Intercalating as an Oxford Medic

By Amrit Rooprai

As many of you may know, when you study Medicine at Oxford, you enrol in a six-year course, during which you participate in a compulsory year of intercalation. This element of the course gives you the exciting opportunity to study specific subjects that interest you. At most other universities, including Cambridge, intercalation can be sought for any subject of your liking. Oxford is different, such that in your third year of university, you will intercalate in Medical Sciences and receive an undergraduate degree for doing so.

It is common knowledge within the Medic community at Oxford that this year is the least demanding when compared to the rest. The sudden transition from 3-4 tutorials a week to 10 tutorials across the entire year requires certain lifestyle adjustments to prevent a rapid descent into complacency. It is a false sense of security, which is completely shattered in Hillary when all your coursework is due, and Trinity exams are looming! For those of you curious about the workload involved when intercalating here, allow me to break it down for you below.

At the end of the infamously challenging year 2 exams, every medical student independently sources, plans and executes a research project of their liking. The duration of the research projects is between 8 and 16 weeks. I conducted mine at ‘Genome Engineering Oxford’, a facility within the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, where I explored a novel method of addressing latent viral infections using gene editing techniques. I had an absolute (primer)BLAST (some biomed humour for you) during my time as a researcher and was astonished by the independence I had gained in the laboratory by the end of it. At the end of your project, you write a paper in the AIMRAD format (abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussion), like a sort of mini-practice publication that does not require significant, world-altering results. This coursework is weighted at 25% of your final grade and is considered the most important submission. The second required coursework is your extended essay, which is a 3000-word write-up that you must also source a supervisor for. I am currently in the process of conducting the reading required for this, and I would describe it as a mini systematic/literature review in a subject of your choice. I am conducting mine in a topic relevant to pregnancy to explore papers in women’s health, a field I believe is strongly underrepresented in science. This submission constitutes a 15% weighting of your final score.

Whilst a good 40% of the course is graded on coursework, the remaining 60% is still determined by your performance in classic exams. There are three compulsory exams (each weighted at 20%) and two optional exams (each weighted at 1%) that you are expected to prepare for. For Paper 1, you must write 3 essays in 3 hours, which must all be from different themes within the course. There are 36 themes in the entire course, and this is the main element in which you can explore niches of your interest. The choices are endless and range from the study of specific receptors and their signals to the study of whole system physiology. There are also disease modules, such as cancer, infection and molecular pathology. For Paper 2, you must write two synoptic essays in three hours. A synoptic essay is a piece of academic writing that covers the question at hand in great breadth. Some interesting past questions include, ‘Anything can be proven with statistics. Discuss.’ This style of questions greatly stretches your critical understanding of medicine and the principles underlying scientific enquiry. It is my personal favourite as every question is exceptionally intellectually stimulating.

Unlike the rest, Paper 3 does not require you to write any essays. Instead, you are given 3 hours to answer questions on a scientific paper. There are 6 papers to choose from, and questions include detailing strengths and weaknesses, commenting on statistical analyses, designing follow-up experiments, explaining scientific methods, and writing abstracts. This paper emphasises critical appraisal and can be compared to an advanced comprehension exam, but instead of writing style, you are critiquing scientists’ use of biological markers, labelling techniques and overall experimental approaches. It can be quite daunting at first, but as with most things, it becomes significantly easier with more practice.

Finally, the optional courses you can enrol in are Chemical Pharmacology or the History and Philosophy of Science. In these modules, you learn alongside chemists, historians, biomedical scientists and several other subject groups across different years. As an optional element, you can choose not to attend the exam if this does not interest you, and you will incur no penalty. If you do choose to study and sit the exam, you may be awarded between 0.5-1% towards your overall score. Whilst this may seem ridiculously low, it is not uncommon for students to find themselves on the edge of a grade boundary, and the 0.5-1% can just about push you over to the next higher grade. This makes this option quite popular, and I, for one, am excited to reawaken the love for chemistry I had in my A-levels!