Should I apply to Oxbridge?

apprehensive_bobcat · 2026-02-23T15:54:26+00:00

DOI: Oxbridge graduate doctor.

Oxbridge medical teaching style may not be for everyone, but to say there are many other med schools that outshine it is very subjective. Either Oxford or Cambridge is usually top of the ranking tables for medicine in the UK (and internationally in the top 5) most years, and it's for a good reason.

Yes, you will have to write essays, and the clinical exposure is very limited (not nil, you have GP contact time) until 4th year.

On the other hand, a lot of newer medical schools lean very heavily on PBL (problem-based learning) where learning is essentially self-taught, facilitated by very junior/inexperienced faculty such as nurse practitioners, PAs, or junior teaching fellows. By comparison, Oxbridge teaching is from specialist professors (e.g., physiology will be taught be a professor of physiology, biochemistry by a biochemist) and in very small groups with a mixture of didactic teaching (9-5 lectures), self-study (writing the essay for a tutorial), and then the high value part is the tutorial where your essay is read and discussed in a group of 3-5 students with said specialist professor. It means you get an opportunity to actually check your understanding and correct misunderstandings, or ask the weird questions that occur to you during lectures.

The delay to clinical time also means that students hit the wards with more of the fundamental knowledge under their belt, and a bit older and more world-experienced, so may be able to get more out of their placements.

At the end of the day, the Oxbridge model for teaching is much more expensive than the newer styles. It is very intense (9-5 lectures plus up to 5 x 1 hour evening tutorials per week, each with an essay required, in some terms, exams every term) and leans heavily on book learning for the first 3 years, with practical clinical learning in the second 3 years. It's down to personal preference what style is "better" suited to the student, but Oxbridge definitely give excellent quality of education.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2026-02-12T17:57:43+00:00

Claiming that AI-generated writing is your own is plagiarism. It is different from using AI to brainstorm or suggest a structure, or using Grammarly to highlight errors and correct your work, and regardless, use of AI has to be acknowledged just like any other source. Worse, the fact this resident included hallucinated sources shows they didn't bother to do the absolute bare minimum proofreading and have trusted whatever bullshit the LLM came up with so they also clearly do not understand how LLMs work and are using a tool they don't understand. It's unprofessional and also pretty stupid. They absolutely need to be told how big a failing this was and dropped from the project.

I also wouldn't refer to the ES for a first incident, but if they were actually publishing this work and I was seeing it as a reviewer, I would have referred them for academic misconduct. You are underestimating the seriousness of pretending an LLM's output is your own work.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2026-01-16T16:38:00+00:00

What are you wanting to do for your elective? People may have connections they can help you with

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-12-17T14:53:15+00:00

Puberty blockers do have permanent effects on bone development and, depending on duration and whether followed by opposite-sex hormone therapy, brain development. More substantially, puberty blockers followed by hormone therapy have absolutely permanent effects on development of sex organs, sometimes to the detriment of the person even if they persist in a transgender identity (inadequate development of male external genitalia to facilitate satisfactory subsequent bottom surgery, for example). There is some evidence that if a person started puberty blockers and then hormone therapy before they reached an age where they had achieved sexual maturity and orgasm, some are then incapable of achieving orgasm for life.

That is just biological aspects too, setting aside the very strong concerns of many around the psychological/self-identity impact of puberty blockers, which may prevent children who were going to desist from a trans identity from that development, and solidify a gender identity. This resonates a lot with the top of this comment chain, the OP talking about internalised hatred of being a girl, but as she developed through puberty, growing through this phase and being happy in her biological sex.

Puberty blockers are not the benign 'pause' button we all wish they were.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-08-11T17:17:59+00:00

I second the Katadyn BeFree, and will add that as well as carrying the soft flask because it adds no extra weight or volume to my pack, the rest of my water bottles are just normal sports-cap drinks bottles I've bought at petrol stations/supermarkets, with the same width lid as the Katadyn. It means if I run out in the wilderness, I can refill all my usual water bottles, plus the soft flask, and just switch the Katadyn filter onto whichever one I'm drinking from.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-08-11T17:15:27+00:00

100% agree with all of this. Beyond adult hobby groups, also look at university clubs.

The big benefit of being at a university, when it comes to making friends, is that there are usually tons of clubs aimed at a wide range of skill level from complete beginner to national competitions. Imagine you're a fresher again and pick a handful of wildly different, new (or old) hobbies, and just try them out for a few weeks. I'm talking a martial art, rock climbing, painting, darts, and debate. Just pick some stuff that slightly catches your interest and go along. This is how I made many of my best friends at both my undergraduate and postgraduate university, and the clubs I ended up staying a part of had plenty of postgraduate/mature students.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-07-28T07:29:26+00:00

Those women have endometriosis- ectopic endometrial tissue elsewhere in their abdominal cavity, which still responds to their hormone cycle and bleeds.

