's the the challenge okay thank you the big thing on that is a difference

between remembering something and using something you remember so none of the questions in my exam say about a bit what is this they asked a lot more in-depth quotes about using and it's based on using knowledge that you have been given to work out a problem or identify different aspects of it um so yeah I think [Music] um so I think we'll do one more question from Grace and go ahead and then we probably have to call it there hi I don't know if you can hear me but I can't hear a thing I don't know if anyone else can oh I can I can hear you yeah and I can hear Grace Fabio so

my question is just more about the volume of things we're doing for application so that like the work experience of volunteering the course is the extracurriculars how much is the concrete right amount and how much how much of it becomes where it looks like you've got more just for the sake of doing more you're not actually doing it to enhance your application you're doing it just to say I've done this I've done this I've done this and I've done this yeah I mean there's only so much you can write about any personal statement there's only so much you can talk about in a 20 to 60 Minute interview right so it's about quality um and

I would that video that I recommended on work experience I'd recommend watching that because that kind of goes into getting the balance because you know your focus is on a successful med school application primarily and if you're always you're volunteering you pay a job and all that sort of stuff then the chances you know that's that's time that you could be focusing on the application so it's about getting the balance right um again this is kind of the kind of thing that we go into in a lot of depth when um we we sit down and do like strategy stuff with our students but if you want to get a bit of a flavor this

video here my work experience video on YouTube will kind of give you um a bit of an insight into kind of how to balance that fabulous thank you cool all right guys so we'll leave it there um toasting I think your question that you just put in the chat is very similar to oh sorry um yeah the last two questions about volunteering all that sort of stuff um so I think that gives an idea about the balance but thank you guys for coming um I really appreciate it like I said we have a few spots available that I've just read um in the last week if you'd like some one-on-one help with your application um

you know they they go quite quickly so I recommend submitting an application today if you're thinking about it but um yeah with the you know whether you just use some well however you go about it um just remember that you know the more you put in and the earlier you start the stronger you're going to make your application there's that saying of the more you sweat in peacetime the less you bleed in Wartime and really you know if you can really go for it now is the time to just go all in with the medical application we've got about you know eight nine to eight months to really just put the effort in now and

and push to to get that place because like I say it is getting really really competitive and we just have to be doing we just have to nail each bit to make sure that we get everything right and you know if you want some help with from us to do that then great but if not I I wish you all the best of luck and um and yeah thanks for coming today Josh any any final words and best of luck you know just stick with it it is a long process but there's someone who's now there it is well worth it I'm really sorry to interrupt you know about the program is it a paid

program and if so how much does it cost it is paid it's dependent on a few things so like I say first you need you need to get through the application um and it it depends on a few variables like I say because it's so individualized you know we have a chat about it first but yeah it's not it's it's not free but um yeah submit an application see if you qualify first and then we can have a chat because the second part is an interview as well so you need to pass that as well okay got it thank you okay guys we'll have a lovely weekend enjoy the rest of your day and um

yeah thank you for coming I really appreciate it and Josh I'll I'll let you get back to Eurovision but thanks for coming along as well bye guys bye

If you're thinking about applying to medical school next September and are serious about getting a place at one of the competitive medical schools, here are the four stages that I've outlined where I'll touch on some of the things that you should be doing at each to make sure you build a strong and successful application. This is going to be a shortened version of the long talk that I give on the four key steps to a successful medical school application. And what I'm going to be doing is using a timeline that I refer to in that and I give away for free. So if you want to kind of help with this video and make sure that it's most useful for you, I recommend that you check out the link here, download the PDF of that free timetable that you can get, and then you can join along with this as we go along to kind of give you an idea of the four stages.

That talk in itself is super, super useful, so I recommend that you watch it anyway. But if you just want the timetable, it'll be emailed to you once you sign up to the talk. So just download it, open it up and let's go. So what we're going to do now is break it down into all of those four phases, taking one at a time. And then at the end, I'm going to tell you the two most important things at the end of the video that you can do to make sure you stand out when you apply.

So if you've got the timeline with you now, you will see that the very first stage is that of experience and prep. So these are the things that you can do now to start building a strong application. These will be anything from a year before you actually submit your application or even further back if you've been preparing for a very long time. At this stage, of course, it's a long way away. And as you get closer to the application date, once you get more information, it's going to be a lot clearer which medical schools that you're going to apply to.

But when you're kind of starting the journey, the most important thing to do at the start is have a rough idea of which medical schools that you need to go to, just so that you know which exams you need to sit. This is particularly important for the grads because you may need to sit one or all three of the GAMSAT, UCAT, and or BMAT. If you're an undergrad, you simply need to know whether you need to allow time to prepare for the UCAT or BMAT or both. Also at this stage, it's really important to have an idea of what sort of specs you have and what's needed for you to get into medical school.

For example, international students particularly, or people who may have weak GCSEs or A-levels, may need to re-sit a GCSE, maybe if they've got less than a six in maths, or do some English if they haven't got the requirements that are needed for medical school. And if you have to sit that in the year that you're preparing, it's really important to know that ahead of time so that you can plan it and sit it at the most convenient time for you. Because what you'll find happens over the course of the year as you're applying is that a lot of people have things happen that whittle down the options that are available to them.

So for example, they might not make the threshold UCAT score for a few universities, they might decide not to sit the BMAT, or they might, if they're a grad applicant, score badly in the GAMSAT. And slowly but surely, those 44 or so medical schools get whittled down to less and less that are available based on your circumstances. So really what we want to do, especially if we're in our final years of school or doing a university degree, is make sure that we score as highly as we possibly can in our academic grades to make sure that we keep as many options open as possible. This is why it's really important to do this sort of research ahead of time, because that means that you go into that year or more of preparation before you submit your application with your eyes fully wide open, and that helps you understand exactly what you need to be doing or kind of preparing for in that year of preparation.

So in phase one, that's more of the research that you need to be doing. But now we're going to talk about some of the action items that are going to make you stand out with this first initial phase of your preparation for med school. The first and most important is work experience. With the students on my elite coaching program, I tell them that work experience will form the backbone of your application. When you come to talk about things or you sit down at interview and get asked about things, it's the difference between being the real deal and being someone who's blagging it.

When you have got loads of experience and you know what you're talking about, it just comes through in the way that you talk about things and the words that you use. So having a vast wealth of experience in the hospital setting and all the requirements that are needed to get into medicine are what's going to make the difference in setting you apart from all the rest of the crowd. If you get backed into a corner, you're going to be able to pluck out some examples much more easily than somebody who's got limited experience. And that is just going to help you get out of tricky situations at interview.

When I got interviewed several times, I got asked questions that there was no way that I could have prepared for. But by having lots of experience and kind of done the work ahead of time, I had loads of stuff that the questions just triggered my memory to talk about certain things that I hadn't even thought about or hadn't prepared for, but they just came very naturally. And that is what got me my place at medical school. So there are three key elements to work experience and kind of a secret fourth, which I actually talk about in this video and go into a lot more depth in.

So I won't talk about them here. What I will say is that the most important thing when it comes to work experience is that you keep a diary. I'm going to talk a little bit later about why that is so important. The other action part of this phase one of the preparation is your extracurriculars. When people are selecting students to become medical students, they want to see that they are not just academics, but people who have real lives and kind of real experiences and are well-rounded people.

So in my elite coaching program, we actually have a formula to work out the best extracurricular activities for you to do to stand out. your medical school application as personal to you. But when you're thinking about what activities to engage in, you want to think of what are the fundamental things they want to see. So they want to see certain traits that make a good doctor. So things like teamwork, leadership.

They want to see well-roundedness. You need to be able to talk to a variety of people from all different backgrounds. So engaging activities that make you socialize with lots of different people will get you to do that. They want to see that you can manage your time and have some stress releases, because burnout is a real thing amongst doctors and they want to make sure that you're doing what you can to avoid that. Maybe things like prizes that demonstrate that you've been an outstanding student from a young age.

There are lots and lots of things, so check out the elite coaching program where you can find out a little bit more about how to do that. But essentially what I say is consider the consultant test. And the consultant test is put yourself in the shoes of a 50-year-old consultant doctor who's in a hospital and looking through 100 of these applications. They're reading loads and loads and probably skim reading them, not looking at them properly. And actually all you want to do in your extracurricular section is just have something that stands out and makes them think, hmm, that's interesting.

And it makes them want to invite you to interview just to ask you a few further questions about it. For this phase, one of the most important things I say is to keep an information bank. Now this is a reservoir of information where you kind of keep a record of all the things that you've done. So it could be anything from your work experience, keeping a diary, which is probably the most important thing from your shadowing. You keep all those notes there.

