Right... so what happened today was that I visited Barts and the London school of Medicine and Dentistry for the open day, which I booked a couple of months ago! It was absolutely great! I love the university (in fact I always have) and I'm still sure that it will be there in the midst of my choices :) After today I can conclusively say that I'm applying here :)
Yesterday I spend quite a while trying to figure out the best way of getting here (located in Whitechapel, around the East End of London in the borough of Tower Hamlets), but it was really only a couple of tubes!
Upon getting there, we arrived at the Blizard Building on the Whitechapel campus. It looked astonishingly modern in pictures, but was absolutely breathtaking in real life. This was followed by a presentation contextualizing the Medical School and its fleet of famous, pioneering alumni, and then a talk on a very important component: admissions! 800 people will be interviewed from around 2000 who apply - selection for interview is based 50% on UCAS tarrif and 50% on UKCAT score - need to nail the UKCAT. Afterwards 500 candidates from the 800 are given conditional offers. I feel that as long as I nail my UKCAT, the 611 UCAS tariff I currently have from my IB prediction ought to put me in good stead (oh and +40 for Merit in Grade 6 exam). There are no guarantees though as I have no idea what kind of candidates will be applying this year; however last year a mid-range UCAS/UKCAT combination that got interview selection was 520 and 690 (avg of the four sections) respectively - so it looks good, but depends on my UKCAT!! The personal statement is only looked at at interview, and at interview you get a score out of 50 (a score out of 5 x 10 individual areas looked at) - 40+ will earn an offer. I think prior to the interview, which are held Jan-Mar 2014, you're given a case study to review and at interview are required to expand on it - I think that would really suit, I don't know why I just do! By the way, he minimum entry requirements.... honestly I can't remember them, all I know is that I've met them, I just want to move on from this haha!
The presentation was followed by a tour of Floyer House residence on Whitechapel campus, which seemed pretty decent to me. But what really made me fall in love was the intimate/friendly nature of the university. Lecturers know your name, and despite it being a large uni the feasibility to make lifelong friends is there! Also the intimacy of the university is exemplified by the fact that there are four main buildings: the Garrod building, the Blizard Building, the student union, and the library - so it'll nice and compact. At the student union I got a bit of light shed on the prospect of continuing on at Queen Mary with something I love to do: drumming! From speaking to a medical student it seems like there might be possibilities to start up a band :P Who knows? After a campus tour I went to a clinical skills workshop in the Garrod building and had a go at drawing blood!!! (Not from a patient, but a model arm). Well, a medical student did have to guide me, but it was a great experience, and I got through it OK! I think my participation with SJA gave me the confidence to do this in front of the many watching! I also had a go at using a reflex hammer.
Overall I Barts (not Queen Mary, apparently you get a lot of hate for calling it that :P) think it'd be a great choice. Greatest +? Not too PBL heavy; there are 2 PBL sessions that are about 2 hours long per week, for the first year at least. Greatest -? The location. Of course the London advantage is absolutely guaranteed and it'd be possible to go to my fav locations, such as South Kensington and Central London, but the area
around the campus seemed a little bit run down to me, fulfilling what I had been hearing about it beforehand. But I think this is greatly outweighed by my passion for the uni. In terms of clinical teaching, I think it would absolutely rewarding considering the ind of location the hospital is in, where socio-economic standards are low compared to the rest of the UK, meaning there would be opportunities to observe unique and interesting cases. From speaking to the Medical Students here they really seemed to like it, and I'm sure that if I was good enough to earn a place this amazing, one of a kind institution, I would love it too :) Barts is swiftly catching up with Imperial for the top choice spot! I hope I get offered a place here!
OK so the word count exceeded the limit by a fair bit haha - what can I do :P
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