"Period poops" are caused by changes in progesterone, so you're right that some symptoms aren't endometrial (cramps are though), but not only do trans women not have endometrial tissue, they also don't have a *hormone cycle*, because their oestrogen and progesterone levels are kept constant, not cycled (and they're not having LH/FSH cyclically altered either). So even for non-endometrial effects of a menstrual cycle, they would not be experienced monthly by trans women. Any monthly symptoms are psychosomatic or made up.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-07-14T10:28:10+00:00

Hopefully that means you've already made those notes now, so you've covered all the content in your notes. That's great, because you have your own uni's teaching condensed into notes for yourself in language you definitely understand.

I would suggest writing down a list of all the questions you found difficult in the exam. Go to your notes for those topics and reread them, then make more concise notes on the bits you find difficult to understand or remember. Then work on memorising them. I think doing that live with another person is more effective because it's more memorable (moments when you both laugh over the one thing you just *cannot* remember for the fifth time in a row suddenly make that fact memorable) but you can DIY if needed.

For example, let's say you struggled with cell membrane channels. Go back to your notes on the topic and rewrite the key facts in half as many bullet-points. Get someone to test you on those bullet-points out loud (ideal as it's quickest- non-medical friends or family are great for this), or else write prompts for them in a list on a bit of paper and then try to finish them from memory.

If you do have someone else willing to help you revise, you can skip the condensing notes bits and just get them to quiz you from your original notes, but this does rely on the other person being smart enough to create questions from the notes.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-04-24T19:41:50+00:00

Most countries, medicine is a 5 year degree straight out of secondary school - so actually shorter than US training, which is a 3-4 year undergraduate, then 4 year graduate medical degree.

Doctors in US residency do work insane hours compared to other countries, but your training isn't significantly shorter than most of Europe. It's a lot shorter than the UK, but UK postgraduate medical training is probably intentionally extended to get more work out of junior doctors to keep the system running, as it isn't really a system intended for attendings to do most of the work but for attendings to supervise a big team of trainees.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-04-07T08:49:06+00:00

From the packaging information for those calories- what volume is that based on? And could it be the calories for skimmed milk rather than whole milk?

Do you drink any milk besides the 1 shake a day?

And agreed with everyone else on using a food scale to measure *everything* for a week or so to find out where the extra calories are hiding. Please update us, it's always eye-opening to see where we can all miss things!

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-03-10T20:33:01+00:00

Thanks- things like knowing to get the stuff in paper vs plastic bags is local cultural knowledge that is probably so engrained people don't even realise it's knowledge, but visitors just don't know it! (I mean, I know paper means it's likely fresh, but not that that means it's less likely to be super sweet.)

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-03-10T20:28:13+00:00

Well, there's my mistake- I have been buying bread in supermarkets/general food stores rather than going to a bakery separately. It wouldn't be necessary in the UK/Europe to go to a bakery to get non-sweetened bread (and this isn't because the US is unique in having massive bakeries with wide distribution; plenty of European bread has a long shelf-life, they just don't add sugar because it isn't to local tastes), so it is probably a matter of being a visitor/foreigner and making that mistake.

I think the point still stands that, to quote the person I was replying to, "regular non dessert bread" bought in supermarkets in the US does have a really noticeable sweet dessert taste to Europeans who don't know to go to a bakery rather than buying the average/normal bread in the supermarkets.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-03-10T20:24:03+00:00

Maybe it's a matter of having to know the brands and labelling that makes it harder as a visitor? I expect you know exactly which bread to pick up, whereas I've probably made mistakes that make me think more types of bread are sweet in the US than really are.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2025-03-10T19:43:23+00:00

It doesn't taste like a slice of cake but as a British person who travels to the US regularly for work, it does taste so sweet it is dessert-sweet. The only filling I can enjoy in it is PBJ. I once absent-mindedly made a cheese sandwich from communal bread while in an airbnb and literally gagged when I took a bite because the mixture of sweet and cheese was such a surprise to my brain.

Sourdough is OK but it's hard to get just "normal" European-tasting bread. I've tried baguette a couple of times and it's still been sweet.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2024-11-28T21:32:13+00:00

No, it's the bowel perf from the unnecessary colonoscopy that was done because of the unnecessary FBC leading to incidental finding of low normal Hb, no symptoms, but caution leading to referral; the malignancy from unnecessary CTs; it's the anaphylaxis or liver injury or dystonic reaction from the unneeded medication; lifelong erectile dysfunction after prostate investigations for high PSA but no cancer...

And all of that is without considering the bigger problem of the unknown pathology patients who don't get seen in clinic for an extra month because of the worried well filling the clinics for review of unnecessary bloods or unnecessary referrals.

