Hi! I'm a second-year biomedical science student at King's College London (my first choice) and I also had an offer from Uni of Leeds. (My other applications were to Edinburgh, Oxford and UCL which were all rejections but that was in part due to being the year that hadn't actually taken our GCSEs so unis didn't really trust our grades)
My advice for the personal statement would be to really showcase your interest in the topic - what particularly is it about biomed that interests you and why do you want to study it at university. For instance, I picked biomed because I wasn't definite on wanting to study neuroscience, so this gave me the flexibility to go into something else and expand my horizons a bit. Personal statements are all about highlighting the evidence of your interest in the subject, so any books you've read, podcasts you've listened to, lectures you've attended, online courses you may have done -- it's a little annoying but it's a lot of trying to hype up why those things made you want to study that subject. In my case, I talked about a book on epigenetics, a few online courses on educational neuroscience I'd done, my participation in an online summer school for biomed, and my EPQ which I'd done with a neuroscience-ish focus. (I didn't have any in-person stuff because of Covid so I was pretty limited to the few free online things I could find)
There's a little bit of balance to it as well - just a short paragraph or two on interests/hobbies you may have outside of biomed to show you're a 'well-rounded' individual who universities can see would be likely to engage in other things in their university. It's tricky when you have to have one statement for 5 different places, but anything like volunteering, other courses you may have done, and then just hyping up your hobbies and the skills you have through them. For instance, I talked about being "good at time management" because of a cyber security course I'd done alongside my A-Levels, and that reading and writing stories helped my vocabulary and creative thinking -- it's a bit of BS but personal statements are really about showing a deep academic interest and in-depth meaningful hobbies even though it's really not realistic for everyone to have both (that 'reading and writing' I do is primarily fanfiction, but they don't need to know that 😅😂)
After opening with your academic interest and then talking a little about your other interests/hobbies, just conclude it with a sentence or two to summarise how studying biomedical science will benefit you e.g. are you planning on doing post-grad studies to go into research, or using it to be a biomedical scientist in the NHS, something like that.
Hope this helps! And happy to answer any other questions you have about biomed
My advice for the personal statement would be to really showcase your interest in the topic - what particularly is it about biomed that interests you and why do you want to study it at university. For instance, I picked biomed because I wasn't definite on wanting to study neuroscience, so this gave me the flexibility to go into something else and expand my horizons a bit. Personal statements are all about highlighting the evidence of your interest in the subject, so any books you've read, podcasts you've listened to, lectures you've attended, online courses you may have done -- it's a little annoying but it's a lot of trying to hype up why those things made you want to study that subject. In my case, I talked about a book on epigenetics, a few online courses on educational neuroscience I'd done, my participation in an online summer school for biomed, and my EPQ which I'd done with a neuroscience-ish focus. (I didn't have any in-person stuff because of Covid so I was pretty limited to the few free online things I could find)
There's a little bit of balance to it as well - just a short paragraph or two on interests/hobbies you may have outside of biomed to show you're a 'well-rounded' individual who universities can see would be likely to engage in other things in their university. It's tricky when you have to have one statement for 5 different places, but anything like volunteering, other courses you may have done, and then just hyping up your hobbies and the skills you have through them. For instance, I talked about being "good at time management" because of a cyber security course I'd done alongside my A-Levels, and that reading and writing stories helped my vocabulary and creative thinking -- it's a bit of BS but personal statements are really about showing a deep academic interest and in-depth meaningful hobbies even though it's really not realistic for everyone to have both (that 'reading and writing' I do is primarily fanfiction, but they don't need to know that 😅😂)
After opening with your academic interest and then talking a little about your other interests/hobbies, just conclude it with a sentence or two to summarise how studying biomedical science will benefit you e.g. are you planning on doing post-grad studies to go into research, or using it to be a biomedical scientist in the NHS, something like that.
Hope this helps! And happy to answer any other questions you have about biomed
Original post by fudgepop
OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS 😄. Can I ask what your experience is like at kings college especially for biomed? Do you find the topics interesting?
of course!! I'd say my experience is pretty good on the whole -- we do what's called the Common Year One in first year which covers anatomy, physiology, cell biology, genetics, pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry so gives you a good basis in everything (a little of it is kind of similar to A-Level content but there's a lot of new stuff as well). And then the reason I picked King's as my first choice is that for biomed, you have zero compulsory modules in year 2 and 3! Instead, you're advised to select a theme of study to pick specific modules around so that you basically have a specialisation, but you can pick a whole range of modules. I'm doing the Neuropharmacology pathway, so I've had some genetics and physiology modules this year but then otherwise am entirely doing neuroscience and pharmacology (mostly neuroscience next year lol). I think they change them slightly every year, but the other themes you can pick from include stuff like developmental biology, infection and immunity, systems biology and endocrinology and nutrition, and there is also the opportunity to switch to one of the specialised degrees at the end of your first year as well, so there's really a huge range of different things you can take depending on what you find interesting!
