Syllabus/Reading list for biomedical sciences at KCL

hi there!! I’m about to enter my third year as a biomed student so happy to help
first thing I’ll say is reading is def not necessary in y1 but if you’re just wanting to get a head start on the content then these are some of the textbooks we use:

The thing is most of these probably won’t be freely available online — when you get your Keats login, your module pages will have a reading list section with links to the recommended textbooks which you’ll be able to access via the institution login with your KCL email/password. So, it might be worth waiting until you can login and start then when it’s easier to get them. You definitely don’t need to buy them tho!! If you don’t want to read them online, the library has a bunch of copies available especially for the main textbooks, and it’s totally free and easy to check books out with your ID.
Hopefully this helps!! And feel free to get in touch if you have any other questions about kings or biomed

Hey there 🙂!!
Thank you so much for the reply! It's really helpful to know what to expect . I'm excited to get started and will definitely check out those textbooks once I have access through Keats.I was wondering if you had any recommendations for biochemistry resources for the first year? I think it is where I would struggle the most, and getting a head start or a basic foundation would really help. Any resources would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks again😄!

sure!! I don't think we had a biochem textbook but there are a few things I can recommend:
firstly this quiz: https://www.stolaf.edu/depts/chemistry/courses/toolkits/373/js/aminoac/ is very useful for testing yourself on the structure and names/codes for the 20 main amino acids which is kind of expected that you'll have them memorised for biochem so I spent a lot of time on this website matching them all up
secondly a lot of the stuff we did in y1 biochem was very similar to A-Level chemistry/biology -- particularly protein structure and bonding, carbohydrate structure, enzymes, DNA structure and replication, transcription/translation and the whole glycolysis-TCA/Krebs cycle-oxidative phosphorylation of glucose so I'd definitely recommend going over your A-Level notes on those (personally I had the CGP textbooks but also Allery Chemistry and Eliot Rintoul on YouTube were really good). Looking back, most topics for the Biochemistry and Chemistry modules in y1 were not really that much more detailed than A-Level if at all, I think because students come from all over and do different qualifications so not everyone might have the same baseline and so they use y1 to get everyone on the same level as it were. But from someone who did AQA A-Level Bio and Chem, I found it was very similar to the a-level specs

THANK YOU SO MUCH !This is all incredibly helpful, especially the amino acid quiz.
That's actually really interesting about the overlap with A-Level material. I did IB instead, so the course structure might be a bit different, but we definitely covered similar topics. I actually found the IB stuff pretty detailed, but it's good to know they ease everyone into it in year 1 at uni.
Speaking of uni, how are you finding King's? Any good? I heard the teachers can be hit or miss, any truth to that? Also, is the vibe good? Just curious And hey, is it as prestigious as everyone says it is?
Thanks again for the help🙂

I'm glad I can help!!
Personally even though I'm obviously biased (King's was my first choice uni as well) but I really enjoy it. Certainly on Guy's campus which is where you'll primarily be based, it's a very chill vibe - plus we have a campus cat!! He's not officially the campus cat but he lives nearby and is on campus very often - he has a whole dedicated instagram page @/lennythekcl.cat. But especially when it's nice weather, I find that it has a really good atmosphere. The Shed, which is the KCLSU run cafe on top of Guy's Bar, is a really great place to sit and have lunch, especially with the introduction of Guy's Hut which does fries and things (it became a staple of lunchtimes for my friend group this year lol), and the drinks are pretty reasonably priced, certainly for London. Guy's Bar is generally open to sit in at lunchtime, and it runs a lot of events on a night - I'm reliably informed Sports Night is a very popular event that sells out quickly, but it's not really my scene so I can't comment too much on that.
The main library gets very busy sometimes but is a good place to study, and there's also Wills Library which is smaller but very dark-academia vibe with old bookshelves and dark wood tables and chairs, and I have a personal love of studying in the Gordon Museum, which you'll have access to as a biomed student. It's a private museum in the Hodgkin Building of preserved human pathological specimens, which is kind of cool and a little creepy but it also has a study space in the bottom with computers and a printer and it's generally quieter than the libraries. Also, the chapel is a wonderfully calm and quiet place to go if you just need to take a moment away from it all, the chaplaincy runs open free student lunches on either a Tuesday or a Thursday if you want somewhere to eat and chat, and sometimes you even get people running stalls and giving freebies in the walkway to the SU. There's often a second-hand clothes market there, and one time we had people giving out free crisps
The prestige is..uhh..debated, I guess. I mean, King's is still high among the top 50 universities both in England and the world, so it definitely is still a prestigious uni, it's just there's a whole joke about other unis (particularly UCL) being higher ranked.
In terms of the lecturers, I won't lie, it is a bit hit and miss. I found the Anatomy and Developmental Biology module really disorganised and badly taught, but most of the lecturers are good and you have such a mix all the time that generally you'll only have the bad teachers a few times. Also Dr Clemens Kiecker (who teaches on the Cell Bio and Neuroscience module) and Ian McFadzean (on the Pharmacology module) are genuinely some of the best, most engaging teachers I have ever had and I'm a little sad I won't have them next year because of what modules I'm doing. But I'd say the good teachers generally outweigh the bad.
(ohh, fun fact about Ian, he once threatened to physically fight another lecturer who had messed up our timetabling so bad that a group of us were there for a practical we hadn't had the pre-requisite tutorial for. He then arranged a session for us all to complain about said lecturer with the Head of Pharmacology -- he's a little bit of a legend amongst the cohort, I think)
King's admin is generally fine until something goes wrong, and then it's a bit of a mess - we had a bunch of problems around exam and lesson timetabling this year but everything did end up getting sorted out. But on a day-to-day basis, it's decent enough, and I've found the Careers Service pretty useful in helping me figure out different directions for post-grad, they run a lot of sessions during the year and you can book to see them whenever, online or offline.
Like I said, I'm more than a little biased, but in terms of being on campus, my general study experience and the vibe, I really love it here. I've found pretty much everyone to be really friendly, and while I'm not totally out to professors but very much to friends I also feel really safe as someone who is gay+trans and dresses a bit oddly sometimes since I'm a metal music listener 😅
anyway, I hope this gives some useful insight into what kcl life is like, and if you have any other questions at any point I'm happy to reply on here or DM you to connect on insta/discord/whatsapp (whatever's easiest)!