The Final Stretch

I can't really believe I'm typing this but I'm on my last module of year 1! How crazy is that?! It seems like just yesterday that I was the one attending the offers open day and nervously meeting new people yet now I'm the one giving advice! 

Our last module is endocrine and is the shortest module of the year. Don't let this fool you though, there is tons of information packed in on top of revision for exams (which are in five weeks eek!) 

I've been trying to figure out the best method to revise and just bought some coloured pens which (as silly as it sounds) have really revived my revision! My boring old notes now look beautiful and colourful...which hopefully means I'll remember them! I'm trying to make little summary pages for each main disease or pathology ready for the MEQs (modified essay questions) and am really focussing on pharmacology which seems to be my weak point. If anyone has any useful revision tips let me know! 

Hope everyone's exam/GAMSAT/ukcat prep is going well :) I'll leave you with something I'm trying to work on myself - No matter how stressed you are, just take a minute to think and remind yourself of all the things you have achieved so far! You can do this! 

First week is over!

My first week as a medical student is finished and what a week! We have had so many introductions to modules, PBL (Problem Based Learning) and the library services it's unreal. Oh and not to forget the meet ups, nights out and fancy dress party...

I have now met the majority of my course mates and everyone seems lovely (obviously, or they probably wouldn't have a place...). Not only that but everyone is up for helping each other and explaining things without making the other person feel inferior. I have adopted three housemates and so already have a brilliant friendship circle and a place to stay after nights out- very handy! After three nights out I'm very used to sharing with one of the girls or slumming it on the sofa. Now that fresher's week is effectively over I think we will all settle down a bit and give my liver a much needed break! :)

Our course begins properly on Monday with our first workshops, lectures and PBL sessions, which I am very much looking forward to, despite still being a little unsure as to how exactly it is all going to work! I recently read a very good article on survival tips for PBL (12 tips to surviving PBL by Bate & Taylor, 2013) which was fully referenced and gave a number of brilliant ideas and things to ensure the group get the most out of each session. Trying my best to keep in mind all the tips and hope that the other 6 members of my group have read the same article. Both my group and facilitator seem very enthusiastic about the PBL section of the course and each member has come from a different background leaving us with a wide variety of strengths and expertise! The fact that we have agreed to bring cake every Friday makes it all seem 100x better aswell. I'm sure I will write much more about PBL once our sessions get underway!

The next time I post you will most likely have sat the GAMSAT so good luck and don't panic!

GAMSAT

This is only relevant to the graduate entry applicant such as myself. The GAMSAT exam is another entrance exam used by a number of universities instead of the UKCAT. The universities that use this exam are: Exeter, Nottingham, Plymouth, St George's, Swansea, Cardiff and Liverpool. The exam this year is on the 17th Sep 2014 and registration is open now at http://gamsat.acer.edu.au/gamsat-uk.

Each university will have a different cut off score which they will use as interview criteria. Last year Swansea had the lowest cut off at around 56, while Nottingham's was 61 (these will most likely change for 2015 entry though).

The exam itself is made up of 3 sections- reasoning in the humanities and social sciences, written communication and reasoning in biological and physical sciences. The exam costs £234 to sit and lasts for 6.5 hours (5.5 hours of the exam and 1 hour break for lunch) so its a pretty monster exam! On the GAMSAT website there is an information booklet which contains all of the official information you need to register and understand the content of the exam...but I will try and explain a bit about what I did to prepare for it!

I have only taken the exam once (last year) and achieved a score of 61 (which considering what I expected was amazing). This score is made up of section 1 + section 2 + 2x section 3 so the science section counts for double! Its pretty difficult to guess or work out what you have in any mock exams you might do as these scores are not percentages or actual scores, but more of a raw figure calculated from your results and everyone else's.

My first advice is to go out and buy the gold standard GAMSAT book! This saved my life, it is amazing! If you can get one with the web access card, even better! The other investment you should make, are the official ACER exam practice questions and mocks, which are available once again on the GAMSAT website as ebooks.  Plus an extra bit of info for you, which I only found out the day before the exam....if you go on youtube and search for GAMSAT there are videos with all the answers and explanations for the questions in these booklets!! As I said in my UKCAT post use google and youtube as much as you can, free information is never a bad thing!

Specifically for the first section, I think one of the best ways to improve your score is to increase your vocabulary! I know that sounds pretty strange, but the majority of the questions would be simple if you just had access to a thesaurus.

In regards to the written section, you have to write 2 essays in an hour on the subject of a group of quotes you get given. The quotes will all have a common theme and you can choose to either write about one quote alone, compare two quotes or write on the general theme. Now I'm a pretty shoddy essay writer, but this section was my best by far! In my GAMSAT preparation I must have written around 100 essays which I got all of my family to read. There are services which will read and mark your essays on a fee for service basis but I personally felt my parents could do just as good a job! The Student Room has essays for you to read, which is really useful in gauging your standard and style of writing. The Gold book has a great variety of quotes for you to use to write essays, but I also just googled 'Lincoln quotes' 'Churchill quotes' etc to find more difficult or indeed easier ones. Another way to prepare is to search for quotes regarding specific themes such as love, friendship, superstition, peace  etc to just enable you to see how certain quotes fit into themes. This section is the easiest to prepare for, just write as many essays as possible and make sure you time yourself once you start getting closer to the exam date!

