How I Got Into Graduate Entry Medicine (UK) *with bad grades

This is exactly how I got into graduate entry medicine in the UK (with pretty average A Level grades) and how you can too 🙂

Check out some of my other videos:
💻How I use Notion as a Medical Student: https://youtu.be/IrsHNG0hvL4
📚How I use Anki: https://youtu.be/SIhqmJ5PqZg
🍽️WIEIAD: https://youtu.be/YceYnNMRdVY

CLICK HERE to download AudioNotes if you want to improve your writing & put all your thoughts into text easily: https://dashboard.audionotes.us/?gr_pk=dpkX&gr_uid=jvlD

Hey 👋🏼 I’m Daniela, a 27 year old Colombiana, graduate entry medical student, entrepreneur, explorer, gym-goer and follower of Jesus. This channel is a collection of my personal thoughts, experiences and ideas as I journey through medical school and try to live this life on purpose.

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If you’d like to talk, I’d love to hear from you.
IG – @danncb

If you are wondering how I got into graduate entry medicine with pre average a levels and how maybe you can too then this video is for You my name is danela and I am a third year graduate entry medical student in the UK and in this video I’m going to be telling you everything about my journey into medicine now it has been quite a long process and it’s very unique so I’m

Going to start right at the beginning so to give you some background I am from Colombia originally I was born there but moved to London when I was very young I was raised in London I did my primary school in secondary school there do my

Gcses and I always knew that I wanted to become a doctor ever since I was a child I would like run towards somebody whenever they got hurt I just wanted to be there I wanted to care for people it was just so instinctive to me I was naturally very curious and I loved

Science so I chose a levels that would potentially open the door to medicine as an undergraduate I did Spanish biology and maths and I ended up getting ABB overall as my great so that kind of shattered my dream initially to study medicine because I was never like the

Smartest person in the room I was never naturally clever I had to work really really hard and I thought it took me such hard work to get these grades I’m never going to be able to make it into medicine so I couldn’t apply to undergraduate medicine so I decided to

Do a year of nursing instead I thought that nursing would be like the closest thing to being a doctor I really wanted to work with patients and with other people and within a team so yeah I did nursing for a year although I think that nurses are absolutely amazing and that

Was a great experience for me to study how to care for people I felt really unfulfilled and I wanted to be the person who was responsible and who made decisions and who would like solve problems and I just felt like I wasn’t really getting that with nursing so I

Ended up quitting nursing after the first year and I did biomedical science instead hoping that I would enjoy science more and that it would potentially open doors to Medicine in the future so biomedical science was 3 years in total I graduated from that in 2018 and I remember applying to graduate

Entry medicine the year that I graduated it was a very last minute decision though I did not spend a lot of time working on the application I totally rushed my personal statement I didn’t do that well on the ukat exam because I didn’t prepare for it enough and I

Didn’t have a lot of work experience and unsurprisingly I got no interviews and no offers and I’m not going to lie that kind of broke my heart and shattered this hope that I would get into medicine if anything it reinforced this idea that I was not good enough to become a doctor

It’s so funny cuz I actually had this like weird notion that if it’s meant to be it was going to happen and it kind of made me think that I didn’t have to put hard work or any effort into the application because if I was just good

Enough it was just going to be easy which was just completely the wrong mindset to have because if you want something you have to work for it like nothing is just ow to you which is kind of the mentality that I had so yeah didn’t get into medicine so I decided to

Work fulltime instead when I graduated from biomed now I knew that I didn’t want to be a biomedical scientist because I didn’t just want to work in a lab I wanted to work more with people and again I wanted to be in a clinical setting I wanted to be a doctor I ended

Up working as a technician for Apple for 4 years and that was a great experience I loved it I got to learn so many skills I got to make some money and save some money I got to travel quite a bit make CL of friends and yeah overall really

Great job but I still deep down you this just is not for me this isn’t right so I then applied to the University of Buckingham now Buckingham is a private university and I kind of knew that but I wasn’t really aware of how the funding

Works for it so I did my application I did an interview it was an MMI and I received an offer for Buckingham and that moment for me was like oh my goodness maybe I am good enough maybe I can do this yeah I was so so so happy

And then I realized I have to pay something like £37,000 a year just for tuition I did not have that amount of money just lying around so sadly I couldn’t end up going there but that sort of push that sort of confidence boost was enough to make me

Think oh if I can get into Bingham then maybe I can get into somewhere else so that was when I decided I was going to try and apply for graduate entry medicine again by this point I was maybe 24 I think think and I had already

Thought it’s too late for me it’s not going to happen I’m too old I’ve just missed my opportunity but I thought to myself if I don’t try if I don’t give it my best shot I know that in 10 20 years time I’m going to regret this for the

Rest of my life even if I give it my 100% And I don’t get an offer at least I will know that I gave it all of me and it just didn’t work out or it just wasn’t meant to be so I decided that I

Was just going to give it my all do absolutely everything that I could in my power to make it the best application ever I worked really really hard on the UK exam I did loads of work experience I worked as a volunteer for a hospital I

Worked as a covid responder I did loads of shadowing um yeah I did loads of different things that would give me lots to talk about in my personal statement and in interviews and yeah worked really really hard for about a year apped to to quite a few different universities I

Can’t remember where else I applied actually but anyway I applied got some interviews and got an offer for war and that is where I am now it feels a little bit surreal that I’m here still I remember getting that offer and thinking surely there’s been a mistake like

Surely surely not but here I am and now that I’m here I just absolutely love what I do it is is exactly what I thought that it was going to be and all of those thoughts and those ideas I had about it being too late just were not

True at all so many other people felt exactly the same way and there are people on my course now who are over 30 40 who have children who have families who have mortgages who come from completely different backgrounds and they’re able to make it work and they’re amazing medical students and will be

Amazing doctors looking back I feel so grateful that I actually had the time to go away and do other things because as I mentioned it gave me so many opportunities to learn so much about myself about what I wanted about who I was and I feel like all of those

Experiences and all of those lessons make me better as a medical student and will make me hopefully a better doctor one day again so many other students on my course come from completely different backgrounds like non-science degrees including things like law and languages and Humanities and they’re doing amazingly well which should encourage

You if you are feeling like this isn’t something that you can do because if you dedicate yourself and if you know this is what you want to do then it is entirely possible it is also really common to hear of people who have applied to medical school two three four

Times before and have persevered and have kept insisting and kept applying and they made it in so again if you have applied multiple times if medicine is your dream and it just seems impossible it really is not and I am a testament to that and I’m such a huge advocate for

Medicine and how amazing it is and so I want to encourage you to really think that if this is what you want to do and you know that you haven’t given it your best shot then maybe you should so that was my story of how I got into graduate

Entry medicine in the UK I know that on this side of it now looking back it just seems super easy and like you know everything just worked out for me but I actually had to put so much work and so much effort into it and it seemed really

Impossible to me at the time but as I say it is entirely possible and I love it it’s great so if you would like to hear more about my story if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the comments below otherwise please don’t forget to like share and subscribe

And yeah thanks so much for being here thanks for watching I’ll see you next time