It's half 12 and I cannot believe I'm still awake after the week I've had - I miss a regular sleep pattern! Before I go to bed though as I have a 9am tomorrow, I thought I'd start writing a post describing my course in detail, which I've started writing now and hope to finish tomorrow (but knowing my writing habits it'll probably be some time next week, especially since I have two shows on these next two weeks!). Anyway, just thought I'd write a little update letting you know to expect that, as I expect quite a few of you are thinking about finalising your uni choices now!
From a very very tired girl who can't wait for the Easter holiday (even though she has about a month's worth of lecture notes to go through), hope you're all hanging in there if you have exams, and speak soon!
HI, just wanted to let you know your blog is awesome and full of useful info. Details about the course would be fantastic as Bristol is one of my offers! I'm finding it really difficult making a firm choice. One thing I heard is that Bristol does not use any PBL-style teaching. Personally I would hate a predominantly PBL course...but on the other hand having none at all would mean less preparation for self-directed learning as a future doctor? I'd love to hear the pros and cons of the medical school. You mentioned in one post to ignore league tables but there does seem to be a handful who consistently get the top spots like the London unis and Edinburgh (obviously Oxbridge)? Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteAw thanks ever so much Janice! That means a lot - it's nice to know that this is actually useful! :P I've just put up a first post on my course, and congratulations on getting multiple offers! You're in an enviable (and rare) position! In terms of PBL (I'll address this further in a post) Bristol doesn't do it in that it's not overtly there, you're right. However, there are a few lectures in element 8 in which we do look at cases in order to apply our knowledge, and in Systems (which I've just started) we do case-based anatomy and radiology, where we go into a room and are presented with ct scans or xrays or disease specimens, like a ruptured aortic aneurysm in a pot, and are given the background of a fictional patient which we have to answer clinical questions with based on our knowledge. In a nutshell, you are definitely NOT spoon fed and in terms of self directed learning, you need to preread for everything in order to keep up - for example, you are not given the knowledge for the case based anatomy; you have to preread and find it out yourself. Also in essay assignments in HBoM you are given a brief outline of what you have to do, but then you go and research the subjects yourself, read journals and come up with your own original sources and ideas. Basically in terms of self directed learning it comes with the transition from school to uni, it naturally underlies the curriculum in that everyone's competitive and in order to keep up you need to read that extra bit ahead. I'll do a post on pros and cons at the end of the summary posts and I've made a comment on league tables in my latest post - thankyou for the feedback! Let me know if there's anything else at all you want to know, or just email me :)
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