The Student Room Group

Imperial medicine student satisfaction

So as I'm sure a lot of people are aware, the 2015 league tables have been released in the last week or so from both the guardian and the complete university guide, and Imperial didn't fare too well in either of them. I know you should take all league tables with a pinch of salt, but given that the decrease in ranking in both tables seems to be largely due to student satisfaction (or some slight variation in phrasing of the same idea), I think it's alright to be a bit concerned.

I've seen plenty of Kings students falling over themselves to explain their low student satisfaction and guardian ranking, but I haven't really seen anyone from Imperial doing so, so I was wondering if there's any particular reason behind this group of medics having particularly low satisfaction, and if imperial are doing anything to change this? I don't want to go to the open day and just be fobbed off with a kind of "we're working to change this" response!

If anyone could help that would be great. I know Imperial generally have a fairly low satisfaction score, but why is this year so low in particular?

P.s sorry if this should have gone in a different forum, I wasn't sure between here, 'medicine' or 'medical schools :colondollar:
*brushes away tumbleweed*

can anybody help me out...?
Reply 2
Original post by just Kate here
x


Hey. I've moved your thread to the medicine section. Hopefully you'll get some helpful responses here :smile:
The league tables are really weird this year. Personally I wouldn't go much on the stats for student satisfaction and student:staff ratios. The way they ask you about student satisfaction in the surveys is too weird to yield actual results, they sort-of ask you about things they consider to be satisfaction outcomes "did all your lectures happen?" "did you get taught the things in the objectives list?" "were there patients?"... rather than actually "were you satisfied with the experience?".

Student:staff ratios HAVE to be including auxillary staff in there... cleaners, hospital porters, nurses, that man off the street, this guy from the A&E corridor, some research scientist we found in a lab technically connected by some obscure publication to the medical school...

I would rely on the feedback seen on this forum and medical school profiles far more than on the league tables. At the end of the day, Imperial probably is 'better' than Keele (5th in the Guardian!!), but all medical schools are going to teach you the same stuff. There's no truly 'bad' medical school and they're all hard to get into, even the ones which are supposedly 'less good'. The league tables are fairly useless, in my opinion. For instance the fact that Oxford and Cambridge are topping the clinical medicine chart flies in the face of a general migration to London universities. Anyway.
Original post by seaholme
they sort-of ask you about things they consider to be satisfaction outcomes "did all your lectures happen?" "did you get taught the things in the objectives list?" "were there patients?"... rather than actually "were you satisfied with the experience?".


Just asking how satisfied you were would be way too open-ended and far less reliable than going through different criteria. It needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt for sure, but if someone is consistently low i think exploring why that is is a very good idea, as the OP is doing.

All i know about the London schools OP is anecdotal from other users on here. They have far fewer patients per student and are far more logbook-heavy than Oxford, and their attachments away from the main teaching hospital can be very long - that's London schools as opposed to Imperial specifically. That's all I can say.

The league tables are fairly useless, in my opinion. For instance the fact that Oxford and Cambridge are topping the clinical medicine chart flies in the face of a general migration to London universities. Anyway.


Not sure what you mean by this. Are you referring to how some Oxford and Cambridge students are forced to go to London each year?
(edited 9 years ago)
I disagree with the point about London schools spending a long time away from the main teaching hospital. At Imperial (and indeed the other London schools), we have more than one main teaching hospital (and some of our DGHs are basically like teaching hospitals). Imperial itself doesn't really send students outside of London or indeed NW London (except for GP and sometimes A&E/surgery in final year- and if you are allocated to St Peter's, which not all of us are). This is very minimal compared to a lot of other universities.

Imperial has a large emphasis on getting signatures (O&G in particular), which may contribute to this. As we train in NW Thames hospitals, sometimes students may not feel like part of the clinical team because everyone is so busy but ofc this is variable and there are excellent teachers/firms. Yes, sometimes it does feel like there are too many students on a ward but in some rotations they get around this by coming up with timetables which ensure you will only have a few students in a certain clinical area (e.g. children's outpatients or wards). The hospitals are very well staffed so this may make it harder to get experience doing procedures, but then again there are probably more procedures as there will be lots of patients too so again this is variable. Some students feel they don't really know what to expect of exams (as there are no real past papers available for the clinical exams), and teaching in fifth year (the specialties year) is very hospital dependent (but we are adult learners after all). There is a lot of student society organised teaching too (either by senior students or doctors) so sometimes you feel like there is too much teaching! They do expect a lot of students in the clinical years (you only have one student selected placement so it can be hard to do extra things), and this may be reflected in satisfaction (for example in the type and number of exams but apparently this is good preparation for postgraduate college exams). People in my year feel we have not had enough exposure to different general medical specialties/surgical specialties but they have changed the structure of third year now to 6 five week firms (rather than 3 ten week ones) so this should be less of an issue. Imperial does tend to respond to student feedback which is a plus.

You do need to manage your own time and learning and be proactive to get the most out of the clinical years but that is true anywhere. Again, a lot of people don't fill in these surveys either. I can't comment on the preclinical years here and I haven't actually looked at these league tables/their criteria. I have really enjoyed the clinical years though. Anyway, should get back to revision!
Reply 6
Original post by just Kate here
I know you should take all league tables with a pinch of salt ...


