Hi, sorry for continuing to make STW sound like mumsnet, but need some advice.
Youngest urchin is waiting for A-level results. Predicted A/A* in Bio,Chem, Math, Further Math. This is on top of three 9’s and straight A* at GCSE (brains from mum!)
She wanted to do medicine and has a great offer from a good Uni, however…..

Thanks in part to Jeremy Hunt and the plethora of regretful stories she has heard from medics she has 90% changed her mind to doing BMath or MMath.

She has not applied to any Maths courses.

How best to proceed?

Should we contact propective unis now or wait till clearing? Will Unis do tours of faculties to see the department etc?

I am happy with her doing maths, in fact any degree she is passionate about is cool. We did a lot of research, visits and prep for Medicine and it feels now like we might have to choose a Maths Uni in a hurry!

All advice welcome on treading this HE conundrum!

Phone the uni she had the offer from to see if they’ll switch her to maths?

UCAS provide advice at https://www.ucas.com/undergraduate/after-you-apply/making-changes-your-ucas-undergraduate-application

It’s worth contacting the careers staff at her school/college too.

Thanks in part to Jeremy Hunt and the plethora of regretful stories she has heard from medics she has 90% changed her mind to doing BMath or MMath.

Don’t listen to them but go for what you want.

She wanted to do medicine and has a great offer from a good Uni, however…..

Go for the medicine. The country needs doctors but have other backup choices just in case.

How best to proceed?

Call the university up directly. Coz that is what I did when my nephew did not get the grade to study medicine so ended up without a clue what to do so I called up my old university to speak to the lecturers … he attended the interview etc and finally did a Chemistry degree. Ended up with a 1t Class Degree and almost top of his cohort (think top 5).

Thanks for comments so far. The move away from medicine is her second wobble on choosing that career, so I think it’s sincere and considered. You are right we do need more docs! And if she chooses this I will be chuffed, but only if she is happy. I am sure she could transfer to Math at the same uni, but I think she would prefer another Uni altogether but for Maths…Durham, Warwick (not York, her brother is there!).

I was wondering if she should contact faculties at shortlisted unis over next few weeks? Or wait?

There’s no harm in contacting them. They will either have places available or not and advise you accordingly.

Durham, Warwick (not York, her brother is there!).

All top Universities there. You got brains in your gene!

One of my friend’s daughter graduated from Edinburg University in medicine. Then went through all the horsemanship whatever they called it. She is now a doctor (GP I think) in London. The only complain she has is the cost of living in London. Got married to another doctor and gave birth to a baby last year.

Being a doctor from UK means she has the mobility to live in almost every country in the world!

I was wondering if she should contact faculties at shortlisted unis over next few weeks? Or wait?

No harm contacting them. Just explain accordingly.

Being a doctor from UK means she has the mobility to live in almost every country in the world!

Agreed

Hang on – who’s hijacked chewy’s account ? 😜

(should add, training to be a doc is bloody hard work (from observation, not experience) and you probably have to really want to be one to make it work for you)

Is this not just A-level pre-results angst bolloxology? Cart before the horse lad. If she thinks she doesn’t like medicine how about she makes her own decision on that based on actually going to university and studying medicine? Rather than some weak bullshit based on her idea of the current state of the NHS (actually nothing whatsoever to do with the discipline of medicine)?

I mean don’t get me wrong, mathematicians are the aristocrats of the academy so the more intelligent people we can get studying this noble art the better for all of us, but this sounds very pre-emptive. There’s a reason she focussed on medicine so let’s just see what the A-level results bring, and correspondingly what the experience of actually studying the subject is.

To be fair Garry, I probably overplayed the Jeremy Hunt comment to fit around my own prejudices. It’s more than a pre result wobble. Has been building over last two years as she has had some amazing and inspiring maths teachers (state school in East Leeds) and has grown a tremendous passion and talent for maths! Any admissions tutors on here that can advise? Or general comments welcome :-).

Right I have no idea on the actually question but.

Your daughter sounds like a smart cookie, and if she enjoys all aspects of the sciences etc she might be a bit dissapointed by maths on its own.

My* experience of a maths degree…

Its a really really specific subject. Like you might have different classes but its maths without application and thats harder to handle than the actual hardsumsTM. Different courses in different unis may vary but I did no essays it was all exams.

I did 42 exams exams on my road to failing spectacularly 😀

*I am not a smart cookie

As @joshvegas has said, Maths is a really specific subject – my elder son did Maths at Bath and teh range ot=f topics and the options means you have to decide what sort of maths you want to study. If she is determined to change to maths, then the simple option is not not go next year and have a year out. Then she can apply with her actual grades and get a unconditional offer. While it will seem like a big step now – it will really show that she wants to change.

