why my get into medical school start-up failed
Table of contents
Introduction
TLDR its very competitive and takes a long ass time to make it worthwhile. Worthwhile in terms of impact? Worthwhile in terms of finances?
“BioToMed.com was a Personalised Medical and Postgraduate Admissions Support Network. Run by current UK Medical and Dental Students for Future students.”
1 What’s different about this start-up?
My strategy with this compared to previous ‘Get into Med School’ Start-ups was to focus on graduates and assist them with the transition into a Medical School application. Information for graduate admissions for medical students is less readily found. Students have to search a lot more for information for their specific circumstances. For example, what constitutes a ‘science-based’ degree, UCAT cut-offs, funding differences between a 4 and 5 year, offer conditions, etc.
There were also a lot of subtle changes required for your statement such as more recent evidence of motivation to study medicine now rather than when you were 18. I sought to develop a program that helped students through this transition where I have found that support does lack depending on your undegraduate degree programme and university.
This project was actually an evolution of a project called BioMedToMed.com in 2018, a PayPal book project that I pitched to my old university BioMedical Science Society Committee to see if anyone would buy it. It was a guide on tips on doing well in your Biomedical Science Degree, Types of Care Experience (and applying for it), Medical School Options (Transfer, Europe, Graduate) and your Medical School Application. I sadly did not sell a copy.
2 What are you going to do with the project?
Let’s recruit tutors from Newcastle. We did so. For our first round-robin MMI event, we had 7 interviewers and 4 interviewees attend. Feedback was very positive. The interviewees felt we could advertise a bit better (especially as we only had 4!). Let’s try and meet regularly to discuss a plan to recruit more students.
After all the excitement, it was February 2020 and students that were interested in being interviewers were less interested in tutoring throughout the year. Unfortunately, once students went back to their regular week-to-week lives, the project was forgotten.
3 Where would you like the project to go?
We wanted to go national. Develop expert webinars, video content and crash courses. Sounds enterprising but nothing new.
In the North-East, medical students and two major society committees are very active in their widening participation push. Students support old schools and we even bused in schoolchildren to the medical school for a Widening Participation Conference in 2019 - all free to the student.
4 So what happened in the end?
Just fizzled out. Student interest died down. This sort of project is so dependent on the good-will and kindess of students - in particular those to help lead and build this sort of project with you. Figuring out how to build engageable content is the way - maybe students relate more to blogs than preachy lectures?
5 So how would you measure its success?
Hello Keaan, **Student** got an offer from Newcastle today. Thank you very much for your help with the practice interview. Hope he will be able to meet you in Newcastle.
Although we never scaled nationally or even got close, we made a difference - even though its just the one student response. Its a pretty good feeling.