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London - lots to do, good London med school banter
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PBL - Despite what I was made to believe prior to applying here, BL is not solely a PBL based course and you are not left to do things on your own. There is a very good mix of teaching here with 4 hours of PBL compared to 10/12 hours of lectures on the four days a week we are actually on campus. One day a week is spent at a GP Surgery (or Hospital in second year). On top of these methods of teaching, we also have practicals, clinical skill sessions, anatomy sessions and microanatomy (histology) sessions. There is obviously some independent/self directed learning here (as is the case on most other medical courses) just because its clearly not possible to teach absolutely everything you need to know about medicine in the actual course itself and you do have to rely on yourself doing your own outside reading. Also, the advantage of PBL rooms in teh Garrod Building means you can book them out to revise (individually or in a group) should you need to - you esentially have an entire classroom to yourself which means that if you are the sort of person that likes scribbling away on a whiteboard to test yourself just before an exam (like I am), this would be ideal for you. Its also open 24/7 practically everyday of the year too, so long as you have your ID card on you.
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East London - relatively cheap London housing after first year in Bow, Mile End, Shoreditch, Poplar, Wappping, Stratford etc.
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Very strong sense of community here
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Lectures are sometimes recorded which means you can listen to them again afterwards if you missed it for whatever reason
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Very quick turnover with exam results - end of year results come out a week after your last paper, and it is double marked too - very efficient. ICA results take about a week and a half too to get back to you. SSCs take a bit longer as they have to wait to get everyones results back before they can be published on Blackboard.
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Whitechapel Market - it sells anything and everything and its uber cheap stuff too which can come in handy when the student loan money begins to run out
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They've listened to us and increased study leave for end of year exams to two weeks in pre-clinical years (as opposed to the single week we had before)
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Nice, large enough, friendly year group - not too big that you feel ignored and not too small that you are bored of your year group by the end of the first week
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Still get smaller group practical/pbl sessions which are very useful if you want to slow things down to your pace. I'm certainly less embarrassed to ask a question in my PBl group as opposed to in a massive lecuture theatre
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ICAs all year round (can be annoying because there are 3 sets to do each year before your end of year exams), but if you manage to stay on top of them, end of year exam revision is a whole lot easier.
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No negative marking in exams (apart from in some SSCs etc.)
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No more SAQ exams after 2nd year
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People in your year look out for you - the amount of past papers and notes and details of revision sessions being emailed to me by randoms is sometimes very astonishing! In such a competitive field like medicine, its nice to have such camaraderie at BL.
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Very well set out course - PBLs/lectures/practicals all link very very well with each other and make understanding so much more easier
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Spiral curriculum which means suff is revisited over the 5 years which makes things a lot more easier to remember. You essentially cover each 'module' three times before graduating - one in first year, once again in second year and then once when you hit the wards. Constant repition means its more likely to be remembered.
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Union is AMAZING - everyone sorta knows everyone and is uber friendly
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We remain autonomous from Queen Mary
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2012 Olympics in the East End - new Westfield being built in Stratford in addition to other stuff to regenerate the area a bit
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We rule at RAG, big time! And we do it in serious style!
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HEMS - you can get on to the PreHospital Course here which involves going out on shifts with Emergency Doctors/Paramedics! Well exciting!
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Really diverse student body which is really nice
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Brick Lane is like 5 minutes away from the Whitechapel Campus
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OSCEs from year one which means by 5th year, you should be a pro at examinations
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You can choose to dissect (as an SSC) or learn through prosections
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World renowned hospitals for placements
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Good mix of hospitals - you get the busier London Hospitals like the London Chest, St Barts and The Royal London hospitals as well as the smaller, quieter DGHs as far out as Chelmsford and Southend. You essentially get a good mix of patients, teaching and experiences as a medical student here.
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Modern lecture theatres and facilities
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The main lectureres/module leads are legends! We've had Prof. Kumar (President of the RSM/authour of Kumar and Clarke) lecture us a few times in first year
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GP Placements every other week in first two years
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Good transport links (to said GP placements and other stuff in London)
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Masses of clubs and societies to join here
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Charterhouse Square. Summerdaze. EPIC. That is all.
