TSR Wiki > University > Choosing a University > University Guides > University of Portsmouth > Biomedical Science
Applying
The average offer is CDD. If you get accepted an interview is usually given, this will be with one of the academic staff and will be your tutor if you end up here. They will ask you why you chose the course and what the course is about. They may also ask you a science based question. Other than that they will just chat to you about your personal statement.
Facilities
BMS students are usually based in St Micheals building, here there are many labs and lecture rooms. You will also have access to computer facilities and the library.
Lectures
They are usually 50 minutes each. They can be consecutive but you get 10 Minutes break between each one. In first year you share lectures with pharmacy and pharmacology students, on average there are 140 students each lecture. You get an average 20 hours of lectures a week. There are spontaneous registers.
Labs
They are usually 3 hours however can be between 2-4 hours. You do these in groups of around 20 and usually work in pairs. You get one lab a week. You also get a free lab coat. If you miss a lab you fail. Many labs require you to produce a lab report after.
Tutorials
You meet with your personal tutor in groups of 3-10. You meet once every two weeks, they will discuss any issues.
First semester
The first week consists of introductory lectures, these tell you what each topic is about. You will also meet your tutor.
The second week gets more interesting, you begin real lectures and labs.
Lectures include:
- Histology - Lecturer - Phil warren. You are taught about tissues and how to identify them from stained slides. There is a mixed reaction to this subject many love it while others hate it.
- Cell physiology 1 - Lecturer - Geoffe Oliver. You learn about nerves and muscle. Many enjoy this lecture.
- Cell physiology 2 - Lecturer - Godfrey white. Learn all about the cells and its organelles. People can only last 1 hour before sleeping. However on the plus side sheets are given out.
- Medical biochemistry - Lecturer - Godfrey white, Hastie, chopra. Contains enzymes, biological molecules and energy and respiration. Lots of people sleeping mainly due to boring lecturers.
- Chemistry 1 - lecturer - Lee Banting - Learn about organic chemistry, basically everything you learnt in As/A2 chemistry. Everyone loves this lecture as lee is a great teacher.
- Chemistry 2 - Lecturer - Name unknown - Learn about molecular arrangement.
Your first lab will be a practise run, ours was "The use of a spectrophotometer calibration graph to find the concentration of a sample of methylene blue." You do the practical and write up a report which is handed to your tutor for feedback. Here are a list of my first labs in the order I did them in, this may be different depending what group you are in.
- Lab 1 - Practise - Make different concentrations of methyl blue and measure the absorbance using a spectrophotometer to make a calibration graph. Then use this graph to find the concentration of an unknown sample from its absorbance.
- Lab 2 - Histology - Look at different tissues under the microscope and identify them. At the end there is a test where you have to identify the tissues on the screen. Quite easy 90% of people passed
- Lab 3 - Test of precision and accuracy - Determine the concentration of serum albumin using spectrophotometers, work out the CV from the known concentration to see how good your lab skills are.
- Lab 4 - Enzymes - Make different concentrations of substrates and see the rate of reaction with each. Plot graphs and find which is the most accurate out of michaelis, hanes and lineweavers.
- Lab 5 - Histology - Stain the tissues and identify them. You are tested on how well your slide is made and if you correctly identify the tissues.
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