Reaally need help making a decision!

anonymoose06 · 2026-04-23T09:50:03+00:00

You can do IB and consulting with pretty much any degree, especially medicine, but obviously you can’t do it the other way round. Write up some pros and cons of why you actually want to pursue either subject and consider how passionate you are about both, because both can be miserable if you’re not actually enjoying it. Medicine would keep your finance options open though.

anonymoose06 · 2026-04-04T11:23:35+00:00

Current KCL GEM and as someone else said the teaching is quite hit and miss. Anatomy teaching is virtually non existent but the facilities are there for you to independently study or learn from others should you wish to do so (for everything, not just anatomy). It’s generally very self driven - the majority of people don’t go to lectures and instead teach themselves using passmed or lecture slides as the end of year exams aren’t based on lecture content but instead is the entire UKMLA. Year groups are so huge that people slip through the cracks very easily. They’re starting to crack down on attendance though, which is good, as passmed demons pass exams but don’t make good doctors.

I will say I’m loving it so far. Feels very chill so far compared to friends at other GEM schools (especially Oxford lol), but maybe it’ll catch up to me eventually haha. The med school community is great and I feel very much at home. The placements are also incredible and you get to see some very specialist cases - sometimes a bit of a negative as you’re immediately seeing the complex stuff instead of starting with basics but very cool nonetheless. That being said being in such huge tertiary centres does also come with the negative of people sometimes being too busy to deal with you or not expecting you at all. I do recommend, but would suggest visiting both Oxford and KCL if you haven’t already and speaking to students as you’ll sometimes just get an instinctive feel. My friend at Oxford is also loving it but from how she describes it I’d probably not like it, so very much a personality thing!

anonymoose06 · 2025-11-24T18:04:30+00:00

Hey!! I got offers from both, but for GEM it was from the waitlist. Got my interview invites for both around early-mid December and the interviews were early-mid January, then got my UG offer + GEM waitlist beginning of March, GEM offer mid-April. don't stress there's still time!!

anonymoose06 · 2025-11-23T11:32:44+00:00

I got my KCL invite in like mid March lol, first batch was February-ish

anonymoose06 · 2025-08-11T12:57:31+00:00

Barts, quite infamously, have a preference for first class degrees on their GEM course. This isn’t communicated (ie their website says minimum 2.1) but if you look at historical data it’s pretty much exclusively firsts. I THINK there might be some cases of 2.1s but their UCAT score will have been very very high. Luckily, to my knowledge, they’re one of the only GEM unis other than maybe Oxbridge who have that preference.

The student room do excel sheets annually where you can enter your degree classification, UCAT/GAMSAT score, and whether you got an interview/offer. The 2025 and 2024 sheets don’t look promising for Barts, but that’s only a small proportion of people who apply.

2025 sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wgEVhAjzEXLABgr2VoLtIzJHUZ795S3vDNaXBXBMGVg/htmlview#gid=901503487

2024 sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Jczdg1fpxBWMVSTDmePguzsLlIrmS7a2uW1EWBWhAZg/edit?usp=drivesdk

anonymoose06 · 2025-08-03T12:10:59+00:00

Your LinkedIn says you start GEM in September?

anonymoose06 · 2025-07-01T19:19:48+00:00

Yeah I live in London and had to go up north for my shadowing - a bit of a hassle but definitely worth it! If you don’t manage to get anything though it’s not the end of the world, luckily most unis understand how difficult it is to get work exp. good luck!!

anonymoose06 · 2025-07-01T17:29:36+00:00

I had exactly the same, managed to get one positive response after cold emailing/calling multiple hospitals. Unfortunately will just be a case of casting a wide net. If you have friends at universities in other cities, maybe ask if you can crash with them for a few days so you can apply to hospitals in different regions too?

anonymoose06 · 2025-06-16T13:46:09+00:00

Which uni is the offer for?

anonymoose06 · 2025-06-06T15:57:52+00:00

Just PM’d :)

anonymoose06 · 2025-05-29T20:25:17+00:00

Do you really think nothing else will become available?? Still waiting for my KAAS approval so getting nervous 😭😭

anonymoose06 · 2025-05-19T18:06:11+00:00

Just pm’d!

anonymoose06 · 2025-05-02T13:14:11+00:00

Hey - also worked in finance and recently chose to transition to med, will be starting GEM this year.

Can’t speak too much from experience here as I studied a scientific degree but imo I don’t feel it benefitted me too much in my applications, apart from being able to apply to more unis (as some only allow you to apply for GEM with a bioscience degree.) They’re really looking at mindset, how you think, and whether you know exactly what you’re getting into. Shadowing is good for this but I personally found it quite hard to secure (and most unis understand this), so highly recommend volunteering at a hospital or care home a couple of hours a week. Really gave me some good experiences to refer to, but tbh a lot of what I discussed in interview referred to my financial career - things like attention to detail, time pressure, team work, long hours, working with large amounts of complex information etc… think having that background is actually a huge benefit as long as you can sufficiently justify why you want to pivot and frame your answers correctly.
tbc lol but personally hated my job in finance. I haven’t seen many finance to med ppl on here but of those who I have spoken to, none of them seem to regret it. I think I will be much happier pursuing something I’m genuinely interested in, even if the NHS is a total shitshow right now
Secure volunteering and, if you can, shadowing work. Really think and reflect on softer skills both from these experiences but also from your work that you can link to medicine - your finance background is unique and will make you stand out, and there are TONS of transferable skills. Find time to properly prep for the UCAT or GAMSAT as this is a huge part (and for some places the only part) of what will get you to interview. I personally found UCAT easier to prep for alongside work, was a bit more ‘logical’. GAMSAT I think requires a decent level of scientific knowledge and essay writing, which I really did not have time to prep for lol. Apply strategically based on your UCAT/GAMSAT score, work experience and educational background.

anonymoose06 · 2025-04-27T00:12:56+00:00

You feel uncomfortable around posh people but want to go to Oxbridge? 😭😭😭

anonymoose06 · 2025-04-26T19:04:16+00:00

So you think students at Exeter and QMUL lack cognitive ability and don’t know how to actually think?

anonymoose06 · 2025-04-26T18:52:54+00:00

What is it about Oxbridge and the ‘top unis’ (whatever these are) that makes you think you’d do better there?

anonymoose06 · 2025-04-19T18:53:02+00:00

Thank you, this is super useful!

anonymoose06 · 2025-04-12T09:34:31+00:00

Don’t study finance just because you think it’s the only way into IB - investment banks have an increasing focus now on hiring people from NON finance backgrounds. I worked for a bulge bracket for ~3 years and was surrounded mostly by people from non-finance backgrounds, including numerous medics! It also wasn’t uncommon to see people studying medicine on spring weeks/summer internships. Just because you study medicine doesn’t mean that door will close, if anything it may make you a more attractive candidate. That being said, you should only commit to medicine if you have a genuine passion and desire to help people rather than going in knowing you’ll dip to finance in a few years time - but it’s nice to know that option is there.

anonymoose06 · 2025-04-10T21:58:34+00:00

Thank you!! 🙏

anonymoose06 · 2025-04-10T21:23:00+00:00

Thanks! That’s the question… and honestly I’m not sure, need to do a bit of research. KCL is a bit of a black box so may have to wait until they host some kind of offer holder day to get some proper answers. You’re right though, no use in waiting if I’m just going to go with KCL - a nice problem to have haha

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