What’s next if you haven’t been offered a place to study medicine in 2022?

This is the time of year when interviews are taking place and offers being made for medicine in 2022. This is a very competitive year for a number of reasons:

• Last year 21% more students applied for medicine

• Last year a record number of students made tier offer grades as a result of TAG’s and many were asked by the universities to defer to 2022.

• This year, there was a 9% increase in students sitting the UCAT exam

• The cap on the number of places being offered has not been removed. All this results in fewer places available for offers to be made. Even in a 'normal' year around 70% of applicants to medical school are rejected.

However, knowing this doesn’t take away the sense of disappointment if you are not offered a place. We hear a lot about resilience, turning disappointments into challenges but in the heat of the moment, you may not feel you are that resilient.

You may have heard of the Folkman and Lazarus (1980) coping styles – problem focused and emotion focused . Problem-focused coping involves actively planning or doing something specific to manage the problem. For example making and sticking to a revision plan in the run up to exams. Emotion-focused coping, involves finding ways to manage the emotions you feel about a stressful event. For example receiving emotional support from friends and family or distraction tasks like watching films or gaming. Some research suggests that problem focused is the sensible way to go before an event, such as taking exams, but emotion focused coping is all you can do afterwards – you can’t change anything now, so if you are worried, seek support from family, friends, sport, Netflix!

So, if you haven’t been offered a place to study medicine this summer, allow yourself some emotion focused coping – cry, get cross, eat chocolate. But then, take a deep breath and move to problem focused coping. You want to study medicine but due to a number of factors, many of which were outside your control (like COVID), you can’t start on this journey in September.

You can still become a doctor.

Here are two suggestions to help get you back on track:

1. Take a gap year and use this to gain relevant work experience such as in a care home. This will be a good chunk of time to show that you are committed to your future career (caring is hard work), it will look brilliant on your application, it will give you lots to talk about at interview. Plus, your application for 2023 will be using your actual, not predicted grades. You also get another chance to take the UCAT exam and having experienced the style of question and the time pressure, will get an even higher mark! Ask the medical school for feedback on your interview if you got that far, and spend some time during your gap year on interview practice.

2. Take up your insurance place. This may be the best route if you don’t come out with those straight A/A*’s. I know it adds 3 years to your career plan but you can apply to study medicine as a graduate, you will be older and more mature and could actually be a better doctor for that. Plus, you will have had 3 long summer holidays to get more work experience. Also, depending on what degree and university your insurance offer is, you might be able to transfer to medicine at the end of your first year, or the end of your degree, within the same university, if your grades are high enough.

So all is not lost. This may not be the plan you started out with but in the long run, it may make you a better doctor.

We are happy to talk through your options with you.