Hi guys I’m currently a year 1 Medical Biosciences student at Imperial. It has been 5 weeks since we started, however, things are not as good as expected so if you are considering this course, you might want to think twice before you apply.
The website says ‘The course has been re-designed and it’s more lab-focused’.
-You won’t have any lectures, seminars or even tutorials.
I knew most of the contents of this course is delivered online by e-modules before I came but I thought there would be tutorials or other forms of interaction with your professors. No, the only thing you get is Face-to-face session where you sit in a large classroom with about 70+ students and you discuss questions in your team (5-6 students). For each module, you will only have 10 multiple-choice questions and 2-4 so-called application questions which basically you just go on google and find the information you need. I can hardly learn from our teammates when there’re only 12 questions and most of my teammates feel the same.
-E-modules
You have to complete the e-module before you go to the face-to-face session. However, the e-modules are not in details and you could even get mistakes in it. This course starts in 2017 and I would be truly surprised if no one found and pointed out those mistakes before. That would cause a lot of misunderstanding of the contents. Most of the time, you will need to search for other resources on YouTube or Wikipedia to fully understand. In this case, why don’t we simply learn from Coursera or Khan Academy? At least they cover almost all the things you need.
-Lab pods
We only have 2 lab sessions so far, so I would say it’s alright at this point.
-Time schedule
We only have two 3-hour face-to-face sessions and a 9-5 lab session so for most of the time, you are free. It sounds nice but bear in mind that all the other students have back-to-back lectures, seminars and tutorials. My friends are all busy af and they have so much to learn, while I was there in the library going through the books on the reading list as currently I have no other e-modules to learn! It makes me wonder where all those money goes? £9250 for home students and £30,000 for international students?
My personal experience is that I don’t feel satisfied with the new teaching method. Imperial is one of the top universities in the country and I was expecting a well-organised course. The fact is that our course, medical biosciences, is like being forgotten. We don’t have enough resources and support comparing to other students. I’m not the only one feeling this, I know some people transferred to biochem or other courses and people complaining. I had offers from UCL and KCL but I chose IC because I want to do research in the future and I thought a more lab-focused programme might help. Right now I feel being left behind by all the year 1 biomedical students in the country.
So, please, do think twice before you apply.