But even somewhere just to capture anything from maybe if you've come up with good sentences or just little things that you're going to add. Because that's going to help you when it comes to your personal statement and even before interview to help remind you of all the stuff that you've achieved and serve as a bit of a confidence booster. I actually talk about the information bank a little bit more in this video, which I'd recommend that you check out what you should do and why you should do it. So that's everything that you should be doing in phase one. And I would say that would extend from anything from around September if that's when you're starting your preparation all the way up to January and February.

And then by then you want to have as much of that completed so that you can move on to phase two. So phase two is all about exam preparation. As I said, you should have an idea of what sort of aptitude tests you're sitting. That could be anything from one or three of the exams depending on what you're doing. But this is the stage where you start to feel the knock-on effect from if you're well or badly prepared from the phase before.

Because what happens if you're well organized and you start early and like I say you really compartmentalize everything, what you can do is focus on one thing like the preparation and getting all the work experience and shadowing that you need. And then you can almost forget about it. You've got your diary, you can remind yourself near the time. And then you can almost leave that thing as completed and move on to the next phase, which is focusing solely on your exams to get into medicine. Because students who don't do that end up being in the stage where all they want to do is focus on their UCAT, which is what you should be doing to make sure that you score the highest.

But you still have all these unchecked boxes from the previous phase that you need to be doing when your focus should solely be on that. That's why on our Future Doc Elite Coaching Program, we help students guide them throughout the whole thing so that we make sure that they've got each thing sorted at the right phase. And then we can help guide them and kind of spend all of our time teaching them how to smash the UCAT so they don't have to worry about anything else. So let's go through this timetable now and think about roughly how I would go about planning the year. For example, if you're a grad and you're sitting the GAMSAT, you have four attempts to get the score that you need.

The score is valid for two years from the point of entry. So that means that if you're starting in September, you can do the September sitting two years before you enter, the one in March the following year, May the following year, and September around the time that you submit your application, which gives you four attempts to get the score that you need. The great thing is that you can re-sit it. It's only your last score that's taken. So you can do terribly in the first three attempts, but as long as you score and get the grade that you need in the final one, that is enough to meet the mark to get you into grad entry.

The problem can occur if you get a borderline score and you're not sure whether to re-take, because if you do and get a lower score, then you have to take the latest one. Anyway, the main point of this is that if you can get your GAMSAT out of the way, just like phase one, you can then forget about it and move on to the next thing. Now for everybody and pretty much every applicant who's applying to medicine, the chances are that you are going to be sitting the UCAT. Now most years the UCAT is from the end of July until the end of September, so you have basically a two-month window within which to sit it.

I would always argue that it's best to start your preparation early, so kind of mid-May is best. That means that you have a good couple of months to prepare and sit the UCAT early in the application window, because again for compartmentalization, you can get that out of the way, you know the score that you've got, and then that gives you a bit of time to make sure that you can A, think about whether you want to sit any other exams, or maybe if you kind of need to rethink what universities you're going to apply to based on the UCAT, you've got a little bit of time to make that decision.

So when you're deciding when you should sit your UCAT, I would consider the following three things. You want A, enough time to prepare at gives you a bit of time to make sure that you can a, think about whether you want to sit any other exams or maybe if you kind of need to rethink what universities you're going to apply to based on the UCAT, you've got a little bit of time to make that decision. So when you're deciding when you should sit your UCAT, I would consider the following three things. You want a, enough time to prepare, b, enough time so that you're minimally encroaching on the other important things, which is maybe your A-levels or maybe your final year of your degree.

And it's really important because that is the priority really, because if you don't get those scores, then you won't be allowed in. And then thirdly, you want to just make sure that you allow enough time when you sit the UCAT early enough so that you can make space for a plan B. And the other thing to consider is when you are going to sit your BMAT. Typically, you have four BMAT sittings. They are usually around February, May, September, and then finally there's one in November or end of October sort of time.

There are only eight unis that take the BMAT and some of them will consider any of the sittings, whereas others will only consider those taken in September and November. So be aware of which ones you roughly want to apply to and what their rules are before deciding which one you're going to sit. Because like I say, having these planned out ahead of time and knowing how you're going to dedicate your time, compartmentalizing it is the best way to increase your focus and chances of scoring highly enough to get into a competitive medical school. So I'm going to show you a playlist here for the UCAT because that's going to tell you exactly how much time you need to spend dedicating to the whole of your UCAT preparation, and then it's going to break it down per section and give you the best tips for each.

I've also done a similar thing for the BMAT, which you can check out here, which is going to give you exactly the same plan just for that test. So once you've done all of that, you'll finally be onto phase three, which is what I call crunch time. If you've done those first two phases really well, it's going to make this stage a whole lot easier, but you still do have a lot of things going on at the same time. This phase usually goes from mid-May to mid-October of the year that you're submitting your application. So this stage, you're going to have a lot going on.

You're probably going to be having things like your academic tests, your aptitude tests, maybe you're writing your personal statement, choosing your universities, which is super, super important. Then you might be actually doing the shadowing placement that you spent the year organizing, and finally, you might be doing some summer school for medicine, which is really useful for your application. So that's the stage that you'll probably find the most hectic and the most stressful, and typically the one that our elite students find that they're so glad that they've prepared well in the phases one and two prior. So all of phase three culminates in you submitting your application to UCAS, and then at that stage, we finally move on to phase four.

So this stage is all about getting the practice and the knowledge that you need to score highly at interview. And actually, the best thing I can do is refer you to this video where I talk about how to prepare for interviews best. So the question that my elite students ask me the most once they're going through all of this is how to stand out, and I always say that it boils down to two words. They are good exposure and good reflection, so exposure and reflection. The reason I say that is because everything that you do is going to help you stand out, so exposing yourself to extracurricular activities, getting hospital experience, all of that sort of stuff, but not only just doing it, is thinking back on it, going through it, maybe learning around the stuff that you've seen, and reflecting on it is what's going to help give you the knowledge and kind of the demonstration of the maturity and skills required to make a good doctor that are going to shine through when you apply.

Because the students that really stand out are those who have exposed themselves in hospital, they've exposed themselves by doing volunteering stuff, they've exposed themselves to a variety of impressive and really outstanding extracurricular activities and achievements, and that is all the stuff that shines through and kind of paints the picture of a really excellent candidate when they come to write their personal statement and they come to interview. Of course, making yourself stand out with the UCAT and the BMAT, and if you want to check out any of the courses we provide, that is going to help you do that to score highly. Those are one of the academic ways that you can do it, and obviously scoring highly with your grades are going to help as well, but those are the two things from an experiential point of view that are going to give the biggest bang for your buck.

And with our elite students, we work with them one-on-one to help them work out the best way that they can do this so that they can make themselves separate from the crowd when they're applying. So if you want to find out about how you can get some one-on-one lessons with helping you and coaching you on your journey to medical school, I recommend that you check out this video here where we'll talk you through some of the ways that you can get individual advice.

So for those of you who have just arrived, I'll just quickly re-explain before we dive in. So what we're doing is one of our regular sessions. We do these fortnightly with our inner circle group, the people who I'm coaching to get into medicine. But today we've opened one up to the public and it's going to be a guide on, a general guide on how to get into medical school, the journey to application and how to like nail each step. And then for each step, this is meant to be kind of more of a superficial one.

Like I say, my inner circle ones, I go a lot deeper, but here I'm just going to point you and signpost you in the right direction to give you everything that you need to hopefully go away and do it yourself. And then if you want, then you can have a look about joining the inner circle and I can talk about that later. But okay, so let's dive in. I will share my screen to start. So this, let's have a look.

Right. Let me show you this. So these are the questions that we were asking before. So those are all in the chat. So this is how to stand out when applying to medical school.

And so we'll talk about the journey to medicine. And so I know you're wondering why the hell is a MasterChef symbol, like what the hell has that got to do with applying to medicine? Well, in lockdown, I have been watching nothing but MasterChef. And you would expect by now that I'd be able to know how to cook a frangipane tart or some of the fancy stuff that they cook on there. But no, I have just watched it and I'm a great armchair critic, but I don't, haven't improved my cooking skills at all from this.

However, what I realized was when you think about medical school applications, it's a bit like the process of cooking a really fancy dish. Because really all you have is a few things. So you have a few ingredients, then you have to prepare those ingredients, then you have to present it, and then you have to know who to serve it to. So the reason I use this analogy, because the ingredients are actually very few. So when we look at ingredients, we have just a few things.

