Glasgow University Msci degree with work placement????

Hi .

Have you just finished level-2? If so, you should have received an email giving details of the Msci degrees shortly after the offers for Honours programmes were sent out; if not, it means you only qualified for the Bsc Hons, I'm afraid...

I'm going to be starting L3 biochemistry or MCB in September - I haven't quite decided which yet - and am also thinking of applying for the work placement degree. From what I've heard, the vast majority of the placements are hosted within the UK and Ireland.

Good luck,

David.

im moving into 2nd year later this year and my gpa is over 12 which is what the book suggests you need to get onto the msci, are there alot of people applying for the msci, and what are the chances of not being successful?
what are the interviews like?, dont know if they tell you that

scotland has a large life sciences industry so i was hoping of staying in scotland at least, glasgow better.

i was thinking of taking molecular cellular biology with biotech.... or genetics.

what courses did you do in L2 and what were they like

Hi guys ,

Does anyone know where someone could be sent on the placement year? Are most of them in the U.K or could you be sent to a company or institute abroad?
Thought I should ask you guys since you would have a better idea that anyone else I've seen on a forum.

Thanks allot if anyone replies !

I got a placement in England this year, but others have gone as far afield as Finland and Munich. Most of the placements are in the UK though.

Thank you so much for your reply. Could I ask you some questions about the Physiology and Sport Science course? Do you by any chance know if its based more on the physiology rather than sport science?And also if that puts it at a disadvantage to other big sport science universities such as Bath or Loughborough?

Thanks again for your reply, and it would be great if you could answer these questions !

Can anyone tell me what the interview process was like? The internal one? Thanks


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It was actually ok for me. They will just ask you a few questions in a very relaxed setting about your hobbies and academic interests, what you expect to gain from going on placement and how your skills would be valuable to your host institution etc...

The interview itself isn't too formal, but competition was intense in my year (and will probably be just as intense, if not more so, for yours!); so make sure you prepare for it!

P.S. which degree group are you in?

Applications to the Msci degree begin in September of L3 - which I will begin in well, September :P - so I'm not sure what the interviews are like. From what I've heard, the internal interview in the uni isn't too bad (as long as you have decent grades and a fair number of extra-curricular activities, of course); but placements must still be applied for externally, so there's no guarantee that you'll get a placement after successfully applying to the programme. The hardest part is applying to companies and research facilities during L3 - some people spend the entire two semesters applying and re-applying before obtaining a placement, while others don't get one at all in the end up; so I imagine it'll take a lot of persistence.

I messed up biology 1b by not attending enough labs, so I ended up getting a CR for that and doing 2nd year in two parts - I did chem 2X and 2Y last year(because I was still qualified to enter L2 chemistry), and this year I took: Essential Genetics 1a; Immunology (13a?); Infection and Immunity (3b); Building an Organism (4b); Microbiology (2c); and Molecules of Life (3c).
For me, the worst course was Microbiology - the second semester labs were great; but this was out-weighed by the incredibly tedious lectures, which were all full of either lists of bacterial species and strains or microbiological techniques we had already covered in labs. Having said that, the quality of the lectures and labs were top-notch; it's just that the content didn't match my interests. Also, you will find Infection and Immunity horrendously boring if you're not really into human disease, so I would advise against choosing that option unless you want to keep the Infection Biology degree pathways open.
The rest were great . My only fault with Molecules of Life is that the first 20 lectures were a bit too basic, with the exception of the first proteins lecture, during which we had to memorise the sidechain structures of the 20 standard amino acids; oh the humanity! Be wary of Essential Genetics - because the lecture notes are formatted in a really simple manner, and nothing in the labs / lectures is too intellectually taxing, it's easy to convince yourself that you're due an easy A; BUT, the final exam is marked quite strictly, so you'll have to know your stuff to get a decent grade. Building an Organism and Immunology were my favourite modules this year. BanO was quite heavy on the plant molecular biology, which I love.
The Immunology lectures were structured quite sensibly - innate immunity lectures at the start of the semester, followed by acquired immunity and other aspects, such as hypersensitivity, cancer, vaccinations etc...; there was also a lecture or two dedicated to consolidating what we had learned so far (e.g. one of the lectures traced the body's immune response to different pathogens, from start to finish, highlighting the differences between each response. By the end it became apparent just how much we'd learned, and how complex the immune response is). Keep in mind though that L2 Immunology looks at the immune system in a purely dry, scientific way (as oppossed to Infection and Immunity, which is largely about the adverse affect pathogens have on thier hosts).
On the whole, L2 was great, and I learned a hell of a lot (my GPA for both this year and overall is now over 15). There are a lot less labs in L2 than in first year, unless you're taking chemistry (in which case there will be slightly more); but the huge amount of time we'll spend in the lab in L3 more than makes up for that, in my view .

Also, essays in L2 tend to be marked more strictly than in L1; so remember to try and quote a few original research papers in every piece of coursework you hand in (it's pretty much impossible to get more than an A5 quoting from textbooks and articles alone, I was told).

Hi,
Do you remember immunology to be difficult?