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I just got back my results for the exam I just gave to enter Psychiatry training in the UK, and I am extremely whelmed.
Back when I first decided to go down the route to becoming a doctor in the UK, the competition ratio was <1, basically there were more open vacancies than people to fill them. And now, it's about 4 something, so you need to scrabble your ass off to make it. So the one thing I desperately desired got about four times harder since I began the long, tedious and expensive process for questionable payoff.
Anyway, I did well. A score, which if I did the maths right, is about 64th percentile. Why do I have to calculate this myself? Because the company contracted by the NHS, Pearson and by extension, their website, Oriel, is trash, and managed to bungle the onerous task of ranking people in a CSV file/Excel spreadsheet.
So, I am officially better than the average British doctor in the mad scramble for positions. Yay me. Unfortunately, that may or may not be good enough for a seat, given that 3500 people are fighting for maybe 400-600 of them.
The silver lining is that since this exam is the sole gatekeeper for Psychiatry, but also a requisite for other subjects like ACCS and Anaesthesiology, there are plenty of people who apply to psych and GP alongside because they have nothing to lose (other than a few hours of filling up horrid forms). If they're significantly better than me, well they're likely to match into their desired subjects and leave their nominal psychiatry slot vacant, and I might get in. This means a good fraction of the 1300/3500 either get something they desire more or would turn down a seat in psych even if they were accepted, whereas all I want is to do that one blasted subject.
Unfortunately, it seems that Manchester is unlikely to be an option given my score, and I never aspired for London in the first place. Too expensive, for one. I can only hope that I end up qualifying for a place that isn't in bumfuck nowhere, where the primary presenting complaint happens to be BAA (beastiality-associated anxiety), a significantly overlooked concern in Wales and Scotland.
For fuck's sake, I would appreciate some clarity as to whether or not I'm in or out. Now, I have to wait for an official score and then the weeks or months of preferencing, matching, reserving, upgrading, and all the other rubbish that follows. That takes long enough that I might end up studying for Round 2, in September, which I would have to anyway if it becomes clear it's a lost cause.
But it isn't clear. Not yet. Now I stew and fret, and wonder if I should consider studying for the even more abominable version that is the Indian residency exams. 4:1 competition? Nah fam, more like 40.
I did decent. About as I expected really. It ought to be a confidence booster, but I am also incredibly fed up of it all, especially the enormous amounts of time it takes. The curriculum is vague, half the exam is pure guesswork and ass pulls, I did much better in the actual Clinical Dilemmas section than the SJT (turns out advocating for Dr. Stephen Hawking MBBS to roll himself off a cliff instead of bothering me wasn't the correct answer). The study resources have only vague similarities to the actual exam, and nobody knows what the fuck is going on.
At any rate, I have to thank @Throwaway05 for bearing with me when I was badgering him in the DMs, but some gratitude is owed to everyone listening to my meandering descent into insanity.
It seems to me that a smaller town would be a good thing for a doctor from a poor country, no?
Salary will largely be the same (or possibly even higher) and living expenses will be as low as possible. You seem like a guy that's mostly either at work or at home anyway so if you want to do something in the city you can always travel there.
It seems like a pretty good deal when you're starting out.
London sucks the life blood out of the rest of the country. The only other cities I'd call respectable would be Manchester and Edinburgh, not that I've exhaustively traveled the country.
I'm unabashedly a city boy, and not so poor that I consider the lower COL to be a driving factor. London would be tight, but I am best described as the poor son of comfortably well off parents (at least by Indian standards).
However, posts in bigger cities have advantages too. Looks good on your CV. More opportunities for locum work, which pays market rates and is thus often double to quadruple the paltry standard NHS wage.
And while I am a homebody, it's not like I don't leave the house at all, and a bigger city = more and interesting friends to drag me out of my shell.
Sadly the working conditions of NHS doctors makes taking regular trips to the big city a luxury at best, but I plan to work 80% hours if possible, which gives me a free day off during the week (to fuck about or to locum for actual money).
That might prolong the period of my training, but the salary cut is not nearly 20% because it draws from a higher tax bracket.
Not that it's the end of the world, just potentially mildly unpleasant, and you're right that I'll be too busy to really notice or care.
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