And really I put them under four main categories. So those are attributes, and that comes under your grades and your personal traits. Now we'll go, I'm going to go through each stage of these and also each stage of the cooking process of your medical school application. But also I'm going to look at each of these bits individually and how to optimize those. So I've kind of made it into a nice little, I suppose not a great acronym, but A-E-A-E.

So A&E, if you have a really bad night, you've gone to A&E twice maybe. But the main thing is, so first we look at the attributes. Do you have what it takes to get into medicine? And those are having the grades, whether that be as a postgrad, as a graduate applicant, or as a undergraduate, so applying straight from A levels. Then the second thing that we need to look at is exposure.

Now that is your work experience. Do you know what it's like to be in the hospital environment? Have you got an understanding of what medicine is like? And that is essentially all that work experience is trying to get out of you. They want to see that you understand what the environment or what the job is like of medicine.

And at the moment, this is an area that people are really struggling with. Obviously because of COVID, no one can get in-person work experience. And this is one of the things that we talk about a lot in the inner circle of sharing experiences and what we can do to stand out, because it is very difficult at the moment, but there definitely are ways. Then the third thing is the aptitude test. Of course, everybody at the moment is starting to worry about the BMAT and the UCAT.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about how we prepare for that and how we time those exams as well to optimise the outcome. And then finally, things that make us stand out. So that's the extracurricular stuff. So our achievements, our reading that we've done towards the job, anything that we have to kind of set ourselves apart from the crowd. Okay, so the thing is, these are the ingredients.

These are the things that we're going to put in our personal statements, talk about an interview. These are the basic things that we're going to put. And there are definitely a wide spanning variety of things that you can do within some of those categories. But ultimately, these are the only things that a selector or an interview panellist has got. to go on when they're choosing between candidates.

So before we kind of present our dish, we have to start doing the preparation work. And this is the phase that we're in now. And also, I would argue the most important phase because that involves all our exposure. So we need to start getting our work experience now in the form of shadowing, paid work, volunteering. You know, your further reading is important because again, this is signaling that you know what the career is, and you've, like I say, exposed yourself and got an understanding of what that is.

It's about doing the work now to get the grades, whether that be A levels, whether that be a degree, all the way up to master's and PhD level if you're applying as a postgrad. Then we would soon start to be thinking about our aptitude tests. We will start preparing for that soon. And I'll talk about, like I say later, about when is the ideal time for you individually to do that. Then our extracurricular stuff, we've still got time to develop some hobbies, make some standout achievements, maybe enter some essay competitions, do whatever it takes at this stage to be able to give ourselves the time to make a outstanding achievement.

So once we've got the preparation done, and we've got our ingredients, it's all about how we present it. So one of the life lessons I've learned from MasterChef is that you can get quite far with, well, not far, but you can do all right with a rubbish, you can get where you need to be with a not so great tasting plate of food as long as it looks pretty on the plate. I've seen people get through on MasterChef with presentation being their main thing. So, but that's really an aside. I'm joking, of course, but really what the point I'm making is that you need to take those ingredients, take that preparation that you've done and find a way to present it in the most appealing way.

So that is how you word your experiences, the things that you've gleaned from them, from your personal statement, the way you talk about your experiences, the way you talk about the stuff that you've done and the ways that it's reassured, sorry, reaffirmed that you want to be a doctor and kind of signals that you are the right person. Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. My name is Tessie and my channel name is Nella Grey. I'm watching videos of myself on YouTube. So it's all about, so you can't have one without the other.

And really going back to that MasterChef joke, I said, you don't really get through to the next stage without having tasty food that's well presented. So you need to have the experience, but you also need to talk about it in a way that makes, that shows that you've understood and that you've gained experience from it and you've reflected on it and actually taken what you need to take away to show that you would make a great doctor or you have the traits to be a doctor or you've seen the things or know enough about the career to be sure that it's the right career for you.

Okay. And then finally, you might have the best ingredients or maybe not the best ingredients, but you might have certain ingredients. You might have prepared them well, presented them nicely, but some people might not like it. So for example, I am not a fan of blue cheese. So no matter what dish you prepared for me with those ingredients, those are the ingredients that you have.

If you put them in a dish, no matter how you did them, I wouldn't like it. Okay. So let's consider if you don't have the grades, for example, that is like Cambridge not liking blue cheese. You cannot apply to Cambridge if you don't have a star AA at A level. And it's as simple as that.

I mean, in this analogy, Cambridge are probably more likely to be fans of blue cheese, but that doesn't really matter. So the point is that who we serve the dish to, i.e. the university that we apply to, needs to match the set of ingredients that we have. And they need to be somebody that are amenable to where our application is strong. So that could be that we have a good UCAT, but maybe our grades aren't as strong.

There are universities that are more inclined to those sorts of candidates. There are some who, if you've not got a great UCAT, they will still look at you as long as your GCSEs or your A level is strong. And a lot of other universities value work experience, for example. So these are the ways that we tailor what we have, we look at what we have objectively, we apply tactically. And that is when you serve the right dish to the right person, and they are happy with the tasty end results.

And that was a bit of a silly analogy, but I hope that it sticks in a way that it gets the point across that I'm trying to make. That it's all about the combination of having the right attributes towards building a strong application, doing the work ahead of time because things like work experience, extracurricular stuff, standard achievements, these are the things that are going to separate you and you need to start thinking about them ahead of time. And also, of course, your aptitude test. And then presenting them in the nicest possible way to the appropriate university that gives you the highest chance of getting in. Okay, so now that I'll…

So we're going to go through these in order now and we're going to talk about the particular ones that I've mentioned. And I'll hand over to Nella to speak about attributes. Sure. I've fixed my audio now. I don't know what was happening.

Everything was playing. But yeah, I think actually it's a really good analogy that Dr. Ash just talked about because it really makes you understand where everything works and how it works. And as silly as it might sound, it is actually a good visual representation. So if we talk about attributes, like what we said, it's that your grades and your traits.

I think that rhymes. So it's who are you and can you be a good doctor, right? So I think someone said before about their grade, they're worried that their grade might not be good enough. Just to tell you a little bit about my story, when I first applied for medical school, I didn't have good grades. I don't even know why I applied.

I had two Bs and a C. And even though there is some people, some medical schools now do take Bs, but not a lot. And you'd have to have outstanding application in other areas, but your grades are very important. And they're important because that's what shows if you actually have the capacity to learn, to learn the things that you're going to learn in medical school because medical school is difficult. And I don't know if Dr.

Ash agrees, but I actually found my A-levels content-wise so much more difficult than I do or did medical school. And that was because I don't know, yeah, I know it's crazy. That was because for me, it was a big jump from GCSEs to A-levels. It was a huge jump. So I was just like, whoa.

But when I got to medical school, I don't know if it's how my brain works. Things were themes and they were, you know, it's a lot of content to remember, but I found that the actual content, the intricacies of the content weren't as difficult for me as A-levels. But now when I go back to look at my A-levels, I just think, no, that was so easy. But it's only in hindsight. So your grades are very important.

And I don't know if some of you said that you're applying this year, so you're in A-levels, but if there happens to be some people who might be in GCSEs that are watching this, what you pick also for your GCSEs will set you up to what you do in A-levels. So that's also important. And then also your personal traits. So these traits are not necessarily personal as in, oh, I'm fun and I'm friendly, you know, that kind of things. It's to do with showing that you are going to be a good doctor and the GMC is very good with this because they've told us what the duties of our doctors are and also what that entails and what kind of things that they're looking for from you.

So I would say, you know, just become best friends with the GMC website because this will really help you to understand a lot of the things that they're looking for. So your traits, like what is outlined in the GMC, the good medical practice, like the one that you can see on the screen, talks about a lot of things, but it's things like your communication skills, it's things like your ability to be safe, you know, practicing in a safe way. It's things to do with how trustworthy you are, it's things to do with your actual knowledge, your skills. And we'll talk about it later in the personal statement, but the whole point is to try and show that you have these traits through the things that you have done and also your grades and those two things go together.

So sometimes I know when I first applied again, I didn't have any information or any knowledge before, but you know, as good as it is that you are a friendly person, it's not something you need to put on your personal statement that, oh, I'm very friendly because I mean, you don't have to word it like that, you word it in a way that shows that those traits are being highlighted. So it's understanding that that's the first thing that should be the basic thing, showing that you've got the traits to become a good doctor and also having those good grades. Those two things are the fundamentals and then you build on that with the other things.