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BL students know how to have a good time
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We remain autonomous from Queen Mary (yep, so good I had to mention it twice )
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East London- erm, yeah, its hardly Chelsea or Kensington now is it.
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The unions a bit meh on the inside (though there is now a £800k refurbishment taking place from September 2011). There've been some pretty top union nights though (dental beer race was defo my highlight in first year), but it sorta went quiet around April time because of exams etc. which was to be expected.
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Quite difficult to integrate with non-medics/dentists unless you live on the Mile End campus
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Can be a liiiiitle bit cliquey to begin with - people group off by ethnicities quite a bit especially at the begnning of the year, but thats probably the same everywhere else tbh - you generally have more in common with them. After the first term or so, there's a whole lot of intergration!
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Sometimes the clinical bits they throw into the pre-clinical years can be a bit OTT and rather than trying to understand whats going on (like you would when you start placements in the clinical years), you begin to just memorise random scales like the ASIA scale etc. because you know for a fact they'll throw it into one of the exams.
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Good idea to have GP Placements in pre-clinical years but there's a lot of variation with the teaching/assessments. Oh and some of them are a trek to get to in the first place! I was in Essex this year - had to leave my house at 7.15 to get in for 9.
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You can get the odd lecturer who mumbles to themselves rather than talks to the students, but again, thats not specific to BL.
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Most days start at 9am (especially if you have morning PBL sessions too)
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Portfolios in the pre-clinical years seem pointless (probably more relevant for the older years, but doing them now is a bit meh)
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Meeting with your personal tutor is just long. Can be useful if you have a problem, but quite pointless otherwise. Shouldn't really be compulsory IMO.
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Assessments can be timed quite badly - weeks of nothing and then one week were you have to hand in PBL write ups, revise for ICAs at the end of the week and do an SSC presentation. Kinda annoying tbh.
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Not many choices for iBScs (even though you have the choice to do it after 2nd, 3rd or 4th year which means most people that actually want to do one will get to do one eventually). Intercalated BScs done after second year HAVE to be done internally, whereas from 3rd year onwards, you can apply externally if they are willing to accept you).
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PBL is much less time consuming than going to lectures, not listening, and having to go home and learn it all anyway
Good unions
Generally fair exams
Long holidays (we had 5 weeks off for Xmas in 3rd year)
1st and 2nd year are pretty enjoyable and sociable
No pointlessly detailed anatomy teaching
Decent SSC choices, and the option to self-propose
Lots of ill people to see
The "study landscape" (unnecessary term for "library" ) is nice
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It is definitely "Teach Yourself Medicine" - there is barely any support except for an FAQ system where you submit questions which half the time aren't answered. If your question receives a response it's a lucky dip as to whether the answer's satisfactory. Wikipedia becomes one of your closest friends!
Varied quality of facilitators - you could come away from PBL with completely irrelevant questions and missing out really important ones. It would be more disastrous if it weren't for the fact that everyone has the "Facilitator's notes" which give an idea of the level of detail required. We're allegedly not supposed to have these but the nicer facilitators give them out.
Most of the lectures are just awful. I've never revised from any of the lectures we've had and it hasn't been detrimental to my performance at all.
3rd year in general was rubbish: some of the clinical skills 'teaching' was disgraceful (venepuncture involved a ppt presentation being put on our website), the quality of placements was highly varied (2 out of my 3 were dreadful - complained about one of them and nothing was done). Literally everyone in the year found the 4x2000 word coursework in 3rd year to be a MASSIVE waste of time and effort.
All of our exams for the year are given in one week in June which is insanely stressful at the time.
They can be really disorganised - timetable mix-ups and us being told things won't come up in an OSCE due to us never being taught it, and then it coming up anyway (it was discounted from the final score but without apology)
Glasgow weather in general, particularly winters.
Glasgow (and the surrounding) hospitals are generally a bit eugh inside (on ward I was on still had carpets...) and need to be done up