I won't lie and say it's all interesting, because there's definitely stuff that I didn't like -- anatomy and developmental biology are the bane of my life 😂 But most of the lecturers are good and you cover a lot of stuff and are often given resources and things to look into if you want to know more about a topic. It's also really fun to see how things become interconnected as you go into more detail which is really where the themes of study come in, and that can make it easier to revise those topics as well.
You get a lot of practical experience too, as a lot of the modules have labs as part of them, and we also get a ton of exposure to the dissection specimens - apparently us neuroscience students get more access to the brain specimens than the medics, since we have several labs that focus on hands-on learning of the anatomy. The things you learn differ depending on the modules you take of course, but I've been able to learn some pretty cool stuff like Golgi staining of neurons, CRISPR editing, protein assays, histological staining, ECGs. It's very content-heavy and can definitely feel a little overwhelming especially when it comes to exam time (or maybe that's just me cramming the entire year in a day 😅) but often I find that when I'm going over my lectures I can really appreciate how cool the topic is
Reply 4
Original post by cyberhex
of course!! I'd say my experience is pretty good on the whole -- we do what's called the Common Year One in first year which covers anatomy, physiology, cell biology, genetics, pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry so gives you a good basis in everything (a little of it is kind of similar to A-Level content but there's a lot of new stuff as well). And then the reason I picked King's as my first choice is that for biomed, you have zero compulsory modules in year 2 and 3! Instead, you're advised to select a theme of study to pick specific modules around so that you basically have a specialisation, but you can pick a whole range of modules. I'm doing the Neuropharmacology pathway, so I've had some genetics and physiology modules this year but then otherwise am entirely doing neuroscience and pharmacology (mostly neuroscience next year lol). I think they change them slightly every year, but the other themes you can pick from include stuff like developmental biology, infection and immunity, systems biology and endocrinology and nutrition, and there is also the opportunity to switch to one of the specialised degrees at the end of your first year as well, so there's really a huge range of different things you can take depending on what you find interesting!
I won't lie and say it's all interesting, because there's definitely stuff that I didn't like -- anatomy and developmental biology are the bane of my life 😂 But most of the lecturers are good and you cover a lot of stuff and are often given resources and things to look into if you want to know more about a topic. It's also really fun to see how things become interconnected as you go into more detail which is really where the themes of study come in, and that can make it easier to revise those topics as well.
You get a lot of practical experience too, as a lot of the modules have labs as part of them, and we also get a ton of exposure to the dissection specimens - apparently us neuroscience students get more access to the brain specimens than the medics, since we have several labs that focus on hands-on learning of the anatomy. The things you learn differ depending on the modules you take of course, but I've been able to learn some pretty cool stuff like Golgi staining of neurons, CRISPR editing, protein assays, histological staining, ECGs. It's very content-heavy and can definitely feel a little overwhelming especially when it comes to exam time (or maybe that's just me cramming the entire year in a day 😅) but often I find that when I'm going over my lectures I can really appreciate how cool the topic is
I won't lie and say it's all interesting, because there's definitely stuff that I didn't like -- anatomy and developmental biology are the bane of my life 😂 But most of the lecturers are good and you cover a lot of stuff and are often given resources and things to look into if you want to know more about a topic. It's also really fun to see how things become interconnected as you go into more detail which is really where the themes of study come in, and that can make it easier to revise those topics as well.
You get a lot of practical experience too, as a lot of the modules have labs as part of them, and we also get a ton of exposure to the dissection specimens - apparently us neuroscience students get more access to the brain specimens than the medics, since we have several labs that focus on hands-on learning of the anatomy. The things you learn differ depending on the modules you take of course, but I've been able to learn some pretty cool stuff like Golgi staining of neurons, CRISPR editing, protein assays, histological staining, ECGs. It's very content-heavy and can definitely feel a little overwhelming especially when it comes to exam time (or maybe that's just me cramming the entire year in a day 😅) but often I find that when I'm going over my lectures I can really appreciate how cool the topic is
hi what do you mean by you can switch to a 'specialised degrees' . would this include pharmacy?
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