That's a gross understatement. You should immediately acquire a whole salt mine before even thinking about reading them, or better even, don't check them at all.

The Guardian league table is not worth the paper it is printed on. It ranks universities on certain subjects that don't even have a department in that subject, one university that was located in the 20s-range last year shot to first place in a specific subject this year and there are other cases where the ranking itself does not make any sense at all.
Original post by seaholme
. For instance the fact that Oxford and Cambridge are topping the clinical medicine chart flies in the face of a general migration to London universities. Anyway.


What do you mean?
Reply 8
Original post by seaholme
For instance the fact that Oxford and Cambridge are topping the clinical medicine chart flies in the face of a general migration to London universities. Anyway.


I'd rather go to Oxford or Cambridge over all the London schools and i'm sure its the same with most unis. This is evidenced by their high UCAS tariff.
Reply 9
Original post by ukmed108
This is evidenced by their high UCAS tariff.


Which has absolutely nothing to do with perceived reputation over actual facts, hasn't it? :wink:
Reply 10
Original post by seaholme
For instance the fact that Oxford and Cambridge are topping the clinical medicine chart flies in the face of a general migration to London universities. Anyway.


Flies in the face of nothing.

300 preclinical students into 150 clinical doesn't fit - the whole clinical school has 4 students in it who didn't go to Cambridge for preclinical - doesn't sound like a general migration to me, sounds like competition for places resulting in a lot of people being forced out.
Original post by hslt
Flies in the face of nothing.

300 preclinical students into 150 clinical doesn't fit - the whole clinical school has 4 students in it who didn't go to Cambridge for preclinical - doesn't sound like a general migration to me, sounds like competition for places resulting in a lot of people being forced out.


Whilst that may be true, some of the top students do choose to go to London for whatever reason (experience, hospitals etc). Others choose to stay. In any case, it is irrelevant because the only reason this happens is because Cambridge cannot accommodate 300 students (they have sent students to London for ages). It may well be easier to deliver a better "clinical school experience" to a year group of 150, compared to almost 400 at Imperial (and UCL, which takes the majority of people that Oxbridge can't). Anyway, Cambridge will no longer be sending students to London from 2017.

Though none of this stuff about Cambridge/Oxford has anything to do with this thread! As someone who has studied at both Cam and Imperial (and has friends doing clinical at Cambridge), I think each have their pros and cons. I don't think ranking accurately reflects this for any medical school (and by definition medical courses are more similar than different, despite using different teaching styles, than other courses as doctors have to be of a similar quality- no matter what people like to believe about the institutions they study at!).

It doesn't seem like Imperial's merits are accurately reflected by this student satisfaction aspect (and indeed some things which people have complained about are changing- and the number of students will also fall soon with the lack of Cambridge transfers and maybe with the changes to Graduate entry). Medical school is much more about what you make of it than which university you go to.

At this stage, when you are deciding where to apply (OP), your best option is going to open days and talking to students there. That way you can also see whether you will like the location you may end up being based in and what facilities the universities have for yourself. You should also consider entrance requirements. You can use forums like this to speak to current students and some universities have their own forums online. Admissions staff also tend to be helpful. Some universities have alternative prospectuses. You can also look up the affiliated hospitals online (to see what areas you may be based in and anything else you might want to know about them). A bit of gut instinct will also come into play when choosing as there are so many options!
Wow. Well I was not trying to say anything particularly controversial, just that the way to get a realistic picture of what people think & do is to read the stuff on these forums like the medical school reviews, rather than the league table's satisfaction scores. The fact that Oxbridge tops the list may be fair, but it belies the fact that there is actually a different experience (which a certain proportion of people, although not everybody, do actually want to have) outside of these places. There are people 'forced' out by lack of places (although shortly that'll presumably be no longer the case as Cambridge switch to 100% staying), but that's not the explanation for every single person. That's all I meant, that actually the situation is more complex than can be gleaned from rankings and that (for instance) there is a group who do want to move for clinical years, and they would seem totally invisible in the tables. So in that sense, tables are unreliable at telling you all of what's happening on the ground.

Not trying to pull any X is better than Y arguments :redface:
Original post by seaholme
Wow. Well I was not trying to say anything particularly controversial, just that the way to get a realistic picture of what people think & do is to read the stuff on these forums like the medical school reviews, rather than the league table's satisfaction scores. The fact that Oxbridge tops the list may be fair, but it belies the fact that there is actually a different experience (which a certain proportion of people, although not everybody, do actually want to have) outside of these places. There are people 'forced' out by lack of places (although shortly that'll presumably be no longer the case as Cambridge switch to 100% staying), but that's not the explanation for every single person. That's all I meant, that actually the situation is more complex than can be gleaned from rankings and that (for instance) there is a group who do want to move for clinical years, and they would seem totally invisible in the tables. So in that sense, tables are unreliable at telling you all of what's happening on the ground.

Not trying to pull any X is better than Y arguments :redface:


My post wasn't aimed at yours, rather all these people who seem to be writing "x is better than y" posts here- which isn't really what the OP was asking (I think).

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