Which uni is better for medicine Queen Mary or Kings college london

I've just finished my first year at Barts so happy to answer any questions you've got about the uni/course etc

Reply 4

OP

Original post by TODTEMPLE01

I've just finished my first year at Barts so happy to answer any questions you've got about the uni/course etc

Hi thanks for offering to answer some questions I have. I was wondering if a 50 minute commute to uni is a good idea whilst studying medicine at barts or whether it would be exhaustive. I was also wondering what a day of medicine is like is it 9-5? Or some days half days etc and whether you are allowed to attend some lectures through video links without needing to go uni for the day.
I also wanted to ask if Queen Mary’s does exams at the end of each semester or the end of the year, and if there are multiple on one day, as I have heard some people studying engineering few years back experienced this. I was also wondering which intercalated bsc Queen Mary offers. Thanks.

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 5

OP

Original post by Ajay19

Hi thanks for offering to answer some questions I have. I was wondering if a 50 minute commute to uni is a good idea whilst studying medicine at barts or whether it would be exhaustive. I was also wondering what a day of medicine is like is it 9-5? Or some days half days etc and whether you are allowed to attend some lectures through video links without needing to go uni for the day.
I also wanted to ask if Queen Mary’s does exams at the end of each semester or the end of the year, and if there are multiple on one day, as I have heard some people studying engineering few years back experienced this. I was also wondering which intercalated bsc Queen Mary offers. Thanks.

Also I just wanted to ask how many weeks of term are there and how many holiday weeks at Queen Mary

Reply 6

Original post by Ajay19

Hi thanks for offering to answer some questions I have. I was wondering if a 50 minute commute to uni is a good idea whilst studying medicine at barts or whether it would be exhaustive. I was also wondering what a day of medicine is like is it 9-5? Or some days half days etc and whether you are allowed to attend some lectures through video links without needing to go uni for the day.
I also wanted to ask if Queen Mary’s does exams at the end of each semester or the end of the year, and if there are multiple on one day, as I have heard some people studying engineering few years back experienced this. I was also wondering which intercalated bsc Queen Mary offers. Thanks.

I know a few people in my year who commuted to uni but I'm not sure how far away they lived. I think a 50 minute commute would probably be alright in first year but you might have a few days here and there where you have to leave quite early or get home fairly late (for example on placement or if you have anatomy/physiology later in the afternoon). You could use that time to get a bit of your work done too, so I imagine it would be doable but I know that I quite liked living a 1 minute walk away from lectures!
Most days aren't 9-5, I had very few days throughout the year where I had scheduled teaching all day apart from a couple of days in the first two weeks with all the introductory lectures. Most days you're finished by 3pm.

A typical week:
Monday - 2x lectures in the morning and anatomy+physiology (if GP placement on Thursday) or histology and clinical skills in the afternoon
Tuesday - 2hrs of PBL (9-11am) and 3x lectures (11am - 3pm with 1hr lunch)
Wednesday - 2hrs of lectures (9-11am) with the afternoon off for sports/societies or just to relax
Thursday - GP placement every other week or anatomy+physiology if not on placement
Friday - 2hrs of PBL (9-11am) and 3x lectures (11am - 3pm with 1hr lunch)

90% of our lectures are recorded apart from a few lectures in our metabolism module but they don't record attendace so you can just watch them at home when you want to go through them or if you want to look over them come exam time. Attendance is recorded for PBLs, anatomy/physiology, placement and clinical skills.

We do have quite a few exams/ICAs (in-course assessments) throughout the year, I think more than other med schools but not 100% sure about that. We had an ICA after each block of modules so 3 in total:

Mid Novemeber - FunMed (Fundamentals of Medicine)
Mid February - CR/MET/LOCO (cardiorespiratory, metabolism and locomotor)
Early/mid May - BB/HD (brain and behaviour and human development)

Each ICA has 2 papers - a written paper (has a mix of single best answer/SBAs testing lecture content and short answer questions/SAQs testing PBL content) and an online spotter (mostly multiple-choice and tests anatomy and physiology) and we sit both exams on the same day. You need to get an average of 50% over the 3 ICAs to be able to sit the end of year exams (written, spotter and OSCE) but each end of year exam is on a separate day.

There's quite a range of intercalated degrees to choose from depending on what you're interested in like global health, neuroscience and sports medicine or even prehospital medicine which is run in partnership with London's Air Ambulance. I think you're also able to intercalate in some MSc degrees if you want. Here's the official list of intercalated degrees that they offer: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/smd/undergrad.../intercalated/

Reply 7

Original post by Ajay19

Also I just wanted to ask how many weeks of term are there and how many holiday weeks at Queen Mary

Just gone through my timetable and I think we had around 31 weeks of teaching this year.

We don't get much holiday time throughout the year compared to other med schools - 2 weeks at Christmas and Easter then roughly 3 months of summer holiday but the summer holiday decreases as you get further on in the course. Although it's not 'proper' holiday we did get just under a week off after our FunMed ICA. We also don't have reading weeks.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask :smile:

Reply 8

OP

Original post by TODTEMPLE01

Just gone through my timetable and I think we had around 31 weeks of teaching this year.

We don't get much holiday time throughout the year compared to other med schools - 2 weeks at Christmas and Easter then roughly 3 months of summer holiday but the summer holiday decreases as you get further on in the course. Although it's not 'proper' holiday we did get just under a week off after our FunMed ICA. We also don't have reading weeks.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask :smile:

Thanks so much, I was just wondering if Queen Mary is in a good area in your opinion, as I heard from some people that they sometimes feel don’t safe, would you agree? Also how many hours a week would you say you do when it comes to self studying.