Lastly, the science section. This section requires you to have physics, chemistry and biology knowledge up to A level standard (a tough ask if didn't even do these subjects!). I did not do physics for A level and had a C in chemistry so wasn't in the best position but still managed to get a good score! I used AQA A level textbooks, the Gold GAMSAT book and youtube for my revision which really helped get the basics down. For this section its less about your actual knowledge, and more about the understanding/being able to logically think...but that said, knowing what Km or bases are certainly helps! Because this is the last section, you will be pretty drained when you start so here's what I did to optimise my chances of a good score. Instead of working through the questions as they  came, I did all of the biology questions, then the chemistry and lastly the physics (change to suit your preferences). This meant that I did all the questions I was most confident on first and it didn't matter if I didn't reach the physics because I was likely to get them wrong anyways! I noticed quite a few people flicking through their booklets and so assume this is quite a popular method of tackling this section and it worked for me! :)

Last advice is to just do as much preparation as possible. Writing an essay is only half an hour of your day, you could do it in your lunch break at work! Make sure you have basic scientific knowledge in all three subjects, don't just skip all physics! Trust me you will understand something. If you have any specific questions just comment and i'll try to answer!

Good luck!

PS. Don't waste time with 'pass GAMSAT' by Dr Tom. I got up at 2am to join his live webtalk and it was an hour of a sales pitch to buy his book and CD set for around £300. Don't make the same mistake...

My journey so far...

Okay so I feel I should explain a bit more about how I got to where I am... Grab some popcorn because this could get long!

I've wanted to be a Dr since I can remember (cliche I know) and so all my work experience etc throughout school was always geared towards this. Then I got into sixth form and didn't get the predicted grades. After much  panicking over what I could do, my mum and I discovered the medical sciences BSc at the University of South Wales. So I got the grades to go there and the rest is history. In my final year the top 12 of us (this included me!) on our course were able to participate in cadaveric dissection with the first year medics at Cardiff. This was hands down one of the best experiences if my life. Despite it being very difficult at times, I learnt so much more than I could have from a textbook and couldn't be more grateful to the donor and her family. All in all, third year was pretty tough, but with a lot of faith and hard work I coped pretty well and have come out with a first class honours! :D

So by the way, I also did TONS of voluntary work such as cubs/beavers, in a care home, a peer mentor, at my church youth group...and my favourite of all (which I still do) a club for adults and the elderly with learning disabilities. My voluntary work helped me soo much at my interviews and just generally as a person. I feel everyone should try and do some voluntary work, just to realise how fulfilling it is to help someone with no guarantee of anything in return. Just seeing some of the people at my volunteering smile or hug me in greeting instantly lifts my mood and makes me grateful to be a positive influence in other peoples lives!
I have also worked as a HCA for the last four years which I can't credit enough for showing me exactly what hospital work will be like! Sometimes its a hard slog, especially if doing a 1-1 (exactly what it says on the tin...you look after one patient for the whole shift) and they have dementia. You can imagine how that ends up :/  But all in all it's so rewarding to know that you may have done something that makes one patient a bit happier or less anxious about their situation! :) I'm sure I will post about work in the future...

Back to the med journey... I sat the UKCAT and GAMSAT exams last summer which was not fun at all but thankfully worked out really well! The GAMSAT exam lived up to my expectations of the worst exam I would ever sit,  with the five hours of hard thinking, but using the Gold standard GAMSAT book had prepared me well and so I left feeling shell shocked but not devastated. In contrast, the UKCAT exam seemed to fly by and I left wondering whether I had just dreamt the whole thing! Excluding the maths section, I quite like the UKCAT exam- especially the codes at the end. I got an average of 730 on the UKCAT and (somehow) got 61 on the GAMSAT! With these scores I applied to Warwick, Cardiff, Nottingham and Swansea medical schools all for the four year Graduate Entry programmes.

After what seemed like forever, I received three interviews (Warwick rejected me) and was over the moon! So I got my suit dry cleaned etc etc and went for my interviews, feeling as nervous as anyone else there! Some of the questions were very straight forward, whereas others I was so unprepared for it was almost funny. In my Cardiff interview they actually had to tell me to stop talking because I was answering questions before they even asked them haha! And after a sickeningly long few months....I managed to get three offers! I couldn't believe it when my UCAS track updated!

After a fair bit of deliberation, I decided to choose Nottingham (based at Derby) as my firm choice and am so super excited to start! I recently went on a meet and greet day and everyone seems amazing! I met four lovely girls who I'm planning on living with this year coming (note the house hunting!) and am confident we will get on brilliantly :D So basically I am at the stage where all of a sudden my dream has come true and I am just trying to enjoy the summer before I get stuck into Med school and all the chaos that will ensue!