Open Days

Hello All!

So today I thought I would write a little about open days, those potentially wonderful but sometimes boring and repetitive but always useful days where we get to visit universities and medical schools.

Over the summer, I’ve been to a few open days having spent a large majority of the Easter holidays trolling through prospectuses and trying to decide where I was going to visit – potentially the most difficult decision in the medical application process because all medical schools have their pros and cons so, how do you know which one is right for you? This is why open days were invented because, sometimes, you just get this feeling as you go around a university that it either is or isn’t the right place for you!

I’ve been thinking a lot how to write this post because choosing a university is a very personal choice so here’s a little disclaimer – anything I write here is just my personal opinion, feel free to comment saying you disagree (or agree!) and everything I write has only been my personal experiences. Other people may have attended the same place/open day and had a completely different experience or take on the events.

Anyway – as I’ve already said, open days are very important but you can’t go visit every single university that offers a medical course so you’ve all had to at some point pick the 4-10 that you fancy visiting and got yourself to as many open days as your timetable/work schedule has allowed. The only way to do that is to go through websites and prospectuses and maybe even send a few emails to see which courses look like they might be for you. The key thing here, is to have an idea about the course and the universities before you book a place on the open day because there’s nothing worse than trekking all the way from Edinburgh to London to visit a university and realise that it’s absolutely not the kind of place you want to go to.

One piece of advice I have for everyone out there is, medical school is hard to get in to so we all think that we’ll be happy to go anywhere. This is true to an extent because the goal here is to become doctors HOWEVER… you can only apply to 4 (silly UCAS!) so don’t be afraid to be decisive and rule some universities out. Some people have a list of what is important to them – eg: location (distance from home, whether or not its in a city), course structure (traditional, PBL, case-based), facilities (both medical and university wide), extracurricular facilities etc. etc. etc. I think this is quite a good idea as it will help you ‘rate’ (so to speak) each university you are considering and help you to whittle down a very long list to just the key 4.

As you all know – medical school open days get booked up fast because of the high competition for places… something I got caught in when I unfortunately was unable to get onto the King’s College London open day over the summer. Obviously, I was a bit disappointed as I am very interested in applying there so I thought the next best thing would be to get as much detail as I could from the prospectus and website and then I gave the medical school a ring. They were lovely, very helpful and answered all my questions so it was as if I had been on the open day in terms of the information I received. So I have to make a decision, which I am sure many of you will also have to make, which is ‘should I apply to a university I haven’t visited?’ In terms of KCL, my answer is YES because I’ve managed to get a lot of information and I like what I’ve read/heard. Also – they interview, so there will be a chance to see the uni and medical school then (should I be so lucky!!) as well as always being able to organise either a self-guided tour or an individual visit.

The first open day I went to this summer was Imperial College London. It was held at the main hub for those on the GEM courses which is very close to Shepherd’s Bush tube station (for you Londoners out there that like to shop, its just behind Westfields). What was very good about the open day was that, given that it was for a GEM course and was held on a weekday, it started in the early evening which meant that a wide range of people could attend as work/uni would have already finished by then. Imperial is a very impressive university – I am sure you all know its fantastic reputation and there are of course great benefits to being in the biggest city in the UK (eg: a large NHS trust and a larger patient population in addition to the extracurricular and cultural benefits of a big city). Having said that, this can go the other way if you’re not a big city kind of person. The thing that stood out about Imperial was that the medical school concentrated very much on the science of medicine as, according to them, this ensures that all their graduates have a strong foundation in the science. There wasn’t much to see on the open day – you got a tour of the building at the beginning and then there was the usual array of talks which were very useful and interesting.

Speaking of the usual set of talks – the most important one is the curriculum/course structure one because that’s the talk that will differentiate the unis (in addition to location and facilities etc.)

Here comes the opinion bit… I really liked Imperial – to be honest, at first, I was almost a little bit intimidated by it because everyone there is absolutely amazing. They all did very well in either their undergraduate courses or at their jobs. What also stood out was that Imperial took a wide variety of people – everyone had the academics but they also had something else. By that I mean, everyone had an interesting story – one person I met did a very interesting Neuroscience dissertation whereas another had been working for quite a few years in a job that meant they had a high level of people interaction. I think this is a positive as, although it may be harder to get into (due to competition and the fact that they only offer 30 places or so), the wide variety of students means that you get to study with lots of people who will all bring something different. This will be very helpful it you’re struggling with a topic and someone in your course happened to write their dissertation on it! Given my academic background, I really liked the scientific aspect of the course however I completely understand that this might not be for everyone.