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 9

Original post by Ajay19

Thanks so much, I was just wondering if Queen Mary is in a good area in your opinion, as I heard from some people that they sometimes feel don’t safe, would you agree? Also how many hours a week would you say you do when it comes to self studying.

For me, the area around the uni has been fine - myself and my friends haven't had any issues with it this year. No place (especially in a big city like London) is going to be 100% safe but so long as you're sensible then you should be fine. Where we have teaching split between 3 campuses (Whitechapel, Mile End and West Smithfield/Barbican) we have quite a nice mix of being in east and central London. We're pretty close to central as well, in just a 5-10 minute walk from the main campus you can be in Zone 1. I'm not going to lie to you and say that the other buildings around the Whitechapel campus are really modern/look like the typical big London buildings (apart from the uni buildings (eg. the Blizard) and Royal London!) but the area around the medical school is so diverse with a great mix of cultures and people to live amongst and learn about which can only make you a better doctor in the future.

I think I probably worked 10-15hrs per week on top of our scheduled teaching to do my PBL research, type up revision notes and go over anatomy but that varied quite a lot week by week depending on how much I had to go over or how close to exams we were. It varied quite a lot from person to person as well - some of my friends worked quite a lot more than I did each week (maybe 4-5hrs per day) and some worked less than me, it just depends on how much you need to do to stay at a comfortable level.

Just to finish off, I can't recommend Barts enough - I've loved my 1st year here. If great early clinical experience is something important for you then you can't really get much better, I've been able to experience things that very few other med schools would offer so early on in the course (2 weeks in maxfax and some time in anaesthetics particularly stand out) and there's some great opportunities to spend time with paramedics and air ambulance doctors or in the A&E from 2nd year onwards if that interests you (like it does me!) or in other specialties with the different societies. There's a strong community feel at Barts that's there from the first day and the social side of the uni is really good if that's something important for you.

Again if you have anything else you want to ask then I'd be happy to answer

Reply 10

OP

Original post by TODTEMPLE01

For me, the area around the uni has been fine - myself and my friends haven't had any issues with it this year. No place (especially in a big city like London) is going to be 100% safe but so long as you're sensible then you should be fine. Where we have teaching split between 3 campuses (Whitechapel, Mile End and West Smithfield/Barbican) we have quite a nice mix of being in east and central London. We're pretty close to central as well, in just a 5-10 minute walk from the main campus you can be in Zone 1. I'm not going to lie to you and say that the other buildings around the Whitechapel campus are really modern/look like the typical big London buildings (apart from the uni buildings (eg. the Blizard) and Royal London!) but the area around the medical school is so diverse with a great mix of cultures and people to live amongst and learn about which can only make you a better doctor in the future.

I think I probably worked 10-15hrs per week on top of our scheduled teaching to do my PBL research, type up revision notes and go over anatomy but that varied quite a lot week by week depending on how much I had to go over or how close to exams we were. It varied quite a lot from person to person as well - some of my friends worked quite a lot more than I did each week (maybe 4-5hrs per day) and some worked less than me, it just depends on how much you need to do to stay at a comfortable level.

Just to finish off, I can't recommend Barts enough - I've loved my 1st year here. If great early clinical experience is something important for you then you can't really get much better, I've been able to experience things that very few other med schools would offer so early on in the course (2 weeks in maxfax and some time in anaesthetics particularly stand out) and there's some great opportunities to spend time with paramedics and air ambulance doctors or in the A&E from 2nd year onwards if that interests you (like it does me!) or in other specialties with the different societies. There's a strong community feel at Barts that's there from the first day and the social side of the uni is really good if that's something important for you.

Again if you have anything else you want to ask then I'd be happy to answer

thanks again for answering my questions I really do appreciate it and you truly have sold me on barts, I know this is a bit personal but what a levels did you do and what did you get in them and what was your UKCAT score, and what would be your advice for them.also how were your GCSEs. Thanks again

Reply 11

Original post by Ajay19

thanks again for answering my questions I really do appreciate it and you truly have sold me on barts, I know this is a bit personal but what a levels did you do and what did you get in them and what was your UKCAT score, and what would be your advice for them.also how were your GCSEs. Thanks again

Glad to hear that you're liking the sound of Barts.

For A levels I did chemistry (OCR), biology (Edexcel/SNAB) and Spanish (Edexcel) with an EPQ on cancer screening and got A* A A* A* respectively in those subjects.

My UKCAT score was 730 average, band 3:
VR - 680
DM - 680
QR - 760
AR - 800
SJT - Band 3
I don't want to put you off but I really hated the UKCAT, most probably the most stressed I've felt for anything and the bit of the application that I'm most pleased that I'll never have to do again. I can't really remember that far back to give you specific advice about the UKCAT but I definitely remember that Medify saved me. I didn't do any courses or anything like that apart from getting the 1 month medify UKCAT subscription, I don't think the courses are worth it personally but if you think that might be something that would help you then go for it. My one bit of advice would be to not start revising for the exam too early, I revised for about a month with two weeks of fairly light work (less than 1hr per day) on holiday and then after coming back from work experience each day and then two weeks with a bit more intense work (2-3hrs per day) before the exam. Lots of people say that you can peak too early if you start revising too far in advance so I think around a month would be ideal.

I started revising quite lightly for A-levels around the Feb half-term and then increased gradually until the exams started. What seemed to work quite well for me was going through the specification over and over again and giving each bullet point a colour (red, orange or green) based on how happy I was with that bit of content until most of the spec was coloured green. Don't forget past papers - and lots and lots of them! I ended up doing all of the current and old spec papers for each of my subjects and going through marking them and seeing what bits I needed to improve on. You definitely start to quickly notice patterns in the mark schemes which you can use for other similar questions which will hopefully let you pick up some easy marks.

For GCSEs I got 8A*s and 2As

Reply 12

OP