We kinda know the implications of maths as our son has just finished YR3 of MMAth at York, and has gone down the pure rather than applied route. Not sure what we have done to breed two mathematicians, but we have! Son is now at the point where not only do I not know the answer, or even understand the answer once given, I cannot even understand the question!! Agree maths is a very specific calling, but with a range of pathways within. The year out thing could be an option, but that would mean she graduates two years after most of her mates (state school…gap years are not really a thing!).

The worst thing she can possibly do is go to uni to match her mates

It wouldn’t happen if she did medicine anyway.
She’ll graduate at the same time as her mates at uni the ones she has shared experience with.
Her school mates will vary, some will drop by the way side anyway, some will drop out of uni and remain friends, some will stay on and never leave and remain friends.

It just won’t matter althoguh it may seem like it just now.

MAking a wrong choice can be pretty bloody awful though

as said, uni maths is a different creature to A-level maths, and many don’t get on with it. You could consider a degree which integrates maths with other more applied subjects. Arguably more interesting and certainly improves employability.

If she really doesn’t know what to pick then a year out is sensible, rather than burning a year at uni finding this out.

If she wants to go to the same uni to do maths then just ring the admissions team for that uni. If she wants a different uni then she needs to get researching asap. ps I’m a uni admissions tutor.

JoshVegas: fully agree that wrong choice is a big mistake and the switch from Med to Maths has happened over last two years, so not a sudden thing. Gap year is an option. Not even discussed that as a family (topic of admissions was parked till after exams and she only finished further maths paper three on monday and has been partying or asleep since then ;-)). Think will encourage her to contact a handful of Unis directly in next few weeks and maybe see if we can shoehorn in visits. 🙂

Tallpaul

Member

There’s no harm in contacting them. They will either have places available or not and advise you accordingly.

This, 100%. Today is literally the last day for UCAS Extra, from here on it’s Clearing… But clearing before results day is a pretty different beast to clearing after (PANIC) so it’s worth just chilling a little and taking the time to speak to people and really weigh up options.

Adjustment isn’t available yet so it’s a wee bit white knuckle changing an actual place- you have to withdraw all your offers before you can accept a new one, and it feels insane, especially since teh existing uni might be on no hurry to release the candidate… But it just needs a bit of care, it’s not actually really <risky>

(I mentioned in the other thread but, this is going to be a great year for finding a good course and place in clearing, just because of demographics)

Also agree with Joshvegas about maths- it’s a subject I don’t talk about past the basics as I’m not qualified, I always kick any serious questions to an academic because you can generally choose your own adventure a lot with maths.

I’d suggest a gap year.

Let the dust settle and give your daughter time to choose a  degree she really wants to do.

Is a gap year a good idea if you are going to do maths? (this is a question for those who have done maths rather than a rhetorical one).  The impression I get with maths is that it is like training for a 20k, then taking a year off then trying to run a marathon.  Maths seems to require you to have a lot of mental skills that you then build on at Uni.  I used to do maths tutorials for final year IB students and I was impressed by the amount of stuff they had to know to solve the exam problems.  I wouldn’t want to be forgetting that for a year and then starting up again.  I might be wrong though – so it’s really a question for those who went to study maths at Uni

I had four gap years before i went 😀

Mind you i didn’t pass either…

Gap year!
Mini-ba (he’s taller than me 🙂 ) completed one year plus one semester and changed his mind.
He lost a year of funding because he didn’t change in September, although he is eligible for the final two years of funding to begin a different degree course.
You can change course but there isn’t a benefit IMHO, better to decide what you want to complete albeit a year later and get some work experience until then

I’m not going to add much to the discussion above, but I went to Uni as a medical student in the late 80s, hated it and switched to a science degree after one year and have never looked back. What I didn’t like about medicine as a subject was the amount of rote learning, as opposed to the development of theories in Science and Maths. So my answer might be to query the motives for a change, but fundamentally I think it is usually relatively easy to change from medicine to something else (but it is a waste of a year that could be better spent doing something else). I also think that any university will do its best to accommodate a course change for a student who meets the entry criteria, within the rules. Many will operate a no quibble change of course in the first few months (the one I work in does).

This, 100%. Today is literally the last day for UCAS Extra, from here on it’s Clearing… But clearing before results day is a pretty different beast to clearing after (PANIC) so it’s worth just chilling a little and taking the time to speak to people and really weigh up options.

This. Not sure if NW made it obvious here (sorry!) but Clearing opens well before A level results day – I think it’s this Friday in fact. So it’s definitely worth getting on the phone early. A couple of other points:

Any uni will know already whether they have places available on any given course, and if they do, will be very receptive to a straight A student phoning up and asking about applications.