Yeah, do you have anything else to add? Yeah, no, I… And I agree, and I would recommend that when you are trying to present yourself as the kind of person who would make a good doctor, just have a read of the good medical practice guidelines. They will literally, as you're reading them, they literally tell you what they want to see in a doctor. And the GMC regulates the medical schools, and they tell them the kind of people that they want them to recruit.

So this document will essentially tell you everything that you need to demonstrate and need to be as a person to make the kind of person that would make a good doctor. Yeah, even now I look at this sometimes, even as a medical student, as a final year medical student, applying for jobs and all these things, I still look at this because this is what you need. You don't just need it for applying to medical school, you're going to need this in practice. So it's actually essential to know, and it's essential to understand because you need to know what you need to be. So it's definitely important.

Yeah, exactly. It's a constant source of referral. I used to read it, I read it before I started my very first job as a doctor. Yeah, definitely. And the other thing I would say about grades is that grade is one of those, it's probably one of the least negotiable things.

So if you get an offer for AAA at university, and you get AAB, it's very unlikely. It does happen, but it's unlikely that they will budge on that because the competition is so fierce that there's a lot of people who they didn't offer a place who did get AAA or higher, and are willing to take your place. So I think, and I don't say that to stress you guys out, but I want you to realise that when it comes to medical school, the margins are quite fine. And you really need to do whatever it takes to make sure that you get the grades. So if that means, if you can afford it, getting a tutor, it's a good investment.

I, when I did my A-levels, I did physics and I actually really enjoyed physics and I felt like I was quite good at it, but I didn't get, I think I was getting a B and I needed an A to get into medical school. So what do you do? Well, I did what I had to do and got a tutor and it was, I think it was back then it was £20 a week. You know, what is that worth at the end of the day? I mean, would I go back and say, I wish I would have saved that money?

I think if you can afford it and if you are able to, then you've got to really do whatever it takes and put in the extra work to kind of make sure that you get the grades that you need, because like I say, it's probably the least negotiable thing of the entire process. Sorry, it's okay. Yeah, it's okay. Someone was asking if we tap into what Dr Ash already mentioned before earlier on, if you missed it at the beginning, but talking about graduate entry and when it comes to your grades, what matters the most, and most universities will say this in their entry requirements websites, when I was applying for GEM, is your degree.

So you need to be aiming for a first. I know some people who got in with a 2.1, but again, it's the same thing that Dr Ash just said, it's just as like non-negotiable as A-levels are for getting those high grades. So it's getting that first and making sure that that is the strongest thing that you have because everyone who's going to apply has a first. So that's the equivalent to those AAAs of A-levels. So yeah, that's what I'll say for GEM.

Yeah, in my experience, people can get, well, people do get in with a 2.1. A first makes it easier for you, of course, but a 2.1, so like when I was at uni myself and I had mates who were applying to medical school, I know that a lot of them were offered 2.1. So it really does depend, but obviously the more that you can do to stack the deck in your favour, the easier it will be and the higher your chances of success. For the graduate students, and I'm getting asked a lot about GAMSAT, I'm going to make a video for you guys especially. So don't worry about that for now.

So we can park that one for a bit and I'll do another session on that or a video for you. Okay. Okay, so the second thing is exposure. Now, medical school to me forms, so let me say work experience to me forms the backbone of your medical school application. Now, work experience comprises three things.

That is a regular paid job. It doesn't necessarily have to be in a healthcare setting. And that's one thing that you can think of is transferable skills. So if you work in a shop or let's say you work in a restaurant and you're client facing then you will deal with, well you have to communicate with patients all the time that you're serving. You probably if you work in a restaurant will get a lot of complaints so that's handling tricky communication situations, lots going on there.

If you work in a shop you have to handle money. Honesty and probity are a really important trait required of a doctor. That is, how trustworthy can you be to handle somebody else's money especially if you're working in a small business. You might even be given the keys and be asked to lock up. That is responsibility.

In most jobs you are required to demonstrate responsibility by the fact that you have to show up at a certain time and be reliable. These are all things that people discount their experiences in that they minimize them and think that they're not significant but actually a lot of people my age when I was 16 weren't working or weren't doing a lot outside of school. And these are all the little things that present the image that you are someone who's willing to work hard and has those traits that are required to make a good doctor. The biggest thing I say to my students and the biggest problem that I have with them this is all work experience now whether it's paid work or not is that they will say silly things for things not wanting to include them in their, at least consider including them in their personal statement slash kind of what they talk about at the interview.

Because they'll say things like oh I did that two years ago it's like an amazing experience but they did it two years ago so they're completely going to forget about it as if it never happened. Or like I did this really great job but I only did it with children, I only worked with children I didn't work with adults so should I include that? It's like yes, yes if it's a good experience it doesn't really matter so much when it is or what age level you did it with. They all count they all can be really good and it's more about what you got out of them it's that reflection that's the most important thing.

And one of the things that I say at this stage is to set up a system where you're collecting everything so collect all the information and on my course I have a really robust system for doing this but don't filter anything at the moment and just get everything down on paper all the things that you've done because you might think oh yeah I did that really cool thing years ago I just forgotten about it but it's actually a really good valid experience or achievement whatever it is have it somewhere and collect it somewhere so that when you come to write your personal statement it's not a case of like trying then to think of all the things it's going to be going to that reference resource that you've got and being like alright which of these do I actually want to include and then you'll be in a position where it's kind of like selecting the best rather than trying to pluck things out of thin air so that's a system to make sure that you are collecting all your experiences and like I say when you're collecting them to start with just remove the filter and just put everything and then you can do the selection after.

Nellie any thoughts I've got more to say about work experience but Nellie any thoughts on that? Yeah I was going to add that one thing that I found helpful as well in the collection part of it is asking people sometimes you forget what you've done and your achievements I do this a lot even now when I'm writing CVs or like any cover letters I'll ask like my mum or my husband what was that thing that I did what have I done in the last five years that's really impressive and they'll remind me they'll be like remember you did that thing or remember you did that thing so ask people around you as well because sometimes things that you know we tend as humans we tend to be you know harsh on ourselves and we think oh that's not important or that's not impressive but if someone else is impressed by it then most likely you know other people are going to be impressed by it and you can use it and like do that transferable skills thing so that's something I'll just add just ask other people as well.

Yeah and I actually read in a book the other day about you should speak to the people close to you who know you best and ask them what your three best traits are and it's a really nice you know it's not a really medicine thing it's just a general life thing but it's a really nice exercise actually because I text my mum and my brother and I think my dad and my girlfriend and I asked them what are you know my three best traits and it seems like you know obviously like the way I worded it was you know I'm doing this exercise from a book and blah blah but it's a really lovely thing to do because you know the people who know you best can really tell you honestly what the best your best three traits are and it kind of leads to a really beautiful exchange because then obviously I was like really grateful So you need to have some volunteering.

Now volunteering presents a difficulty at the moment and an opportunity because COVID has shut down a lot of opportunities but it's actually also generated a lot of opportunities. There are lots of COVID-related volunteer posts that you can do because people, for example, who are shielding and need looking after, that caring for someone and a paid job that can do that or a volunteer job that can do that is an amazing thing to have on your personal statement on your CV. So I think while we're still in lockdown there are actually opportunities to be had with volunteering around COVID. So I would say either Google volunteering COVID in your local area or just go to the Royal Voluntary Society and there's absolutely loads of stuff.

I know a lot of people have got great experience as vaccinators. I think you have to be 18 to do that but there are lots of opportunities around COVID that have presented themselves. Then so work experience is obviously the… So when I say work experience, shadowing is the real sticking point at the moment and there are lots of virtual work experiences that are good and some are better than others and if you guys want to share in the chat some of your best ones then that would be really beneficial to other people. But really the thing that's going to really make people stand out is in-person work experience and I think as we're coming out of lockdown we're going to be in a position where it's going to still be possible to do in-person work experience again because it's my prediction that the differentiator between a lot of people are going to be those who've managed to get it and those who haven't.

Nella, any thoughts? Yeah, I would agree the same thing because especially right now because the opportunities are there, they might be scarce or they might be hard to get but they are there and like what you said they will be the differentiator whether people were willing to go out of their way and get that experience or not. Of course you'll have experience that you have been doing even from before but it's already been a year since Covid so I think it's thinking outside the box as well of other things. You don't have to wait for a foundation programme like a charity or whatever to help with volunteering.

You could volunteer in your neighbourhood, you could go and go see people around your community that needs help, like you go out of your way so you don't have to wait in terms of like voluntary work not in a clinical setting but outside of a clinical setting so I would say think outside the box as well so that you can try and get as much as possible that you can you know transfer and things like that and yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There was one more thing I was going to say about work experience which I'll come back to because I have slipped my mind. Okay, so other than that we have the aptitude tests.

