Inside Felix the Cat Visits Obama Aremaking Imperial Medical Students Top of Thethe List Or Cut Are They Being Left by the Wayside? See Page 3
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The student ‘news’paper of Imperial College London Guardian Student Newspaper of the Year 2006, 2008 Issue 1,421 Friday 23 January 2009 felixonline.co.uk felix Inside Felix the Cat visits Obama AreMaking Imperial medical students top of thethe list or cut are they being left by the wayside? See page 3 Pages 5 Fashion - You cheapskate! Page 18-19 Music - MGMT in control Page 23 Technology - CES 2009 Pages 28-29 2 felix Friday 23 January 2009 Friday 23 January 2009 felix 3 News [email protected] News News Editor – Kadhim Shubber [email protected] 2009 Science Challenge The Judges and the Imperial Students lose out in Questions Foundation programmes Launched!! Now in its third reincarnation, the selection process for final Professor Lord Robert Winston got the guided tours of the National Physical passing onto each judge the top ten Professor Armand Leroi 2009 RCSU Imperial College Science Laboratory, the facilities at CERN in essays based on their question. Each Professor of Evolutionary Developmental year medical students has started to produce favourable results What the college thinks Challenge, supported by Shell, off to Geneva and a Shell alternative energy judge will then select the winning es- Biology at Imperial College a flying start last night, as he spoke at laboratory. say for each of the two categories and for Imperial, but is it fair? felix Editor in Chief, , its launch. The event was attended by And just when you thought that was then all four judges will decide upon “Will Homo sapiens Jovan Nedić “I would of course like every single one of our over 150 Imperial students and even all, John Sanderson of the RCSA has the overall winners, who will be an- investigates the history and what the results say this year. students to get their first choice of job and al- the Rector, Sir Roy Anderson, was once again given generously to the nounced at the Grand Final event, to continue to evolve, though the system is imperfect, at least our amongst the audience, with students cause, donating once-in-a-lifetime be held on the 13th March at an as-yet students were less disadvantaged this year. and teachers from schools across the (non-scientific!) prizes to the winners undisclosed location. With previous and, if so, how?” lmost 86% of final year United Kingdom also logging in to – two tandem flights on a paraglider Grand Finals including sell-out events students from the Im- London has always produced more doctors than watch the event live online. Some even for the winning school student and two at The Ritz Hotel and The Science Mu- perial College School of can be accommodated for training in the capi- made the journey to South Kensing- trial lessons on a light aircraft for the seum, you can bet this will be one not Dr Martyn Sené Medicine [ICSM] have tal and over the years, even before the current ton to attend the event itself! Either winning Imperial student…who said to miss! Acting Director of the National Physical Laboratory been assigned their pre- system, many students did choose to start their the free cakes and drinks on offer, or science couldn’t be fun…? The Science Challenge website has “At a time when the public seems ferred foundation programme this postgraduate training out of perhaps this year’s prizes, must have also had an extensive re-development Ayear. Although an improvement from London. We need to help our caught their attention – with the over- The Small-Print and is now available, complete with full last year’s figure of 61.5%, the results all winner standing to pocket £5,000 details of the competition, previous to be increasingly distrustful of released on the 6th January 2009 are students create the strongest for only 800 words! All entries must be submitted online winning essays and information about still below the national average of 90%. possible applications to in- Full details of this year’s competition at http://sciencechallenge.org, and re- how to enter, all of which can be found science and technology and, indeed, The fears raised by many students and crease their chance of secur- were announced at the launch by the ceived by 23.59 on the 2nd March. Im- at the conveniently named http://sci- professionals alike is still whether or ing their preferred Foundation Chair, Jad Marrouche, PhD student and perial academics will judge the essays, encechallenge.org. of scientists, what can be done to not the new system, known as UKFPO former President of the RCSU, who is Version 2.0 which is the 3rd reincarna- placement.” running the event for the second time ensure an informed and balanced tion of the process since it started in after his many successes in 2006-2007. PHOTO by TOM ROBERTS 2005, is a fair process. Prof. J. Higham