Anyone studying at KCL now?

I am applying for extended international foundation course.

My name is Mina.Nice to meet you.How do you do??

Hey! I am good thank you! When will you be starting at KCL? And I study Physics btw.

Where are you from?

I will be starting in September 2021? how abt u??

I already started in 2020!

I will be starting in September 2021? how abt u??

👍👍👍 That's Great hope to see you there.😊

Hey I want to study physics at kcl in 2021!!

Hey I want to study physics at kcl in 2021!!

That's Great to hear!! I wish you all the best for your application to be successful.😊👍👍👍

yayyy! I study Physics at Kings... you seem enthusiastic and thats what they want!

How do you like the course and the uni. I know corona takes away from the experience but I was just wondering how it’s going for you.

You too Mina, Good luck for KCL and all your other choices.

My advise: Just go over Further Maths content and a lot of Electromagnetism during the summer. You will be fine hahah

Maths is fairly straightforward, labs is alright but sometimes it can get a bit boring, you will love Matter and Classical Mechanics but you will struggle with Electromagnetism.

Uni is beautiful, campus is central, course is diverse, no 2 professors of yours are from the same ethnic background. I have bengali, pakistani, russian and hungarian professors for semester 1. My personal tutor is American and my academic tutor is British.

The workload is alright and manageable and a lot better than A level. Mark schemes are straightforward. They make hard stuff seem easy.

Prestige wise and historically... Maxwell founded the laws of electromagnetism (which led to engineering being a thing) here. A lot of famous people including Peter Higgs studied here. My academic tutor actually won the David Bates prize so you have cool people who are experts in their fields and who are working on cutting edge research!

You will love it here but you may also hate it... it depends on what kind of person you are and what you are looking for in a uni.

I’m part of the K+ programme so I was lucky enough to visit a couple of the campuses, I’ve been to strand and Waterloo. It was nice tbh, and I would love to go there (plus if I get an offer, it would be reduced). I didn’t know I wanted to study physics at the beginning of year 12 and I regret not picking Further Maths but I’ve been trying to learn it in my free time - not that I have much of that.

I didn’t know Peter Higgs studied here!!! I’m particularly interested in particle physics so that’s exciting to know. How would you say the particle physics modules are - or do you not do that in first year? Also was there anything you disliked about the uni?

We have some particle Physics in first semester but you only lay down the foundations related to it. Like you learn about collisions and stuff like oscillations (which involves a lot of maths, a lot more than what you are used to at A level). But most of the fun stuff is in semester two.

What I love about Kings and other unis dont really do this: You usually learn the maths before you apply it whereas at other unis, they teach you the physics and then go over the maths as well and it doesnt make sense til after 3 or 4 weeks where they teach you the maths and then you go back to the lecture notes thats 4 weeks old and thats when it starts to make sense.

I however hate that the Physics department is quite small than a lot of unis. You have fewer professors even though they are masters in their own fields. The labs are small and arent as good as other unis labs. If you want to be the leading student at your uni with the largest building, then go to Manchester.

That’s good, I guess I shouldn’t worry too much about not doing further maths at A level. I also applied to Manchester but it was for a foundation course as I needed a backup uni with really low entry requirements. I think it was BBC. So Manchester isn’t really even in my top three tbh but I have been considering it. This is a bit of a weird question, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. In your opinion what’s the girl to boy ratio in the physics course. All the physics teachers, who are boys, at my school have warned me that it’s mostly boys and all the girl physicists they have spoken to have said that at some point especially at the start it made them feel alienated. Ik it’s a weird worry to have but all of the physics people I look up to look nothing like me and it helps to know that I’m not alone in that. If you get what I mean...

Also do you live at home or in accommodation, and in your opinion how are the experiences different.

I applied for the foundation course at manchester and the bsc course! (Insured the BSc Course and got in haha but went to Kings which was my firm).

With regards to women at kings... the current head of department is the american, my personal tutor however it will change in a few weeks and we will have a female person. I dont know the ratio but we dont have an overwhelming majority of men. When I look at people in a room, its almost 50-50 and we dont really care about gender. The hardest module is taught by a woman and we dont judge people based on their gender, religion, background etc. Everyone is here to learn and we dont even need feminists cause we have equality here. Like, Ive never thought of the ratio and neither have the girls on my course cause thats the amount of equality we have.

However at the uni, I did come across the stats when I was looking at unis and there are obviously more girls than boys at the uni itself. So you wouldnt have to worry about that at all. Kings is probably the most diverse uni in the UK and also gives a lot of importance to womens rights.

That’s good to know, Ik it was a bit of a weird question but my physics teacher tends to go on about it when ever I bring up what course I want to study. Probably should have considered the fact that he went to university over 20 years ago. Also Congrats on getting into your firm choice, Ik there was a lot of controversy regarding A level results in 2020, so really well done.