Now I think with the aptitude tests people get really stressed out about the aptitude tests and for the grad meds like I say I'll do a GAMSAT separate video soon, I'll make one for you. But with regard to the UCAT and the BMAT, especially the UCAT, people do worry about it and I think work themselves into a point of diminishing return sometimes because what I want you to consider the UCAT as is a performance and I consider it a bit like sprint training or sprint sprinting. If you're a hundred meter sprinter what you don't is sprint every day for five hours non-stop because that would be ridiculous you would just burn out and your time your 100 meter time would get worse as the day went on.

That's not the aim of it, the aim is to be at a level where you are performing consistently and on demand. Right so how would you train if you're a sprinter? Well you do short bursts and then long recoveries and then do that as many times as you can make sense before you meet that point of what they call diminishing returns and that point of diminishing returns is where more effort doesn't necessarily equal more output and actually some people when they are practicing too much for the UCAT imagine it's a onslaught on the senses you're being tested on your verbal skills your logic your numeracy skills all those things against the clock really really fast so you probably do well for the first couple of hours maybe even three hours of testing but there comes a certain point where you'll be tired and you'll be performing and you know your performance isn't as high so it feels like the more they're doing the the worse they're getting but it's just typically because they've kind of burned themselves out so burnout burnout from UCAT can be a real thing.

Now BMAT is slightly different in the sense that BMAT is knowledge-based as well so there's an element of kind of there's numeracy verbal spatial all that sort of stuff but there's also biology maths chemistry physics so that is knowledge-based where you know revising within reason the more you revise the more you learn the more you solidify and that helps but it's about being effective with study not just quantitative because long rests are what's going to help. So with the UCAT I say you have to think about the timing of the UCAT so I always say that when you sit your UCAT as in when you're picking the date you have to consider three things you have to a have minimal impact on the life events which is usually basically your exams you want to not have them interfere with your exams as little have them interfere with your exams as little as possible you also want to give yourself enough preparation time now I think two to three months is probably on the long side but you know if you'll see people who are on YouTube saying three months minimum but I think two to three months is about the optimal time and also you want to do them early enough that because when you do the UCAT you get your score immediately now you don't see you don't see where you lie compared to everybody else but it doesn't usually vary by that much so in when you get a score you can look at the averages for previous years and I did a long talk about this so on my YouTube channel I did a talk about what the averages are so you can gauge roughly where your score is so you'll know and again on that video I have the deciles by year so you know if you've got 2400 where would that put you that would probably put you in about the eighth decile or the 80th decile 80th percentile eighth decile so that would put you you know in the in the bottom end one year and then you can see based on how you scored where roughly you are and if you do it early enough that gives you time to rethink your application remember we were talking about tactical application and if you give yourself enough time you can a consider what universities you're going to apply to but more importantly you can consider if you want to sit the BMAT as a kind of plan B and some people are more suited to the BMAT than the than the UCAT so it is something worth considering for people and then in terms of preparation I would say so there are two phases of your revision for UCAT so the first one is learning the how to do the questions so I have an online course that well I'm just releasing that the 2021 course in the next couple of weeks now and and that goes through all the types of questions that come up and how to answer them and at first you just need to learn those techniques so you need to learn how to you know when this sort of question comes up how you do it what's the most efficient way remember that this is a time-pressured exam that's the most crucial element of it that the reason that people don't score well is because people don't finish it so you need to learn how to be efficient and accurate at the same time.

So firstly the first bit is learning techniques so that is just getting through the material and learning how to do it but after that it's all about practice so you need to do practice questions and get good at doing the questions under pressure so that's when I say you should simulate the test as much as possible so practice on a computer because you'll be doing it on a computer. I would recommend Medify and those guys I've actually for the inner circle I've got a discount for you guys that you can use because we just got a deal with the Medify people to get quite a big discount.

So yeah practice on a computer that's really really important because you know we want to simulate the test as much as possible we want to mimic the time pressure we want to mimic doing it on a screen it's very different to doing it on a piece of paper in a book and we want to prepare for that performance like I say this I would consider this more of a performance than a knowledge-based test and we want to get ourselves as ready as we can for that and remember that is because it's a screen because it's intense because it's time pressured that is why we get tired from it and we don't want to overdo it so preparing intelligently and giving yourself lots of breaks and not overdoing it is the key to sustaining that practice.

Nella any thoughts? Yeah that was really good I think for me what what I would advise as well and something that I did wrong the first time and right the second time what Dr Ash just said and mentioned the idea of being clever about how you do it so the first time I did it I did it wrong in that I don't know if there is a way to do it wrong but I did do it wrong in that I started practicing before I understood so what I did was I just started to just I went on the UCAT website and you know downloaded the the practice one and practiced it realized you know kind of what it is and then just kept practicing like I just kept practicing how to do the UCAT which was just completely not efficient because I didn't understand the UCAT so I would say that you need to understand how how it works and what it's asking from you and that's you know people asking you what are the can you give tips there's I don't think there is such thing as quick tips for something like the UCAT you have to actually understand well how the how the exam is set up and what it wants to get from you so it's you know whether you're paying for a course to help you to do that or whether you're learning from books whatever it is knowing the strategies of how to tackle the UCAT is the most important thing first before you start practicing because if you just practice with no prior knowledge you end up just practicing wrong and then you're going to get jaded because you're going to think I'm so rubbish at this and the reason why you might be rubbish at it is because you don't know let's say basically what you're doing because it's it's a very strategic type of exam the second time I did it I got a really high score because I did the the prior work then after that I went got a course understood how it works and then was able to then practice and another thing that Dr Ash said that is very important is if you keep practicing and you're practicing wrong you're going to do the exact same thing in the exam you're going to end up in the actual live one you're going to end up you know you're just going to you're basically simulating and your simulation is going to be the exact same most of the time to your the actual thing so I would say that don't just practice before you understand understand and then and then practice and I also agree with the three month thing I don't think you need more than three months because you will get burnt out I yeah I think one to three months is enough I would I think one is maybe pushing it so maybe let's just stick with two maybe in the middle but yeah so I wouldn't go like a year of practicing that the UCAT I think once you get it you you you understand it after like a few months so that's what I would say yeah meet me in the middle at two months but yeah um no I agree and and yeah just learning proper techniques so yeah don't worry I've got um like I say I've got the 2021 version of the course coming out very soon so that will give you proper technique for literally every type of question that comes out yeah oh and another thing I was going to add as well is you mentioned something you said some people might be better suited at the BMAT and I think that's something that people overlook like to really actually decide whether which one you want to take because I know that most people most medical schools except expect the UCAT um if not oh yeah not most of them not all of them some don't have any entrance exam but sometimes some people are better suited at the BMAT and then you might realize you know what and even after I've tried, I'm just better at this one and maybe you just want to apply to BMAT only or just none.

Obviously that really narrows down your choices and that wouldn't be my first choice but understand as well how you work and sometimes you don't want to end up doing both if you can help it. So that's something that I would say, like if you can help it by trying to mix it up with not doing one or the other or none, then try that. So think about it as well strategically. Cool, questions in the chat, when we're going to end, probably about 8.30 because we'll do a bit of Q&A after and we might give you guys the chance to do some breakout rooms as well, that usually helps when people can talk to one another.

Okay, great. So Nana, do you want to talk about extracurricular and further reading? Yeah, I can take that. Yeah, so your extracurricular, you know, sometimes I think that sometimes we get confused with the extracurricular with the traits part of it because you could think that you're, I mean it can go hand to hand because you know, your traits can be shown with your extracurricular in that way but your extracurricular and your further reading is basically trying to show that you are a wholesome person, that you are more than just, you know, a book nerd that only reads and that's it because you're going to show, you're going to need to show that you are dynamic.

So this kind of just goes into kind of like your sports, your hobbies, your passions, your things like that on the side, outside of medicine or outside of school, what are you, like what else do you do and what's interesting and this is your, I think that this is the chance a lot of the time, especially in the personal statement to kind of stand out in a very small part of the personal statement because you could show something that's very different that other people wouldn't have done because like what we were talking about, for the most part everyone's going to have work experience and you're going to have a very similar type of personal statements and what makes them the same is because people, most people do the same thing.

