Year 12 - Where to begin?

WHAT SHOULD I DO DURING YEAR 12?

1. Do not waste this valuable time! I spent it as a “toedipping into A-Level, I’m not doing any real exams this year so I can revise and pick up definitely next year and smash those exams”. Yeah that doesn’t happen. Work mounts up pretty fast. My tips would include:
a. Complete homework pretty much as soon as possible. It’s so relaxing doing one piece of work a night rather than four that are all due tomorrow. Breaking it up helps. I’m not saying “Do it the night it’s set” because you do that once and can never repeat … so just make sure you complete every homework and keep on top.
b. Pretty notes are good, but do they really benefit you? This differs person to person. One girl in my class would write scrap notes in class to then copy out neatly when she got home. Her folder was the best in the class, but you want to spend this time valuable doing past paper questions and/or applying your notes to answers.
c. Literally use class time to jot notes. Get into practise of writing quickly and concisely as I’ve been recommended to develop this skill in preparation for university.
d. Definitely read around topics. It’ll wow your teacher and fill in any knowledge gaps. You learn about stereoisomers in Chemistry and chiral carbons and it makes no sense why biological catalysts are better than lab experiments in synthesising drugs. You WIDER READ online and find this the reason Thalidomide was responsible for causing mutations in Thalidomide babies. It really does help reading around a subject.

2. Volunteer. But volunteer in a medical or care setting. Some people volunteer in a care home or some people volunteer on hospital wards. Volunteering is a lot easier than you think. You’re not being unpaid to save lives or clean bodily liquids. It’s mainly an opportunity to observe how the hospital environment works, the hierarchy of the staff on the ward and how patients are cared for. Your main role really is serving hot drinks and dinners from the ward kitchen. Mainly prospective med students will volunteer, so take it is an opportunity to make friends! I had no friends at sixth form interested in studying Medicine, but through volunteering I found myself in a small group where we’d keep each other updated on what we learnt, interviews etc. I would definitely recommend doing this upwards from 6 months – 12 months. I volunteered at my local Hospital on the ward dedicated to caring for dementia patients. Here I learned how doctors and nurses communicate with dementia patients as well as how dementia patients communicate themselves with me. My main responsibilities were serving hot drinks, dinners and making beds for new patients.

3. Next, attend some kind of residential course which will deepen your knowledge in your interest. Let it be related, like biology, cell biology, drug physiology etc. I attended a Villiers Park Residential Course on Biology in Foxton. I really enjoyed this experience because I learnt about cancer in terms of its biological side as opposed to the emotional side. In this residential, I developed interpersonal skills, how to work in a team of people I haven’t worked with before with a task I’m not familiar with and dissecting an understanding from research journals and papers that I will be doing in university.

4. Summer of Year 11-Year 12 is a perfect time for work experience. Make sure it is relevant again, so maybe explore a particular field of medicine you’re most interested in. Apply online by contacting the hospital or surgery directly. I completed work experience at my local Hospital on the ward dedicated for the treatment and care of cancer patients because of my passion for cancer that had stemmed from completing the Villiers Park residential. Here I shadowed doctors and understood everything from treatment to care to admin in dealing with cancer patients.


WHAT EXTRA THINGS SHOULD I COMPLETE?

1. Maybe a first aid course? I did first aid training at the hospital and at my school to understand and learn basic lifesaving procedures.

2. Fundraise? My school didn’t have an AED (defibrillator) which I thought was very dangerous, so I fundraised for one and raised £1400 at school which now means someone’s life could be saved at my school if they were to experience a cardiac arrest.

3. Duke of Edinburgh Award? This is quite a good topic to write about in your personal statement and you can say about how you’ve learnt a variety of skills whilst completing the award.

4. EPQ? This is debatable … see later post.

5. Keep an experience journal… see later post.

6. MOOC – Massive Open Online Courses … see later post.

7. If you see something on your work experience, research more into it! Produce a small paper or document on it! When I completed my work experience on paediatrics, I was amazed to meet a patient with tracheoesophageal fistula (TOF). I then went home, researched more about it and produced a document that I took with me to my interviews.

Subjects - What A-Levels do I choose?

SUBJECTS - WHAT DID I CHOOSE AND WHY?

So I began at my secondary school's sixth form where I decided to study Psychology, Maths, Biology and Chemistry. The standard university offer for Medicine is Chemistry and usually two other sciences that includes Maths – they essentially won’t accept Critical Thinking or General Studies. Check any universities you may be interested in and mould your options around them.

It is also important that at GCSE you have aimed to get mostly A*s or As (now 7-9 in the new GCSE Grading System from 2017). It is vital you get the minimum GCSEs to study the A-Levels listed above. For example, you may require to get a B (or equivalent) in Biology GCSE to study Biology A-Level.

I chose Psychology because you study memory and case studies into dementia and have a beginning “foot-in-the-door” to understanding mental health issues. You also learn biological processes like synapses and neurones which you met at GCSE but will need to understand a little bit more (…which definitely goes hand-inhand with Biology A-Level). I chose Maths because I enjoyed it and Biology because I found it more interesting than Physics.

My word of advice: do not choose Biology A-Level if you are going to regard it as an "easier" subject compared to the other sciences. Don't learn this the hard way...


WHY HAVE I GOT TO DO A-LEVEL CHEMISTRY TO BE A DOCTOR?

You might be reacting how I first did reading uni prospectuses. Why Chemistry? Surely body anatomy and physiology outweighs the effects of temperature on the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide in a lab? Surely Biology is more important than Chemistry for a doctor? Well yeah I guess it is, but I have asked a doctor about this question.

She told me that it’s all about the skills you learn whilst studying Chemistry A-Level. I will dwell on this in the science subject section, but you learn a lot about logical working, critical thinking and investigations. The doctor said this is a perfect representation of Medicine. Someone comes in with a problem showing symptom A, B and C – you will diagnose their condition based on visual symptoms and results from tests. This is similar to Chemistry. If you have four beakers on a workbench containing clear liquids that all look and smell the same, you can work out which one is an iodide by adding silver nitrate and observing a yellow precipitate forming – you ‘diagnose’ it as an iodide.


SCIENCE A-LEVELS - WHAT'S INVOLVED EXACTLY?

So that explains choosing A-Levels… but I didn’t go into too much detail about the sciences, just that word of warning about Biology. You will hear it in the science department as banter that "Biology consists of respiration, photosynthesis and more on plants." Biology is the WHAT, Chemistry is the HOW and Physics is the WHY. They are all as hard as each other.

I can’t speak on behalf of Physics as I didn’t do it. But from what I hear from my physicist friends, Physics sounds similar to Chemistry in the way there is complicated theory endorsed by mathematical elements. This is very similar to Chemistry. If you like Maths, I would definitely recommend Chemistry and Physics. You will be taught things in both subjects that cross-link, eg. you’ll be taught logarithms in Maths and made to use logarithms in Arrhenius’ Equation questions in Chemistry.

Biology is not easy. You could say most of the content is easy as you may be familiar with parts. For example, closed keeping of chickens to conserve energy so they produce more meat. Or that all your genetic code is kept in a double strand of DNA. But the difference is quantity. There is sooo much to learn for Biology which makes it more challenging. My Year 2 Biology A-Level textbook was the same size as Year 1, whereas Year 2 Chemistry ALevel textbook was half the size of Year 1!