The competition will follow a simi- public and political debate?” The national application process is Head of Undergraduate lar format to previous years, with the the method by which medical students Medicine aim being to write an 800-word essay are assigned a hospital where they will in answer to one of four questions, set Duncan Macleod do their foundation course. In previ- by a panel of judges, based on a scien- Vice President, Hydrogen and GTL, Shell ous years, as part of their Pre-Regis- tific topic and its effects on the wider tration House Officer [PRHO] year Imperial medical students doing their thing world. There will once again be two “Hydrogen is key to (i.e. the final year of medical training categories: one for students at Imperial as and employee), medical students What ICSMSU thinks College, and another, run in conjunc- tackling the world’s were matched with a position in the rectly for posts but a maximum of 40. grammes Office [UKFPO]. The previ- tion with Imperial Outreach, for school hospital(s) linked to their individual The MDAP was still not ‘national’ as it ous year saw only 352 applicants for students across the United Kingdom. rapidly increasing medical school, however this was tech- wasn’t open to all posts in the country, 321 posts in NWTFS, which gave the “Imperial College School of Medicine Students’ nically illegal as it was not consistent instead students could apply to one impression to many students across Union is extremely happy that our final year The Prizes demand for energy. with employment laws. The system of two ‘Units of Application’ that had the country that it was relatively easy students fared better this year compared to also meant that medical students could a number of schools within them. Af- to get into a NWTFS. Back in 2007, previous years. North West Thames Founda- In the Imperial category, the overall Discuss.” not apply to hospitals that were not ter one year, the system was deemed NWTFS saw 552 applicants for a simi- winner will receive £5,000 cash, gen- linked to their ‘home’ school, unless to have been a disaster. Each student lar number of places, a figure that far tion School is still a particularly hard school to erously sponsored by Winton Capital, they had received permission from that applied to a particular post was surpassed that of any other founda- get into, and we, in collaboration with the other with the three runners-up each receiv- Professor Tejinder Virdee the Dean of their medical school. This ranked in order to allocate the posi- tions school. As a result, only 61.5% of London medical schools, are in the process of in- ing £1,000 cash and in the schools cat- Spokesperson for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN particular method of job assignment tion, yet there was no national guide- Imperial finalists got their first choice vestigating how heavily skewed egory, the overall winner will receive had not been legally challenged; how- lines for scoring, no academic rank- foundation school. a £5,000 bursary to study at Impe- “What can we learn from ever, when the new national selection ing and poor consultation with senior With a new year and a new round the results are considering so rial College, with the three runners-up system came into effect, and where medical professionals. There was ef- of medical students applying for posts many final years did not apply each receiving a £1,000 bursary. the Large Hadron Collider the PRHO year changed into founda- fectively no process in which all the at foundation schools, it is time for to our home school as a con- If this wasn’t enough, there will also tion programme, it was inevitable that students across the country could be a change to the application process. sequence of last years results. be “experience” prizes on offer for experiment?” some people would challenge the se- compared to. 20% of medical graduates Points allocated from academic mer- Whilst we are pleased with the all the prizewinners, including a day lection method on a legal basis, which in the country come from London, and it decrease from 45% to 40% which shadowing Lord Robert Winston, and Past RCSU President Jad Marrouche at the launch yesterday the medical schools would have lost as in 2005, 250 London medical students means more of an emphasis is made result, we will still be pushing the law was being broken. without posts, 44% of the total number on the written part. This is of great for educational continuity in re- The General Medical Council of unplaced posts. Of these 250, 39 benefit to Imperial candidates as they form to the allocation process.” [GMC] had in the past recommended were Imperial students and after clear- have scored higher on average than Felix, Beit Quad, Prince Consort Road, London that students “undertake a PRHO post ing 11 were still without a post; the 11 anyone else in this sector over the past Mark Chamberlain SW7 2BB.