Welcome to King's College London's Official Q&A on The Student Room!

Hi there! I have a question

I have an unconditional offer from KCL for medicine (A100) and have had my heart set on KCL for the past two years so I'm thrilled.

However, I've heard bad things about student satisfaction due to such a large cohort of students, a lack of feedback and unorganised placements.

My problem is that I'm torn between Bart's and King's at the moment

Please could you persuade me to firm to kings instead of my other offers. - I hear there's a new dean. Will this improve the student satisfaction?


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Why is it taking soooooooooo very long to let interviewees know the outcome of their interviews, the process is very opaque and causes stress and worry. It potentially impacts on studies when waiting over 4 months to find out the outcome ...........the comment is in no way intended to be a criticism, but your help is sought to ease the situation..... By the way I am medicine applicant still waiting to know.... It would be inhuman to tell me that I have been rejected after waiting so long!!

Hi Dr. Aco Malfoy,
Congratulations on your offer!

Firstly, King’s is a great place to study medicine. Our students tell us that they value the clinical experience at our hospitals (which include our 3 primary NHS Partner Trusts – GSTT, KCH and SLAM as well as a network of district general hospitals), our breadth of SSCs and intercalated BScs as well as our first class facilities which includes state of the art simulation centres and our dedicated Virtual Campus for health students. However we recognise that there are areas of the programme that need improving. Professor Stuart Carney was appointed as Dean of Medical Education at the beginning of this academic year and is progressing a detailed action plan. Changes are already being implemented and Professor Carney is working closely with the Medical Student Association (the student representative body) to ensure that the School engages with students better.

One of the biggest differences between King’s and QMUL is that King’s is one of only 6 UK accredited Academic Health Sciences Centres (QMUL/Barts is not an AHSC) – known as King’s Health Partners. The role of AHSCs is to bring together NHS organisations and their university partners in world-class research, health education and patient care. To be among a small number accredited as an AHSC for a second time, is acknowledgement of our progress in this mission and our reputation.

Last but not least, King’s continues to rise in world subject ranking for medicine - 19th in the world this year (QS World University Ranking). This is real recognition of our world class research and researchers – which include the clinicians and academics who will be teaching you. QMUL is placed 51-100 (at this end of the scale, QS do not publish individual positions).

I hope this gives you some food for thought –we really hope you choose King’s!

Thx
Sabi

x

Hi, I have an offer for the BSc physiotherapy course at Kings and I'm struggling to choose between Kings and Salford; and I just have a few questions about the course in general.
Firstly, do clinical placements take place during term-time over the 3 years, or would they run into the summer holidays? How long are the terms and holidays roughly for the physio course?

Also, does the university organise all the placements or would I get to choose where to go for some part of it? How important is the university name itself when it comes to looking for a job after I graduate, as I know all courses are regulated by the CSP and should be at a similar standard?

Thank you in advance!

Thanks! That's really helpful.

Are you a current KCL medic? If so how do you find it (I.e. the university itself and its teaching#?

Thanks in advance!


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Hi, I'm in a similar position to Dr. Aco Malfoy. KCL has been my favourite medical school since I first visited last summer, but I also have an offer from Newcastle and I want to consider both carefully.

Firstly, will KCL be having another open day for offer-holders? It seems a bit unfair that the "exceptional" candidates who received offers a couple of weeks after their interview got to come to an offer-holders open day, but the "pooled" applicants don't seem to have one.

Secondly, could you tell me more about how the issues with organisation and student satisfaction are being resolved? This is something that gets mentioned a lot so I'd like to be reassured that I would have no problems with it if I were to firm Kings.

Thanks in advance!

Hello Flobie!

I'm Cassim, currently a medical student at KCL.

I can't give much information on the open day for offer-holders to you, but I can say I was one of the last few students to hear back from KCL when I applied 5 years ago. I do remember receiving an invite for an open day too. However, I'll leave this for someone more knowledgeable on the topic to answer for you.

With regards to student satisfaction, from my personal experience being here for 5 years, and knowing many of the people who contributed to the campaigns to bring down the student satisfaction here, it was largely based on poor quality assessment feedback as well as organisation of clinical placements. KCL has really jumped onto the issue after these incidents and there's been a huge number of changes for the better this year as a result of it. For example, in clinics, a significant percentage of our marks is based on what our 'Firm Head' (the consultant of the team we're attached to at the hospital) thinks of our performance; however, this introduced an extremely subjective element, as some people were fortunate to have firm heads who gave everyone the highest marks, or very harsh and rarely gave above a 'pass'. On the other hand, there were Firm Heads who never even spent time with their medical students and would mark them really very randomly. This year, they've now made these Firm head marks only 'formative' so they're just for your own personal feedback and no longer contribute to your final grade. Instead, only the main exams matter. With regards to organisation, this year they e-mailed us to say from next year placements will be made in 'clusters': we can choose which cluster we'd like to be with throughout the whole year, so we can really make ourselves at home to whichever hospital we choose. I must admit though, even before these changes, I did observe that students who tend to complain aggressively about the poor organisation of clinics were mainly those who like to be spoon-fed and struggle to take the initiative. I had the honour of being part of one of the most poorly organised firms of the year, but it was definitely one of the best placements I ever had, as all I had to do was show the doctors I was keen to get involved and help out as much as possible, and this naturally meant I got so much teaching and opportunities. Even though this was self-directed, KCL definitely gave us knowledge of what exactly we need to know and focus around, so I could express this to the doctors, and in exchange for helping them with their jobs (which adds to the learning experience, e.g. taking blood, taking a history and presenting patients), they would give me dedicated teaching.

I hope this answers your question?

Do remember, the peer-support network here is extremely strong. When I was at the afore mentioned poorly organised firm, there were some final medical students doing their rotation in the same hospital, and they almost on a daily bases let me tag along with them. As they know exactly what I needed based on my year of studies, they made sure I got all the relevant experience. Me and my peers know full-well we would do the same for others too. I genuinely believe people will only struggle with clinics if they have poor attendance, struggle to take the initiative, or have poor communication skills.

Thanks, that's really helpful so is there a lot of self-directed stuff?

No worries, glad to help.

Overall, we're moving to the direction of becoming less self-directed, as it seems students prefer much more of a structure (I personally prefer self-directed, so I guess it depends on the individual). However, some placements I've been to were almost entirely structured, whilst others largely self-directed (with maybe three sessions of scheduled teaching a week). We have a logbook which is compulsory to get all skills and experiences signed off by a clinician, and also contains all the information about what we need to know and should aim to experience in hospitals for the relevant year of our studies, so you pretty much know what to get on with. Nevertheless, even with the structured placement, I still had the chance to slip in some self-directed learning.

That's pretty good. I don't mind a bit of self-directed because you don't get spoonfed when you're a doctor

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