I don't think anyone's done UCL...
UCL (mainly preclinical)
Pros:
- London
- great location: main university is walking distance from the British Library, Camden, West End, Oxford St, Covent Garden, and lots more
- cheaper to live in than if you were at Imperial, more expensive than Barts
- good rivalries between the other med schools
- nice preclinical/clinical divide which gives you the time to learn the basics, get a bit of confidence and do the fresher's thing without being unleashed onto the wards
- PDS (professional development spine): one morning a week of comm skills, clinical skills, law, ethics, placements. Really builds your confidence and gets you ready for clinics. Your PDS tutor is also the only person in the med school likely to know your name (though that doesn't mean they will)
- intercalated BSc: probably the broadest range of options and lots of arts subjects on offer as well as pure science. Also allows you to be a proper student with an 8 hour week which will be nice after two years of 9-5. And if more study isn't your thing, some people are allowed to use the year to travel.
- good student support system in the form of weekly surgeries. I've found from friends' experiences that the med school is very understanding if you're going through a tough time and will do anything they can to help (Dr Cross, especially, is lovely) but this is only if you seek help
- teaching is, in general, good. The core of all our modules have been very well organised with great lectures, online powerpoint slides and handbooks of lecture notes. Some of the "extra" lectures can be of varying quality, but there's quite a lot of clinically related lectures and content. Student administration is good too. Some people complain, but from what I've heard from other med schools, UCL is a model of organisation. And it's amazing being at a university at the forefront of research - the things discovered here and currently under research are constantly mentioned in lectures and make you feel part of something pretty good, particularly in neuroscience.
- dissection! Some people don't like the way its taught here but that's mainly because they don't spoonfed you. Provided you put the work in and actively seek teaching, anatomy teaching is excellent. By far my favourite part of the curriculum and a real strength here.
- SSCs: there's a really good selection, with something for everyone (eg. volunteering, IT, arts, languages, science, library projects, community placements and you can even create your own)
- RUMS: we have our own sports teams, societies, bars, social activities and so on. It makes us cliquey and less likely to socialise with non-medics but it also creates the sense of a community which I like.
- pretty much nothing to hand in, other than the odd PDS essay and SSC things
- the third "arts subject" admissions policy suits me because there's a lot of people here who are into things other than science. Of course this will be the case at other medical schools, but there's definitely a lot of people here like me who would have done an arts subject if they couldn't have applied for medicine.
Cons:
- London: expensive (especially with the compulsory BSc)
- you are effectively a barcode to the university. Some PDS tutors are great, but others barely know your name and have no idea what you're like as a person so they write generic references for BSc applications. No other lectures or tutors know your name unless you repeatedly fail or attend the surgeries frequently. I feel like if I had a problem, no-one within the medical school would notice other than my friends
- the medical school is quite clique-y
- constant formatives to revise for
- summatives: exam papers are often unbalanced and place a disproportionate emphasis on small details so even if you know the core essentials inside out, you can come out feeling absolutely awful. Plus you have to pass each paper and also each module.
- the library has a tendency to do building work round the time of exams
- the preclinical course is pretty much 9-5 every week day so if you work part-time, social life or academics might have to be compromised
- psychology and sociology are taught in perhaps too much detail and could be better assessed by essay, though some of the lectures are excellent