>>I chose this course because at first I wasn't necessarily sure whether I wanted to go into biomedical research or clinical medicine and so I thought it would be best to experience the biomedical aspect first - the research side of it first and I could always do postgraduate medicine if I wanted to afterwards.

>>Each term you'll have a split between lectures and labs, so the lectures are what prepare you with the theory and then the lab is when you get to put it into practice. So there's lots of different sort of paths that we go down, anything from microbiology to physiology, and I really enjoy how varied the different labs are and how it sort of helps you to make up your own mind in terms of what you want to do later as well. 

>>There's a real effort on the part of the University to try and provide excellent study spaces for students, as well as trying to build academic communities with things like common rooms. So I really enjoy that, how the study spaces actually sort of contribute to that sense of academic community, so for example in the Biosciences study room you'll get students from all different stages in the course interacting and helping each other and that's just such a nice feel to have. 

>>Lecturers are incredibly approachable as well; they always stay back for at least five minutes after each lecture so you can ask them any questions, whether that's about the lecture that just happened or whether it's about their own research, or whether it's about opportunities they might know about, so they're incredibly approachable. 

>>Even if you just see them walking around, they're more than happy to have a conversation with you and that's one of the things I love so much about the School of Biosciences. It's just such a such community spirit and you never feel you can't approach one of the academics and have a fairly informal conversation with them and yeah, I just absolutely adored that. 

>>My plans after I graduate are to do a research Master's here at Kent so that is a really exciting opportunity and it's one that's not necessarily available at every single university, so that's where you stay for a year and get attached to a research group in the School of Biosciences for a year and you do you Master's exclusively by research. 

>>There's no taught element so I think that's really good because I'd love to continue onwards to do a PhD afterwards. It's really good for setting you up with the core skills in research that you need and to develop obviously your understanding of how academia works which is vital to anyone who wishes to undertake a PhD. 

>>My main advice would be to not just go to your lectures, go home do the work that's prescribed to you but just take advantage of all these opportunities that you have at university, just the ones that might not be immediately clear. It's to be proactive and just think about what you might be interested in and how they can help you further your own goals because there are so many opportunities here and especially if you want to progress academically you can. 

>>There are so many informal opportunities available; most of the academics will be more than happy to take you on in their research labs for a short stint if you wish to gain additional experience and that is something I would highly recommend because it will help you in your applications if research is what you want to do.