The only thing that will probably differentiate them is how you write them but the one thing that makes you is who you are, your hobbies and what you do outside of medicine and yeah, you're trying to show that you can do more and this is important because as a doctor or even as a medical student, the reason why this is important is because you're going to need it. You're going to need something outside of medicine because medicine can be very consuming both mentally, physically, everything so you need to be able to adapt and show that you are more. So extracurricular activities I would say is like I said before, things like your sports, what sports do you do, do you play instruments and did you do something completely interesting like skydiving for something that you can show that is outside of the norm because most people will have played an instrument as well and will do a team sport and not only are you trying to show that you're more and you're wholesome but also doing that, like what we said before, that transferable skills like if you're part of a team then you understand team working and it goes back into the trades thing and who you are as a doctor or who you're going to be as a doctor because you understand teamwork because you are a team member or you are a leader or you show commitment to something because you've been playing violin since you were five and now you, you know, 10, 15 years later you're still playing it showing that you can be committed to something for a long time which goes into medicine because medicine is a lifelong vocation or maybe you constantly have to relearn how to do new music, I don't know, in violin which transfers into medicine being a dynamic and constantly changing and evolving career so it's things like that that you can show those transferable skills with as well and then the further reading aspect of it I would say is just keeping up to date, keeping up to date with medicine and what's happening in the world so for example a lot of you should be aware about, you know, what's happening with the vaccine, how does it work, why are people apprehensive, you know, the medical aspect of it, things like that that you should constantly be learning but also knowing things that, again, it's all about standing out, right, knowing things that other people might not know about certain things or being involved in research work especially if you're doing graduate entry as well, things like being published and having like research that you're ongoing that you're doing so this is your chance to basically stand out like I said before but also show that you are committed, you're committed to medicine in the further reading so it can be things like what Ash was on the screen and health websites, but also just books, just read books.

Two of my favorite books are medical books that are kind of realistic, but not, but you guys probably already know about them and have already read them. But it's, This is Going to Hurt, one of my favorite medical books. It's by, I can't remember his name, he was a junior doctor in the UK, and then he quit. Sorry? Adam Kay.

Adam Kay, that's the one. I read it, I listened to an audio book. It's fantastic. So, and that is actually a very realistic book about, you know, the challenges of being a junior doctor and things like that. And then you can also read something more, you know, that's more, you know, breathy, like When Breath Becomes Air is another really good book from a surgeon in America and how he got cancer.

And then his perspective was from the patient point of view. So read other things, basically, not just journals and things, but also things from a medical perspective. Yeah, so I think that's what I'll say about extracurricular and further reading. It's your chance to stand out, but also make it transferable and show that you are more than just, you know, in your books. Yeah, absolutely.

And I would say that, you know, you've still got time now to demonstrate. If you're thinking, I don't have anything, you probably do have more than you think. But if you're really thinking, I don't have anything, then you still have time. It doesn't take long to develop a modicum of skill in one of these things, at least enough to talk about the benefits. Remember, the point of all of these are that it's how you're going to present these ingredients, right?

You're going to be able, if you, let's say we were living in a non-COVID world, but let's say if you joined even a football team for the next six months, you can talk about the teamwork skills that you've gained from that. And that's a really important thing because teamwork is such an important part of medicine. And you can, in those six months, gain enough experience to be able to talk about that. If you were to learn a new instrument, say you've never played an instrument before, if you were to learn and get to a reasonable level in, again, six months, three months, whatever it is, lifelong learning is really important.

And to say, like, I managed to teach myself something, and I managed to demonstrate that I can pick things up quickly. And not only that, let's say it's violin or piano, you can always say, like, it's also taught me manual dexterity, which is important for procedures. So there are always things that you can do. I would consider a language, a sport, and or a instrument. Those are three areas that are quite easy wins and good and crowd pleases as well.

But yeah, the thing that you have to think about is put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's reading these personal statements or who's interviewing you. It's usually a 50-something-year-old hospital consultant who is going to be reading a lot of applications. They're going to be reading lots of personal statements. And sometimes all it takes is one thing to be like, oh, that's interesting. I like this personal statement.

Because whether it's fair or not, with the sheer amount that they have and the amount of time that they have to do them to read through them, when I was reading through them, with the best will in the world, I would read them quickly. I would scan them. I wouldn't sit there and read them like a novel or like you do when you're sitting down to read something. So you have to have those things that make them want to invite you to interview, to ask you more about them, to be like, oh, that's interesting. I'd like to ask them more about that.

So those sorts of things that stand out. Now, I mean, there are so many things that I talk about on my course about like really amazing, outstanding achievements that people have achieved that you can imagine if you were reading those would make you want to invite somebody. And one of the, I won't name them, but one of our current members has played drums on stage with a very famous guitarist. And that's a really cool thing to be able to put on your personal statement. And even though it's not academic and it's not particularly medical and that kind of, like I say, academic sort of achievement, it's still something cool.

Doctors are still people at the end of the day. I would read that and be like, that's a really cool thing. Yeah, I'd love to invite that person to interview to ask them more about that. So think along those things. You obviously don't want to do crazy stuff for the sake of it.

It needs to be reasonable. But at the same time, think of things that would pique someone's interest. And just to go back, someone did ask about the BMAT. So again, I'll be doing a course, and nearer the time I'll be doing BMAT-specific stuff. But I would say with the BMAT, again, it's a bit more knowledge-based.

So your physics, your maths, your chemistry, your biology, that is stuff that you'll hopefully be doing in your A-levels. So it should just be a case of refreshing your memory. That is more content and knowledge-based examination. So that is something that, unlike the UCAT, where I say it's performance-based, that stuff is knowledge-based. So obviously, studying effectively with that is the way to go.

Then you do have the more IQ-type tests that you do in the UCAT, and you also get those in the BMAT. So you get spatial and numeracy and logic. The numeracy, I would say, having your mental arithmetic on point really helps. Again, with that section, I would say practicing questions, that's one way of doing it. That one really, that part I would treat like the UCAT.

And the final one is the essay writing. So practice your essay writing. Get good at… Actually, again, sorry to keep referring you to more YouTube videos, but I have a YouTube video on four books that will instantly improve your written English. And the best one that I would recommend is Revising Prose.

I think it's William Irvine. I can't remember the author. But in that video, I have the link to the book. And that one, literally the first two chapters changed the way I write. So it's about practicing essays, but taking a step back and looking at the quality of your written English and how you can improve it.

And reading a book like that really opened my eyes to it. So yeah, that's how I'd approach the BMAT. But don't worry, you've got plenty of time and I've got some talks on the way about that. Okay, so then we're on to the presentation stage, right? So I was forgetting my analogy there.

So this is the time where you are packaging all those experiences, all these things that we've gathered now, and then you're presenting them in a way that makes them appealing, makes someone want to first invite you to interview, because that is the point of the personal statement. Apart from the one university that doesn't interview everywhere else, the point of the personal statement is to get you to the next hurdle, which is interview. And then the point of interview is to convince them that you are a worthy medical student, and then to get them to offer you a place, right? So yeah, I won't go into too much about how to structure your personal statement, but I would say that you divide it into six.

And you do, basically you divide it into three elements. The first element is why you want to study medicine. The second is your work experience. So again, that is actually, the work experience will probably comprise half of the word count. And that is spaced across the three things, the three elements of work experience, which is paid work, shadowing, and volunteering.

And then you do a little bit on extracurricular, that's the third element. And then you finish with why you want to study medicine again. So that's why I say six. So it's a six on why medicine, three six on work experience divided into those three subcategories, a six on extracurricular, and then a final six on why you want to study medicine again. And those aren't, that's not a hard rule, that is just a rough guideline with how to structure it and how to break up your word count.

Now, it doesn't have to be strict, you don't have to do the things 4,700 characters off the top of my head. You don't have to split that evenly into six, they can spill into each other a bit. Sometimes people have more experience in one area, and they'll want to beef that out at the expense of something that they've got less experience in. That's absolutely fine. And typically, although I say six for ease of explanation, your extracurricular stuff typically ends up being more like a quarter where you're borrowing words from the other sections.

But that is just a rough guide to help. And again, I will be doing, and I think I have a webinar like this on my YouTube, but I'll be doing some more personal statements, live stuff. Some questions for you as well. And then interviews is a whole thing that we need to prepare for. And really, I would leave preparing for interviews until the point where you've submitted your application.

That is when you can forget, you know, take a breath from all the stuff that you've done and turn away from that now to start focusing on interviews. So I won't go into interviews too much. But all I will say with interviews is there is a lot of material to cover. Get a comprehensive resource. Again, I have an online course, but you know, just get anything where you can prepare yourself for the kind of questions that are coming up.