If she has accepted an offer with a uni and gets her grades, then theoretically she is under contract to go there. In practise, universities don’t really want to enrol students who are not keen and might drop out, so they may well release her from her offer if you ask nicely

Most universities offer ‘Clearing Open Days’ although these will be after A level results day. They are usually receptive to students coming to mooch around campus too, but since term has ended, campus will now be completely dead. The students have gone home, the cafes have closed and the only people in the SU bar are professional services staff on their lunchbreak. However, most programme leaders probably have their contact details listed either on the course page or on some sort of website directory, and I’ll bet they’d be only too happy to show someone around the faculty (they are personally under pressure to fill their courses, so tend to be very helpful most of the time)

Does she love maths? Or is she just good at it? I’d postpone the year. If she gets the grades for medicine, she’ll have open invitations for whatever she wants. Maths is as much a vocation as medicine. And I’m a professional mathematician who also gets to play medicine and biology. And get paid for it! There’s no rush. I swapped from Chemistry to Physics to Theoretical Physics and then to Biology to Clinical Pharmacology. A solid maths training will open a lot of doors, and the mix of maths and medicine is VERY valuable.

Btw, a medical degree open a lot of doors. You don’t have to work in the nhs. The pharmaceutical industry is always looking for MDs, and has a bit of a PhD/MD glass ceiling. I know one I work with who trained in the NHS only to discover they didn’t actually like patients. Loved medicine, but not the practice of it. Has been happily doing research for nearly 20 years.

As always, the quality of advice on STW astounds! Have copied link to thread to said urchin so she can follow up/act as she thinks appropriate 🙂 Ta!

Just a thought –

what about bioinformatics?

A mix of the two subjects.

As long as she can get into AI she’ll be sorted for a future career (at least until the robots are programming themselves but then we’re all doomed)

As other have said, maths and medicine are two very different callings and both very specific vocations.

When I was studying, I think maths had one of the highest drop out rates as it is so specific and the biggest regret of almost everyone I met who did make it to the end was that there was so little applied maths and that there didn’t seem any translation over to the real world (you could argue that is true of all of the academic world though 😀 ). Of course this may differ from place to place and course to course but just being a bit good at maths and liking it a bit probably isn’t enough (as it sounds like you already know).

Just to throw a huge spanner in the works, has she ever considered anything on the medical engineering side as that seems an obvious combination of the two whilst being very applied? There are a lot of medicine/ maths/ science crossover degrees out there besides this too as others have already mentioned. They key is to find where an interest lies and what she will be motivated to work 3+ years at IMO.

I’ll cast a very tarred brush over medics too, in that the vast majority aren’t really that bright but have fantastic memory, drive, self confidence and ability to throw themselves in to things and pick them up without fear to get a good grasp of anything and everything very quickly. I can’t think of a route in medicine that isn’t highly stressful and highly competitive. Medics are generally a very different breed to mathematicians!

I guess a lot of this comes down to personality and what she enjoys. It sounds like brains aren’t the problem which is a very fortunate and well earned position to be in 🙂 Even if she goes for something else then you have to really enjoy the course as anything you do is more than just academically tough. Very hard thing to be faced with at 18 with the brains to do anything! 😀

Medicine: decent pay (once through Uni) and scope during training to push yourself in to any direction you want. Maths and physics-y? Go towards Anaesthesiology or Radiology.

Maths: real world applications for degree educated mathematics seems to be academia, finance or Starbucks.

Engineering as a middle ground? Shorter training period than medicine, more useful than a maths degree (although your first year should be very maths heavy) then you get to make stuff and break stuff.

It’s easy to change, just phone them up, they all need students as the sector has over-expanded. Many people change courses in their first year anyway.

Life science-y stuff as above — I know of at least one person that was set on medicine, didn’t get the grades but settled for good course and I have to say – I’m not sure about the big aspiration for medicine / dentistry / vet. school other than I guess a way of soaking up good grades and making cash!

Our lad is at end of year 4 out 5 year engineering course. I think he had a wobble when he saw folk graduating and he had another year to go, but stuck in and seems good for the final year. I think it’s worth it..

Yeah my son has one year of MMath to finish at York. Most of his school mates and house mates graduated this year, but he is looking forwards to his final year of obscure maths (cryptology and other esoteric stuff). Will leave daughter to mull things over! She is smart and will make a considered choice. I was more worried in case there was anything parents should be doing or asking. 🙂

Jon Taylor

Subscriber

Engineering as a middle ground? Shorter training period than medicine, more useful than a maths degree (although your first year should be very maths heavy) then you get to make stuff and break stuff.