Then came Warwick (opinion… which I loved!). I think the biggest benefit of Warwick over all other GEM courses is that it is GRADUATE ONLY. Initially, I didn’t think that this would make that much of a difference but because of this, they offer about three times as many places as other medical schools and there is no ‘merging’ with the undergraduate class. Although, this isn’t really a major issue, it is nice to know that you are not being streamlined but that the course is specifically designed for graduates. Besides, it was very much like the Imperial open day – the talks were very good and informative. In addition to the talks, there were taster sessions in the afternoon so you could sample the learning style and a tour of the campus.

I managed to break some bones a few days before this open day so was on crutches and unable to participate in the tour but instead I drove around the campus and the nearby town of Leamington Spa which is where many medical students live. At a university like Warwick, I would suggest doing something similar, since the university isn’t in a town so it’s quite a good idea to see what the local towns/cities are like because you might end up living or socialising there.

The third open I went to was Swansea – FYI, Swansea take the GAMSAT unlike the other universities I visited which accept the UKCAT. I really liked Swansea – like Warwick it is graduate only and the town is pretty great (not the prettiest place but seems to have everything you need: lots of shops, restaurants, places to go out and most importantly an apple store!!!!). The building where lectures take place is almost next door to one of the teaching hospitals which was great. The talks were informative (as with the other universities) and there was also a taster session. The only reason I’m not applying there is because I have decided not to take the GAMSAT because, due to some other circumstances, I felt that I didn’t have enough time to study properly for it. If it wasn’t for that, I think it would definitely have made my UCAS choices (so essentially, some better organisation on my part would have meant I could have applied!!)

I was going to see Southampton because I really liked the look of it but because the open day was not geared towards studying medicine but was a university-wide open day I decided not to go. The reason I did this was not because I didn’t like Southampton but I have friends there so I know it a little and the course offered there states that it requires Chemistry A Level in some cases. I didn’t take Chemistry A Level so what I have done is contacted the medical school to see if the content of chemistry in my degree is sufficient enough to apply… if the answer is ‘no’ then I didn’t waste any petrol (!!!) and if the answer is ‘yes’ then I’m going to go on a guided tour.

Finally there was Barts (in London). Unfortunately, I found that for a university with such an impressive reputation, this was by far the worst open day I attended. The reason for this was due to the bad organisation – one of the two (only two!) talks organised was cancelled therefore the only talk was about the history of the medical school. Although this is interesting, in my opinion, I wasn’t told anything I couldn’t find out on their very informative website. After that you were placed into groups to do a set of four activities. The first activity for my group was an Information Fair. This was essentially what all the other open days included in their organised talks – admissions information, course information, accommodation, life after uni etc. etc. The problem was that everyone (including me) wanted to talk to the people at the admissions stand (I, for example, wanted to know their UKCAT cut off score which FYI was 2800 last year) so I spent the whole half hour session queuing and only just being able to ask that one question. I did not participate in the rest of the open day because I didn’t need a self-guided tour of the area as I am from London, and should I apply, I’ll probably live at home to save some money so didn’t need to look at the accommodation. As you can probably tell, I was very disappointed by Barts’ open day (not the university itself as its reputation speaks for itself) so sorry if this section was too opinionated for some (see disclaimer above!!!!!) but as I’ve said, this is just my personal experiences.

Anyway, all of that was my experiences of some of the many open days that are available. I really wish I had unlimited time this summer to have seen some other unis but unfortunately that was not the case. Would love any of you readers to comment with your experiences either at the same open days or at others so that everyone can have a bigger picture.

As always, the university websites contain all the useful and factual information so go look at those for facts & figures… didn’t think I should bog-down this already long post with more of those!

I’ll post again soon.

Dr Wannabe xx

Ps – sorry again for the length of the post… I think I need to learn how to be more concise… or maybe be less opinionated!!!