Because the trick to interviews is to be prepared but not rehearsed. Because the things that will throw you are not having thought of how you would answer a question before. Once you've heard the question and just thought of an answer and then kind of tweaked the answer to make it the best it can be, that is when you will be able to answer questions off the cuff or when their word is slightly differently to the ones that you've rehearsed. Which is why it's important not to be rehearsed but practiced. And then when they ask you something that you've kind of talked about before in your preparation, you can reframe it in the context of the question that they're asking but deliver a strong answer because the kind of thought behind it and the sentiment behind your answer is already something that you've thought about and kind of worded and formulated in your mind already.

Nella, I've spoke for a while now. Yeah, I'll just say about the personal statement as well. It's good to have that structure in your mind like that because as much as it's not strict, it helps you so that one, you don't miss anything out but also it gives you a general guide on how to do it. And I would say also the most important thing, well it's not the most important thing but one of is those first and sixth, like your first sentence and your last sentence. So I think that those are quite important because that's what introduces you to that person and like what Dr.

Ash said, most of the time, well I won't say most of the time, but a lot of the time, people are not doing a detailed analysis of your personal statement unless it stands out then maybe someone will go and be like, okay that was interesting and they might go back and read it in more detail. So they will just naturally, it's like naturally when you're reading a book, unless you're really interested in that book, you might skim through or you might read the first sentence, see what that book is about. When you pick up a book in Dublin, think about it that way and you want to see what it's about, you read the back and you might read the first sentence and you might want to read the end or whatever.

So it's the same thing. So you want to grab attention straight away so that first sentence and the last sentence is important because the last sentence is the last impression that they're going to have on you, which is the last thing they're going to think of you when they put the personal statement down and that first part is the entry to who you are. So I'll say that those two are quite important as well in the personal statement and having that general structure in your mind will really help you so that you don't miss anything out and you will realize as most of you may have started to write your personal statements, it's really short.

Like what Dr. I said, it's 4,700, it's like 500 words, I think, altogether. So it's an A4 page. So you really don't have a lot of space. So you really have to be prepared before and what we mentioned earlier of that gathering part of it is why that's so important of gathering all of your experiences and all that stuff on somewhere separate because then you can put it all together properly and I know that Dr.

Trash has a really in-detail course on that on personal statements and interviews, but yeah, if you don't have that kind of strategy to it before you go, you'll find it overwhelming and before you know it, you finish your A4 piece of paper and you still have just kind of talked about why you want to study medicine. So just think about it that way as well. That's all I have to say about that. Yeah, being succinct is key. And one of the formats that I would always recommend to follow for actually both how you word things when you speak them at interview and how you write them down on your personal statement is what you did, what you learned, and then link it back to why it will make you a good doctor.

And that could be a lesson that you learned or why that lesson is important, what traits it strengthened in you, anything that will link back to being a good doctor. But that's what they want to see, that format, that three-step process. So question in the chat about a graduate entry medicine programs, are they four years or three and a half years? They are four years. Yeah, cool.

Okay, so, and the final bit is being tactical, right? So like I say, we have a lot of these ingredients. Well, actually, I say we have a lot, there are only four real things that are going to dictate your application to medical school. And then those ingredients that you have, it's all about how you present them. But then the final element is, like I say, once you've prepared that dish, you serve that dish to people who like that dish.

If you have a university that doesn't like blue cheese, don't serve them blue cheese. So if you have low, if you are on the lower end of the accepted grades, don't apply to Cambridge or Oxford, it's just going to be a wasted place, isn't it? And so think, so you're going to have, you're essentially going to be presented with a few situations. You are going to be someone who is either high or low on the aptitude test. So apply, there are universities that are a bit more lenient to low aptitude test scores.

Then there are universities that want high GCSE scores. If you don't have great GCSEs, well, rule those out because it's going to be a waste of application spot, most likely. Now, the best thing to do is, if you're not sure, is to call the university. I give loads of guidance on how, you know, on what universities you should apply to tactically. But I, you know, even my inner circle students who I do long sessions with and I get to know them quite personally, I don't know their life better than they do.

Even, you know, their family probably don't know their own situation quite as in-depth as they do. No one's ever going to know your life as well as you do. So when you call the university, it's important that you call the university and tell them your situation and they can say, yeah, you are somebody who would be eligible. You're someone who's likely to do well. They will tell you those things.

So ask them specifically and do the work up front to make your life easier when it comes to the actual application cycle, because it will be a lot less stressful to know that you're applying to the most suited universities to you. Yeah, definitely. I think the worst, I think one of the worst things that people do is to generalise medical school applications. I know that they obviously, it's quite general in how you approach the thing, the application, but it really can be tailored to the university and you should know the universities that you're applying to, you should really know the ins and outs of their process of, you know, do they use the UCAT as the cut off point and then they choose their interviewees?

Some, you know, a lot of universities do that. Some don't do that. Some actually really rely on the personal statement. So, and some of the things you might not know exactly, but a lot of them will tell you what they do. So understand the universities that you're applying to.

Like what Dr. Ash said, there's no, nothing worse than wasting a spot because you really want to somehow a miracle happen that you get into Cambridge, even though you know that you're predicted, you know, an A and two Bs, I don't know, whatever, but it's understanding that and not generalising and don't ever underestimate just literally reading the entry requirements page of the uni. I know it sounds so like basic, but a lot of people don't do that. You know, they'll say, oh GC, I think people ask general questions like, do my GCSEs matter? Well, they might matter, but they might not.

It depends on the university. So understand that like what, and I keep saying the same thing, but honestly, I know that a lot of people really overlook that part of just going to the website and looking at the entry requirements as well. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it's important, you know, it will benefit you to do your own research.

So yeah, don't try, you will be better off the more information you get about it. So why are websites helpful to see entry requirements for unis? What websites? What websites? So there are a few.

I have a comparison tool, which I'm just actually updating at the moment. Yeah, so there are comparison tools out there that you can just Google and they will tell you, but like I say, go on the universities again and go on their websites and speak to them. And you can, like I say, you can call them and literally you can tell them your entire life. You can tell them your whole life story and they will say yes or no, you're eligible here. And you can even say like, look, what's the bar like for entry?

Am I someone who historically is likely to do well or am I not? And they will tell you that. They will say like, yeah, you might just get through. Or they might say, no, no, you've got a very good chance with the things, with what you've presented to us. Or, you know, they might say, I would recommend you apply somewhere else.

But that's time well spent because it's a year-long application cycle. Well, a nine-month application cycle. And, you know, spending a few hours, maybe a day, phoning universities is a much better time investment than wasting nine months applying to something that you realistically weren't giving yourself the best chance at. Okay, cool. So we're going to answer some questions now.

Let's see how we're doing for time. What's the time? And just to let you guys know before we do Q&A, is that I have just hired a couple of new tutors. So that means I have a few, I think about three spaces left on the elite program. Now, the elite program is a one-on-one coaching program.

You get access to all the online courses that I told you about. So that's something for every aspect of the UCAP, the BMAT, the personal statement course, interview course, and also the how to get into medicine course. That's a really important one because that literally lays out the journey and tells you what you need to be doing now rather than wait till September and you're scrambling around to fill the holes. Literally, you can know ahead of time so you can prepare. And like I say to all my students, the habits and the things that you start doing now accumulate and compound over time so that when you get to September, the experiences have grown exponentially in some cases so that your standard is really, really high.

So those are the courses and then you get a tutor that you see one-on-one. You get about three to four sessions a month. So it works out pretty much about one a week and it's a lot more in-depth versions of these sorts of talks. We do deep dives on all the sections of the application and depending on what time of year it is and what part of the application cycle we're at, we will do in-depth lessons on that particular thing. So actually, let's hear from somebody who is already part of the elite program.

I saw Tiawana's here. Tiawana, if you're there and you happen to, do you want to unmute and tell us a little bit and share your screen if you're happy and tell us a little bit about your experience of the program so far? Yeah, I can hear you. Hello, so my name's… Sorry?

Hi. Hello, my name's Tiawana and I'm applying for medicine this year. I joined the program probably a month ago, maybe two months ago. And ever since joining, I felt so much more supported. Going into medicine and the application process, there are so many things that you need to do.

But joining the program really highlighted to me the areas in which I need to focus on. And this will save so much time and it just brings a lot of comfort to you because I know from speaking to my friends who are doing medicine already and to speaking to people who want to do medicine, one of the most common regrets is not knowing exactly what you should have been doing or having a lack of guidance. And what the FutureDoc program can do is pinpoint exactly where you need to work on. Sorry, I can't hear you. Thanks, Tiawana, sorry.

