If you're new here, I'm Loveleen a King's College London medic. As someone who had no doctors in the family I understand the struggles of navigating the medicine application process. I'm here to help you along the way so you can achieve your dream of studying medicine! I also love helping out aspiring medics, by sharing the hidden getting into medicine curriculum as someone who received 4/4 post-interview offers.

My aim is to create a community of supporting aspiring medics and making the medicine application process feel as accessible as possible. Therefore I always encourage discussion within the community. I love hearing from you and what your concerns are.

This is why I've created this google form, which is completely anonymous. If there are any questions, content or products you want to see from me, you can let me know directly!

Click here to respond!

And you can find the answer to any questions you've sent me on these newsletter editions or videos on my social media pages!

Starting the new academic year can feel overwhelming. With UCAT still ahead for some of you, balancing school and commitments, writing a personal statement, picking universities, and interview season looming ahead, it can feel like there are a million things competing for your attention.

To help you through, I’m going to share my top tips and techniques I used as an applying student to help me manage multiple priorities at the same time without burning out.

First, it’s important to talk about burnout. As an applying student last year, this was something I struggled with as I always felt like there was something I HAD to be doing. But if you don’t take time out for yourself and focus on preventing burnout in the first place, you will be forced to. And burnout can hit at any point. So to prevent burnout, the first step is to create a timetable. Look at your week and pick one part of your week where you do nothing. This could be a Sunday morning, Wednesday afternoon or Friday night. Any slot of time. This is for you to do something relaxing and enjoyable, such as a hobby. Because REST is PRODUCTIVE. So remember to include rest as part of your week.

So now that you have some definite rest time scheduled, it’s important to organise your personal statement, UCAT and interview prep. This helps you to feel more in control because you know exactly what to do and when. So spend 20 minutes working out how you want to structure your week for the next couple of months so you can manage applications more easily.

Here’s one way you could organise your evenings to manage applications and academics. Remember to make your timetable work for you!

Example Timetable

In school

• Biology lesson
• free period 1 - complete biology lesson notes and revision
• free period 2 - personal statement
• Psychology lesson
• Chemistry lesson

After school

• 5 pm to 6 pm - rest
• 6 pm to 7 pm - psychology and chemistry notes
• 7 pm to 8 pm - personal statement and university research
• 8:30 pm to 9 pm - light interview revision
• 9 pm onwards - rest

Juggling multiple parts of your application is difficult. However, organising your time helps you to stay on track and balance everything you need to stay productive, including revision for A-levels, interview preparation, university research, personal statement writing and rest.

And finally prioritisation. This may seem obvious and might be something you already know you need to do, but here is how you can ACTUALLY put it into practice. Every morning, write down your 3 most urgent tasks that need to be completed by the end of that day. Even though you have a general timetable created for you, this brings focus back into the present and helps you to take things day by day and again prevents you from feeling overwhelmed. For example, your 3 priority tasks of the day could be

1. Write an introductory paragraph for my personal statement
2. Complete 5 biology practice questions
3. Learn the 3 interview styles

This creates easy, actionable steps you can follow and takes away some of the mental procrastination from having to start tasks. Instead of thinking, ‘I have to start interview revision’ or ‘I need to write my WHOLE personal statement’, break up tasks into smaller sub-tasks you can tackle more easily each day.

I hope these tips help you to work sustainably, feel more organised and most importantly, prevent burnout so you can feel confident during your application!

Let’s be honest. Applying to medicine is a lot. Between UCAT prep, drafting (and redrafting) your personal statement, arranging work experience, keeping up with extracurriculars, and then interview prep on top of it all, something has to give. Usually, it’s your A-levels that end up squeezed in around everything else, which is exactly the one thing admissions teams won’t let slide.

I know this because I was exactly where you are. Last year I sat all 4 of my medical school interviews within 10 days, straight after two weeks of mocks. So I get how hard it is to keep your grades where they need to be when everything else is competing for your time.

That’s where I can help. I offer A-level Biology and Chemistry tutoring (OCR and AQA) in small groups of 2-3 people, so sessions stay interactive and focused rather than just talking at you. It’s £25 an hour, and I’ve been tutoring for coming up to 3 years now, helping students consistently hit their target grades.

If you want one less thing to worry about while you focus on the rest of your application, email me at loveleenj241@gmail.com and let’s get started.

To answer your questions this week, I'll be going over my UCAT scores and how that translated to my final score, how to improve in VR and support for personal statements.

Many of you feel like you are stuck in low scores for weeks. And you worried this is how your actual exam will go. This is a completely understandable feeling and I felt that way too during UCAT season. Therefore, I have attached a screenshot of all of UCAT mock exams that I took when revising. This is to show you that fluctuations in scores is normal. The important thing is to remember to learn the correct techniques for all the question types, do your practice questions and reflect in detail.

And how do you improve in VR specifically. One of the most important things that will make the biggest impact to your scores is practicing speed reading. Do this for 10 minutes everyday. Pick any book, ideally one you haven't read before. I also recommend that you vary the difficulty of the book to help you get used to difficult passages in the UCAT. Read as many pages as you can in the 10 minutes - this tests your speed. Then write down everything you remember from the passage onto a piece of paper - this tests your comprehension. Increase the number of pages by 1 every 3-4 days. Repeating this exercise will have the greatest impact on your VR scores and equip you to handle any type of passage.

Many of you will also be writing your personal statements so I have created several resources to help you!

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I'm Loveleen, a medical student at King's College London and I remember being an applying student feeling confused by the entire process. I had no doctors in the family, yet went on to achieve a top decile UCAT score and 4/4 medicine offers. I'm passionate about helping other aspiring medics, so I work really hard to create the resources I wish I had in your situation.

Check out my website for my UCAT Crash Course and my Ultimate Medicine Interview Course, where 100% of my students who reached interview stage secured at least one medical school offer. Secure your spot to achieve your dream of getting into medicine!

And as a tutor for nearly 3 years, I help students in GCSE and A-level biology and chemistry, to secure their dream grade! As someone who got A*A*A I teach you all the content and exact revision methods to make studying feel easier, especially if your managing multiple aspects like interviews, UCAS applications and interests. Email me to book a place as there are limited slots.

📸Here are the links to each of my social media pages, so make sure you follow! In all, I detail the advice and tips you need to help make your application to medicine so much easier! If you ever need any help, feel free to reach out to me at loveleenj241@gmail.com