Siblings Russell and Claire Conyers have had their eyes set on medical school for as long as they can remember and now their hard work is paying off.

Both of them received direct entry into university after graduating from Warwick Academy — Russell in 2014 and Claire this May.

“I’ll be going to the University of Edinburgh,” 17-year-old Claire told The Royal Gazette. “My course is six years and I don’t nessecarily know what I want to specialise in yet, but hopefully I will start to figure out what interests me more.

“I’ve always wanted to go into medicine because I’ve enjoyed sciences and the teachers at Warwick are really great and encouraged me to do more outside of the classroom and explore my interests in science more. Then there’s also the cliché reason of wanting to help people.”

Her older brother, Russell, 20, will be going into his third year at the Royal College of Surgeons.

He said: “I personally always enjoyed science but I could never see myself locked away in a lab for the rest of my life. I wanted something where I couldn’t be chained down to a desk but also interact with people, so this just seemed like a perfect marriage of all those things.

“Right now I’m interested in internal medicine, definitely not surgery because my anatomy class was a nightmare, so I’m steering away from that but definitely something internal.” Understanding the competitive nature of the career path, the siblings said that they were well prepared for the application process — building up their resumes at a young age.

“I would tell young people that are thinking about going into medicine to start planning for it as early as possible even down to when you’re choosing your GCSEs. You need to make sure you have your three sciences and maths up to a good standard,” Russell added.

“It needs to be in the back of your mind because, as crazy as it is to want children to know what they want to do when they’re 16, universities will look that far back. It might not end up being what you do but if you’re thinking about it, you have to tailor your decisions with that in mind. You have to build a good resume and make yourself stand out because there are ten’s of thousands of people that apply.

“They also asked what your extracurriculars are and what clubs and societies you’d be interested in joining once you get into medical school,” said Claire. “It’s important to be well rounded.

“I volunteered at Westmeath, Agape House, St John Ambulance. I did Gap Medics in Poland, shadowing cardio surgeons for a week and gastro surgeons for another week, I’ve done a few conferences such as the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards and the Global Youth Leadership Conference in Europe. I’ve done a lot of preparation in general, talking to doctors at the hospital. I also enjoy scuba diving and used to play tennis for a while.”

From Russell’s perspective, you still have to build your resume once you’re in medical school, as a job is not guaranteed after graduating.

He is president of his school’s drama society, the fundraising officer for the psychology society and the education officer for a new society starting up this year called RCSI Brigades which aims to send students to places around the world to do volunteer work. He has also been heavily involved with the summer programme at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for the past two years.

“The programme at the hospital is absolutely fantastic, they’ve put me on rotations in the departments I’m interested in and they’ve put me with doctors to do different projects, which is amazing.

“They’re very good about putting the emphasis on how you would always have a home at the BHB once you graduate, which is great, because I think both of us are planning on coming back to Bermuda.”