Cool. So let me give… If you guys, like I say, I've got like literally, I think I've got three spots on that. So if you guys want to apply to that, obviously you have to fill out an application form and then you have to just have a call with me one-on-one and then I kind of make a decision whether it's something that we can offer. But if you'd like to apply, feel free, there's the link.

And also I've got lots of videos coming up on YouTube. So that's my latest one. Hi, when is the next inner circle meeting? So that'll be next Wednesday. Normally it would have been today, but we did this kind of one-off session.

So we're going to do the inner circle meeting next Wednesday. Then, is there a big difference between the advanced program and the elite program? Yes, we're actually phasing out the advanced program. So the elite program as it is this year is new. It's a new version.

And we've kind of decided that because the advanced program was kind of, when we found that the elite program was having so much success, we kind of felt like it was silly to do anything other than that. So we kind of have phased that out now and we are moving to just the elite program. And actually I've got a new website update coming in the next couple of weeks that's going to not have that on there anymore. So go ahead, Nella. Oh, it's okay.

We're talking to medical student be just as beneficial as talking to doctors. Yeah, absolutely. It's different. It's beneficial in different ways because for example, if you're talking to a consultant who, you know, is in their forties or something, they have not been in current medical school in 20, 30 years. So it's understanding how the, you're basically understanding, you're asking for different questions.

So if you're asking a medical student, you're asking about the, how medical school is, how, you know, the workload, things like that. So your questions are going to be different. Whereas talking to doctors is more understanding the actual environment and what it is like to be a doctor. So it's just as beneficial because it will help you to understand. It's like to be a medical student, but also medical students have other ones who have applied most recently.

So they're going to know more about the application process and what they would advise probably better than someone who is already a doctor because it's been such a long time and things change. They don't change that often, but they can. So I think it's just as beneficial. Not one is better than the other. It just depends what you're asking for exactly.

Yeah, and remember, so medical school and being a doctor are two different things and you're applying to do both. You're applying to go to men to be a medical student and then with the view to becoming a doctor for a much bigger proportion of your life. But, you know, you have to do both. You have to get through medical school to be a doctor. And that's what they want to see.

They want to see that you've got the grit to become a doctor, but also to get through medical school. And then, yeah, I think remember the whole point of these conversations is to get a flavor for what medicine is like and to let yourself know or to reassure yourself that it's the right choice for you. And that's the whole point of it. So, you know, it's beneficial to speak to both, you know, get this. Obviously, there's a point where it becomes a bit ridiculous, but the more you can get an insight of it, the better, really, to a point.

Cool. When you do the APTU test, is there just one date you are given to do the test for the year? So you're only allowed to do the test once per cycle. This year, because of COVID, so I'll talk about the UCAT and I'll talk about the BMAT. So the UCAT is, so the date that you can book your UCAT is 28th of June.

I would recommend that you decide when you want to do it and get on it, book early, get there for like as if you're waiting for a concert ticket. So probably won't sell out as quickly as a concert. But, you know, make sure you're there on time to get the date that you want. And the dates this year are the 26th of July until 29th of September, end of September, basically. You only get to sit it once in the cycle.

And that's it. And then the BMAT, usually you have February, April, February, May, September and November. This year, we've only got, we've had February, but we've got November and September. If you want to apply to Oxbridge, you have to do one of those later sittings. You can't do the, you can't do the earlier sittings.

Yeah, I think that answers the question. Shelton, can I just say something extra on the UCAT? Yeah, of course. So on the 2nd of June, that is when the registration will open. So you can create your account before.

Because I was on talkbits yesterday and I said that it was a lot harder to book the UCAT if you just booked it when the opening started, if that makes sense. So registering before can actually make it a lot easier. Yeah, thank you. No, you're completely right. I don't want to bombard people with loads of dates, but yeah, it's very true, actually.

So make sure, yeah, give yourself a few days to complete the registration before. And then, you know, 9am 28th is when the places are up for grabs. OK, let's see. Can you reschedule the date of taking the test once you've already booked the date? Question, I think you can.

I think you can, but it's tricky. I wouldn't aim to do that. Yeah. When would you recommend to best, oh sorry, how competitive is medicine in Lithuania? I'll answer both.

Medicine in Lithuania is not competitive to get in. Now it's a little bit more competitive, but it's nowhere near as competitive as the UK. So you definitely have a higher chance of getting in Lithuania. I can help you see that if you want that. And then when would you recommend to best sit the UCAT and how long?

OK, so I think we mentioned earlier before about the when to best sit. Use best sit when you are ready. So you have the three months, like you've got a three month period of being able to sit in from July to September. So if you give yourself the time to study for it, that one to three months that we talked about. So if you want to sit in August, you can book it for August and then start studying for it or practicing for it around June, July or June-ish or even before.

So you give yourself that one to three months and then book it. So the best time to sit is and you are ready where you don't have any distractions like what Dr Ash said before, you're not doing exams, you have the time to actually study for it, that's what I would say. And yeah. How long? Sorry, were you going to say something?

Yeah, no, no, I was just tackling the next question. So fees for Lithuania, I think you said they were about 10 grand a year, right? Yeah, yeah. Cool. So one thing that I'd recommend, sorry, one of the questions asking about the time frame.

So I would say it's like this. So let's say you want to, let's say you're going to start medicine in September 2022. You would apply in September 2021. And I would recommend that you should have started in September 2020 preparing. That's the kind of timeline I would recommend.

So let's say, so that's basically, that's the timeline for people who are applying this coming September. So you want to be having your, between now and June, July sort of time, you want to be getting all your work experience, all that stuff prepared. You then want to be starting cooking your personal statement around May, June, getting the first drafts ready around that sort of time. You, depending on when you sit in UCAT, UCAT is July to end of September. So depending on where you're sitting and how much time you want to prepare.

So I'll add two to three months, as we were saying before that. BMAT is either September, start of September or start of November. Again, prepare as appropriate. Applications are 5th of September. Sometimes it changes, but usually about 5th of September to 15th of October.

And then interviews, anything from November all the way up to May sometimes. So if you want, you can get a free timeline on my website, futuredoc.co. And if you scroll to the bottom, you can get, just put your email in and I'll send you a free timeline where you can have that all mapped out properly. I think I missed a question earlier that said, if you're, how long is the application process if you're applying from South Africa to a school in California? I have no idea about the American process.

I don't think, yeah, I think, yeah, I don't know if Dr. Ash does, but in terms of applying to America, I have no idea. I think we're more, I would say, Europe based. Okay, I think we'll do one more question, then we'll call it a day. I was going to do breakout rooms, but we've gone on for too long.

So inner circle guys, we'll do breakout rooms and like chatting and kind of helping each other out. The breakout rooms are usually really good, actually. So maybe I'll do them on the next public one, because it's really good to help each other with like little problems and you share a lot of ideas and it kind of makes everybody a lot stronger. So that's a really good thing, but I don't think we've got time to do that now, unfortunately. So we'll do one more question and we'll call it a day.

So, is it better to hand in your application early? I would say so, yes. Again, it depends when you've done your aptitude test or what aptitude test you're doing. If you're doing the BMAT in November, well then, because the only argument for not doing it early is that if you do your UCAT, like I say, you can use that score to calibrate whether you need to rethink your university choices. That's the only kind of thing to consider.

Other than that, yes, I would say as long as you've given yourself adequate time to prepare and enough time to do personal statements and enough time to prepare for your UCAT and all that sort of stuff, I think the sooner that you do it, the better, because the universities do pick them up as they come in and they will start issuing interviews earlier and get it, you know, you can kind of get the process. It's an anxiety provoking process, the waiting game. And I think you do minimise that by getting your application in early. Agreed. Cool.

So, does your UCAT score affect your BMAT? Does your UCAT score affect your BMAT universities and vice versa? No, one doesn't affect the other. Obviously, if you've got a really high UCAT score, you might favour UCAT universities. If you've got a low one, you might want to think about sits in the BMAT.

But they don't impact one another, other than maybe, you know, if you've not got enough time to spend on both, then your preparation time might suffer. Good. Okay guys, that was a long session. Please everybody say thank you in the chat to Nella, she's been amazing as always. And yeah, I really appreciate you guys showing up.

And I will send you an email with the recording of this where you can find it. And it's going to be on YouTube at four o'clock on Friday. And if you're watching the recording, I've got all the links in the description. I've just posted all the links that you need again in the chat. But other than that, thank you, Nella.

And have a great rest of the week, everybody. And yeah, inner circle crowd, I'll see you next week. Cool. All right. Take care, guys.

All the best. Bye, guys. Bye.