Professional hat on even though I’m off work today… This is a terrible idea in like 99% of situations, engineering is more or less a calling and you need to do it for the right reasons or it’ll eat your soul. That’s not to say it’s not a good decision, but doing it as a middle ground, no.

Engineering would have appealed to me, but definitely not to daughter. She is more maths/bio etc than tensile strengths and gears. Her best mate however has been offered a place doing engineering at Durham! Fabulous to get more women into this area.

h he – we have two offspring, in tertiary education.
Lad doing aero mech, as engineering as they come, and definitely buoyed by a summer job, local to our area (which as a dearth of high level engineering) which is right up where he wants to be – at the local rocket factory no less 🙂
Daughter finished 2nd year at art college, couldn’t be more different – not to say she couldn’t hack the physics, maths and stuff at school, but was much more adept at social sciences and arty stuff..

You’ve had good advice from admissions folks, so I won’t add to that.

Speaking as an academic, if I was 18 now (and interested in maths) I’d be pursuing applied statistics. Just don’t tell my boss.

GHill: interesting… my son doing MMath dropped stats to do more pure. Hasn’t a clue (or at least not sharing) what he plans to do with the qualification, probably finance of some sort.

I’d be pursuing applied statistics

Which is what I’m doing now, applied maths and Bayesian statistics. At this very moment I’m working (running clinical trial simulations) whilst browsing a forum.

Maths is a gerat foundation – almost all of my fellow Theoretical Physicists went into Finance, but I’ve always had a scientific vocation.

You’ve been given good advice, especially about contacting the Uni she has accepted an offer with, because she needs to be released from that. I am a bit concerned that she is looking to change Uni at last minute. Seeing the other threads on the same subject, it really is so important to be happy at the Uni and picking one that suits her (the course, the institution and the city/campus style). Going to Uni is much more than the course. Is it the Uni / city that is putting her off starting the medicine degree and then changing if she really dislikes it? I agree with probably taking a year out, but taking the time now to determine where she wants to go and what course she wants to do. Whereas if you did loads of open days and she knows what she wants to change to, then just start making the phone calls.

Given her grades, she will have absolutely no problem getting in to a Maths degree. So she does (probably) have a lot more choice of location than when looking at Medicine.

“Is a gap year a good idea if you are going to do maths? (this is a question for those who have done maths rather than a rhetorical one). ”

Given her grades, I suspect she will have no problem at all getting back up to speed with things, perhaps just spend a week or two before semester starts revising. But the reality is, because every exam board has a different syllabus and students will have done different subjects at A-level / Baccalaureate, there is a lot of reiteration and building up knowledge across disciplines in first year. That allows students to then focus (stats, applied, pure etc) in later years, hence it is a good idea to make sure the Uni offers a broad range of modules. Sometimes departments (especially smaller ones) end up focusing more on one aspect, depending where the research money is coming in.

“Maths: real world applications for degree educated mathematics seems to be academia, finance or Starbucks.”

FFS. Yes a lot of mathematicians end up in academia, because we have skills and logic that people who chose other courses don’t have ;-). The number of permanent jobs in academia is tiny. Finance pays well. But with a good Maths degree you can get into virtually any modern workplace: finTech, AI/machine learning, deep learning, engineering solutions, big pharma, defence, aerospace, software engineering/development, space industry, problem-solving ‘business consultancy’. Finance and banking solve the same problems (stochastic partial differential equations, SPDEs) as Bayesian inference or fluid mechanics.

If you are still reading this far (!) I would recommend she consider doing either a Dual Degree with Maths and Computing or a course at a Uni with a heavy teaching of software development. Simply because that is the way things are going. Having a mathematical background is excellent because it means you actually understand the underlying solution, but computing power means we solve problems quicker than ever. Packages like R and python are pretty much necessary for any CV.

(I did a mathematics degree with some earth science / geography, which I loved because it had variety and gave us real-world examples of applied maths. Then MSc in Fluid Dynamics, worked in environmental sector for a while, then PhD, then more (different) environmental sector and an academic researcher at the moment.)

Also if taking a year out, it could save her cash if tuition fees are lowered – but I don’t know whether that is a safe bet and when it would be implemented.
I remember at my uni people changed all the time – changed courses, dropped out, went somewhere else, but this was back in the day when it was cheap to attend, so I guess getting it right first time around is more important now.
The “Mathmos” I knew at uni all did well, many have gone into finance and one earns a fortune. Funnily enough it is his interpersonal skills which have helped him move up the ladder in addition to his maths skills. He also topped off his undergrad with a masters in computer science.
The biggest shame is only one engineering student I knew actually went into that field (he works for a formula 1 team and I often spot him on tv) but the rest all went into banking too.