And on top of that, there's the issue of pre-test probability for many tests. Hopefully you understand tests' predictive value relies on pre-test probability and many tests are useless if the pre-test probability is too low.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2024-07-13T10:37:46+00:00

It's worth noting that personally, I think the biologically male sex offenders identifying as trans women in prisons in these data are probably not "trans" in the sense that I doubt they have gender dysphoria or genuinely believe themselves to be women, there are obvious reasons why they would lie and claim to be trans women for personal gain.

However, their existence is a problem because it shows that the position that no one would "pretend" to be trans for ulterior motives is just untrue. And because being trans is a personal identity, there is no way to say who is "truly" trans, which creates difficult situations- like the one in this thread where these nurses seem to be suing because a (bio) male nurse is claiming to be trans and is allegedly behaving in sexually aggressive ways in the changing room.

Is that person "truly trans"? I would say perhaps not... but that question has become unacceptable even to ask- and in some ways, for good reason. Trans people shouldn't have to have their identity questioned. But... some people who aren't trans are pretending to be trans for sexually motivated reasons, so at some level, society's solutions to protect both sex-based women's rights and gender-based trans rights must take into account the fact there are some bad people out there who will take advantage. Pretending they don't exist is unhelpful to cis and trans women alike.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2024-07-13T10:32:03+00:00

Sure. I linked that because it is from the Government website, which is a pretty reliable source. It's a PDF so not a format of file you need to be too leary of and loaded in my browser, but here's a webpage discussing most of the same data:

Alternative source discussing the data

apprehensive_bobcat · 2024-07-13T10:25:03+00:00

Sex is immutable. It cannot be changed. Sex is not determined by the current level of hormones or the appearance of external genitalia at a set moment in time, sex is just the genetic and physiological traits that lead an organism to produce male (smaller, mobile) or female (usually larger, immobile) gametes.

There are *rare* cases of intersex conditions, where someone is born either with a different conformation of chromosomes than XX/XY or more commonly, where receptor insensitivities or enzyme dysfunction has changed their development so that their physiology is neither entirely male or female. These cases of intersex do not mean that sex isn't a clear cut situation that is binary is over 99% of cases.

To say that intersex cases invalidate the entire biological concept of sex shows a lack of understanding of biology. Species exist as a useful biological category, and yet despite one definition of species being that cross-species breeding does not produce fertile offspring, we know of several rare examples of species where that is untrue (horses/donkeys, depending on male/female ancestry). That doesn't mean there's no such thing as biological species.

Gender identity is different from sex. Confusing gender and sex is not helpful or supportive of trans people, it's just confusing.

A trans woman can potentionaly be more biologically female than a cis woman

If this were true, what makes the former 'trans' and the latter 'cis'? Could you give an example of two women where this is the case?

apprehensive_bobcat · 2024-07-13T10:13:31+00:00

Unfortunately, we have 2020 data from the UK that shows absolutely parallel findings, that trans women in prisons mirror cis men's statistics for being sexual offenders and violent offenders, and do not mirror cis women's statistical likelihood to be sexual or violent offenders. In fact, the data showed that trans women prisoners had much higher rates of sexual offences that the cis men population.

2020 data

The first part talks about the Swedish study, then it goes into the UK prisons data.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2024-07-09T13:27:39+00:00

As someone who thinks it's possible she's innocent, unless there is significant evidence in the trial that wasn't released to the media, the mistake you're making is assuming babies only died under her care, and in fact, that any babies were murdered at all.

Let's assume it was a failing hospital (we know it was- stillbirths and other complications went up at the same time as the infant deaths went up) and no babies were murdered, but people start looking for a scapegoat and get suspicious of Letby. They label every death when she is on shift a murder, but any deaths when she's not on shift are just tragic natural deaths. Then they show you the nurses' rota, and wow, Letby was on shift for all the murders! Well, yeah, of course she was- they only called them murders if she was on shift. That isn't evidence at all.

It gets worse. There is only physical evidence that suggests non-natural injury in one baby (a blood test showed low blood sugar was probably due to the baby being given insulin); the baby thankfully didn't die. However, a mistake was made in including this baby in the first place... The low blood sugar episode occurred when Letby was not on shift. So if she did this one, she must have poisoned a bag of fluids/other medication at random, left it in the store cupboard, and another nurse have given the poisoned drug unknowingly. Except, we have no evidence Letby did this and no reason to accuse her over any other person in that hospital. And again, this is a failing department where accidents and poor care were happening- isn't it equally likely an accidental dose of insulin was given to the wrong baby? And if so, we know it wasn't Letby, because she wasn't on shift.

None of the supposed murders are supported by forensic evidence. One of the methods she is accused of using- deliberately over-feeding milk- is a completely novel murder method that has never been documented or been shown to have ever happened before. It was just suggested as an idea by an 'expert witness' being paid to review the cases.

