Medicine
Peterhouse is a great place to study medicine.
Lectures, practicals, presentations etc. are all university-based and therefore the same at all colleges. However, there is some degree of variation between colleges in the way medicine is taught. This is most noticeable in college-based supervisions and in the degree of academic and pastoral support that students receive. All prospectuses will tell you that medicine is a relatively demanding subject with a heavy workload. While this is true, the medical fellows at Peterhouse are understanding and very helpful.
Supervisions are usually held in college with groups of no more than four and are generally of high quality. Unlike other subjects, they are orientated around providing solutions to problems that have come up in lectures, rather than aiming to set huge amounts of work. In the first year you tend not to have more than two essays a week, which is probably slightly less than medical students at many other colleges. This makes it easier to keep up with consolidation of lecture material. All Peterhouse medical fellows are clinicians who provide a welcome clinical slant on the traditional Cambridge pre-clinical course.
Other positive points about Peterhouse are its proximity to both the Downing and New Museums sites (where most undergraduate medical teaching is delivered) and the citi4 bus to Addenbrooke’s hospital leaves from right outside the porter’s lodge. The location couldn’t be better!
If you have any problems with work, there is always someone to turn to at Peterhouse. Because it is such a small college, you will soon get to know your tutor, director of studies, supervisors and other medical students very well. At exam time, there is certainly not as much pressure from the academic staff as in other colleges. Far from being detrimental to results, this appears to have a positive effect, with Peterhouse getting some of the top results for medicine in the university.
John Dalton & Sam Roberts
There are usually 7 or 8 medics in each undergraduate year at Peterhouse, which is quite a few for such a small college, though there is plenty of opportunity in practicals and lectures to meet the medics from other colleges. As seems to be true for medics everywhere, here we work hard and play hard: yes there are horrid exams to get through, but that's more than made up for by all the balls, dinners and formal halls the medics get up to.
As for some advice for those medics starting in October or thinking about applying, Peterhouse is a relaxed and friendly place to study medicine, though at first the work seems a bit daunting it all works out well in the end (almost guaranteed) and we do have lots of fun in between those crazy study sessions.
Leah Flitman