"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure" - Confucius

So, getting into med school. What an epic! Firstly, you have to try and get as much experience as you can. Phone up hospitals, GP's, call in favours from family friends. All made even more complicated by the fact you cannot do medical work experience in your local area due to confidentiality issues. I was lucky enough to get a good range of experience, and this undoubtedly assisted me in applying.

Then you have to choose a course. In the UK there are many different course structures for a medicine degree, ranging from purely traditional at Oxbridge to purely problem based at Manchester, Liverpool. In the middle are universities like Leeds, Newcastle, Kings which do a bit of both.

So the traditional courses. They are split into two 3 year chunks, the first of pure science and the second of pure clinical. So after 3 years you get a science degree, with very little clinical contact in that time. I didn't think this was the right course for me, as it tends to prepare people well for research etc and I knew that my interests were elsewhere.

Problem Based Learning, PBL, is the complete other direction. To me it seems like DIY Medicine, in that there is very little structured learning in the forms of lectures. Instead the teaching is based around a variety of clinical problems. For example, one week might be spent on a scenario of a sore throat. You would have to go away and learn what causes a sore throat, what tests to do, what drugs to treat it with. Again, for me it just didn't seem right, I would be afraid of missing out huge chunks of learning, and also as an 18 year old teenager fresh out of spoon fed a-levels it would be very difficult at first to motivate yourself.

I chose to go to a uni that did an integrated course. This mixes it up a bit. The course is very lecture based, however it is with a clinical focus. For example at the moment we are doing scenario's similar to PBL however instead of teaching ourselves about it we have lectures on it. This way it keeps you interested with the clinical focus.

After choosing a course, you have to choose a uni, then go and looks round, go to open days. Then pick 4 to apply to. You could put a 5th choice for a none medicine degree, and some people put Biomedical Sciences as a back up.

Whilst doing all this you have to write something called a Personal Statement. This is possibly the most ridiculous part of the process. As many medical schools have thousands of applications each year, they cannot interview everyone. And so as a way of selecting students to interview you submit a personal statement. This is basically an A4 page on why you want to study Medicine, what work experience you have done etc. I've heard stories of admissions tutors who get about 200 personal statements to read through who pick up the pile, throw it down the stairs and the ones landing face up are the ones chosen to interview. You can sympathise with them, reading 200 identical A4 pages of text full of the same phrases like "I am passionate about caring for people, but have always loved science and so medicine is way of combining the two" and words like "motivated" and "empathise" etc. Also, the vast majority of students applying have music qualifications, DofE awards, a set of 5 straight A's at A-Level and 10 A*'s at GCSE.

Finally, after writing this personal statement, choosing what course at which uni, and getting all the experience you have to take an additional exam, either the UKCAT (Clinical Aptitude Test) or the BMAT (BioMedical Admissions Test). The UKCAT is going through many difficulties at the moment, and when I took it a whole section was discounted due to errors or something. It is just another way to try and separate identical students on paper. Also, despite what the government is saying about widening opportunities to disadvantaged students these tests cost money to sit, my UKCAT cost £70, the BMAT was a similar amount.

Then submit the application on UCAS, in around September time. After that you have to wait, keep your fingers crossed and hope you get some interviews. I was lucky to have one before Christmas, and they were very quick in replying with an offer. I had 3 more interviews, and got one more offer.

The interviews themselves I will save for the next post, as this one has gone on a bit!

“The beginning is the most important part of the work” - Plato

So here I am, starting a blog. It is by me, a 19 year old first year medical student in the UK.
In this blog I hope to show people what it's like to study medicine, from the highs of shouting "Get me that chem 20, STAT!" to all the nurses in Resus (OK, maybe not yet) to the lows of finding that the coffee machine is out of order right before a 3-hour lecture session.
I realise I'm a bit slow off the mark, with over a term gone already and with it some of the most important experiences (like seeing my first dead body). I'll do a few posts in the next few days to catch up on the stuff I've missed, mainly getting in to med school, interviews, first lectures, dealing with dissection etc.
Hopefully I'll blog once a week ish, maybe more if lots happens, maybe less if it's a particularly boring week of histology practicals...
Also, I realise that in medicine there are a lot of sensitive topics, and things that shouldn't be disclosed or talked about inappropriately, and so will do my best to anonymise anything I say.
Finally, I sincerely hope nobody gets offended by this blog, and if that is the case will understand that it was never my aim to do so. Thanks.