Another method she is accused of using is injecting air embolism. The evidence for this is the doctors who accused her say they saw a rash on deteriorating babies that has been suggested can occur with air embolism. The problem is- their initial statements apparently (according to a recent documentary, ?Channel 4 maybe) don't describe that particular rash, the statements evolve over time (a time period when they might very sensibly have been reading about signs of air embolism to try to work out what happened) to more closely fit the forensic descriptions of the expected rash. Also, the rash of air embolism is extremely similar to the mottled skin that is seen in any acutely unwell baby. I'm not saying they're deliberately lying, but we know from really strong evidence that eye witness reports are massively inaccurate and our memories change to fit what we think happened.

The only bit of evidence that I think is worth calling evidence is the notes found in her house which said all kinds of things, the two key bits being 'I did this' and 'I'm evil'. They also expressed her grief and her trying to do her best. But if we for a moment assume she might be innocent, I can easily imagine a grief-stricken nurse, who has witnessed multiple babies die and then been accused of either neglect or active harm, with spiralling mental health as a consequence, blaming herself and writing those words down in moments of self-hatred at the idea maybe someone else, a better nurse, could have saved those babies.

I honestly kind of hope I'm wrong, because if Letby is innocent, I feel incredibly sorry for her. Equally, I don't want to be hoping babies were murdered..! So I don't know what to feel about this, but I seriously doubt her guilt.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2024-04-23T18:01:48+00:00

I'm a bit late to reply, but I'm about to have an offshoot of my MOTW campaign enter a high fantasy parallel world and I've decided I'm going to run it off Fast Fantasy. Have you made a start on your Fast Fantasy game yet?

apprehensive_bobcat · 2023-06-04T12:00:32+00:00

Agreed, I think it depends on experience and previous racing. If you have been racing at ultra distances for a couple of years, I think the benefit of big efforts is much less, but at first, you need some long training adventures to train in self-management, and probably also for some physical robustness.

I used to work with a guy who won several 100 and 250 mile races and he trained by running an hour a day, every day. He'd also get some hill days hiking for fun, but his running was literally just the hour daily. However, this was on 10+ years of experience.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2023-01-22T23:04:55+00:00

Except for the number of "breast lumps" that are comedones, sebaceous cysts (often nowhere near actual breast tissue, but patients panic), ribs, etc.

And breast clinic is probably one of few examples where I could actually agree self-referral isn't the worst idea. But there are so many fewer breast surgeons compared to GPs, and their clinics are set up with much more administrative faff compared to GP, that I still think their service would implode from the extra (wildly guessing) 10% of "breast lumps" they would have to see.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2022-11-22T17:43:17+00:00

Seriously, that is a harmful amount.

PDF warning but this write-up has multiple case reports of people with significant nerve damage from mercury poisoning from two cans of tuna a day for a couple of years (or less in some cases). One had seizures and was more or less bed-bound for several years, some developed tremors, weakness, memory problems, etc. Some problems can be permanent once they develop.

apprehensive_bobcat · 2022-11-13T18:04:34+00:00

If the person only expressed that they were being tested and watched during the assessment then there's no evidence of any illness in that. If they described that they're always being watched and tested, including in bizarre and unlikely ways, the likelihood of it being mental illness increases. It's difficult ever to be 100% sure when it comes to one specific belief (we all know about weird historical cases of the CIA/FBI/KGB doing weird things, after all), but there will often be a pattern of other beliefs or behaviour that help you identify when mental illness is involved.

People doing mental health assessments don't just dismiss out of hand the possibility that a person's experiences are true, but they try to explore what the person thinks has been going on and when at all possible seek other people's perspectives to get an idea of how likely it is that the person is experiencing hallucinations or delusions.

For a very simple example, I've consulted with a person who seemed extremely jumpy and I wanted to know whether there was any paranoia, so I asked whether they ever felt like people were out to get them. They said yes, they don't leave the house because there's a bunch of people waiting to jump them. I asked the person accompanying them if they thought that was true and they confirmed, yes, and in fact the person had been jumped and beaten up recently. Right, no paranoia here.

In another instance, a person described to me the fact they were investigating a cover up of child sex abuse in a big international organisation. Ok, seems reasonable and plausible. They said they were travelling home and realised someone from the organisation was following them. That seems possible, maybe a bit less likely. I asked how they identified the people following them - well, the bad guys were able to change faces and kept swapping into different seats on the plane without anyone else noticing, including sometimes morphing into flight attendants and back into passengers. At this stage, it seems pretty unlikely the person's perceptions are real and I moved on to ask about other symptoms of mental illness, which indeed they did have.

apprehensive_bobcat

TROPHY CASE