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U.CAN get involved at KCL

11 Nov 2014
One of our former Scholars, Enam Ahmod, is working with an exciting organisation called U.CAN as part of King’s College London SU and Widening Participation team designed to provide help for applicants in Medicine and Dentistry. The organisation is hosting Mock it! an interview skills workshop on the 29th November. Here, Enam outlines his personal experiences of the difficulties of the university application process, and what drove him to join U.CAN.
Mock It Poster 2

Getting into university was one of the hardest processes I’ve ever had to go through, especially considering the fact that I was applying to study medicine and almost all the universities I chose were from the Russell Group. How do I make myself sound like a spectacular individual that’s had experience in a wide range of medical fields, when I didn’t have any doctors or highly educated members in my family or even from my close friends? How would I tackle a medical interview when I have never really been prepped on what to expect or how to answer the questions? And above all would I really get the grades to even get in?These worries and more caused me a great deal of grief during the latter part of my studies in college and when I did get into university to study medicine, I realised that a lot of my colleagues also had the same concerns as me. (My medicine course is part of a King’s access-style course, so everyone I study with is basically from similar background to me) It was this realisation that the overwhelming amount of medical applicants who come from a similar background to me had the same obstacles, that made me realise that it was an issue that needed to be tackled and that I should make some sort of effort to be involved in access programmes for selective universities and more specifically to the course which I study.

So with that in mind, now in my second year at King’s I have decided to become part of the university’s Widening Participation Scheme and also be part of a student-led society called U.CAN which aims to support students applying to medicine and dentistry, equipping them with the skills and the know-how to go about getting into those two highly competitive degrees. It’s more out of a sense of duty to level the playing field, that I do it – more than buffing up my resume or anything!  The system isn’t fair and it’s a great waste of potential in British society that  bright students are let down by a system that doesn’t always recognise who they are or what they can achieve.