Carter, who studied on the Bioengineering stream of the Sutton Trust Summer School continues our blog series

I’m Carter, I live in Manchester and I studied Bioengineering at Imperial College London. I hope to study Mechanical Engineering at university.

I applied for the Sutton Trust Summer Schools because I wanted a chance to experience a university in depth, not just like you would see on an open day; I wanted to stay in the accommodation, use the equipment, try some of the skills and meet the tutors. I chose Imperial in particular because I was aware that it is one of the leading universities for both bioengineering and mechanical engineering. So I knew it would be a unique opportunity to visit.

The run-up to the programme for me was very exciting. From the moment I received my acceptance e-mail, I was booking coach tickets and looking at images of the campus. After I had returned the initial forms, they said they wouldn’t get in contact with me until two weeks before the programme. I enquired about what time I should book my coach for and the response was speedy. A fortnight before the start date, I received a (rather thick) letter. It contained specific details of the accommodation, rules, meals, timetable and mentors. This was when it really sunk in: I’m really going! There was definitely a unique feeling when someone asked “Hey, you free next week?” and I would have to respond “No sorry, I’m staying in Imperial”. There was obviously a lot of things I was nervous about : what if I don’t make friends? What if I find the work difficult? What if the food is gross? And most worryingly: What if I have to share a room with someone?!

The journey to Imperial started at 3:00 AM, so I was rather tired but luckily, the excitement cleared the bags under my eyes!

On arrival, we were given the welcome talk and a genuinely engaging talk on “Applying to University”. We were also given lots of things to takeaway (including a very nice hoodie which I am currently wearing). The programme itself was clearly split into Academic sessions and Pastoral sessions, for which you had separate mentors. The academic sessions were very enjoyable. Although the first Introduction session was very overwhelming, everyone slowly got the hang of the topic and eventually we evem started to try to set our own projects. We were tasked to produce a digital stethoscope. To do this we had many tasks to do: learn about different types of data, learning about Arudinos, learning type C Programming and calculating the gain of an amplifier among other things. My partner and I managed to code the stethoscope to turn on an LED If the heart sounds exceeded a threshold value. Although this sounds overwhelming and a lot of work, the support from the current students / mentors was so helpful. Each session (6 hours with lunch in between) was very well planned with relevant handouts. I enjoyed being thrown into an entirely new topic and being encouraged to explore and experiment. We also had chance to speak to some students about their projects and research. This was particularly interesting because it was content that had not been produced anywhere else!

The evening / pastoral sessions mimicked the social side of university. The first night involved a quiz and crafting a team mascot. This was when I began to relax as I realised everyone was just as nervous as I was making friends. It was clear that everyone was here to get involved and it made talking to everyone very easy. The second evening we ate at Wagamama and had a series of “challenges”: take a photo with an object beginning with each letter of the alphabet; build a tower of spaghetti and make a Lego model identical to the example at the front. These challenged tested our creativity, team work, engineering and communication skills. It was clear my team wasn’t the best a communicating. The final night we had a formal dinner at a fancy hotel restaurant. Everyone dressed up appropriately and we shared a lovely meal. We also had a charades game which was invigorating. The pastoral activities were all ranked which produced a (very) competitive atmosphere (I must add that my team won).

The thing that surprised me most about Imperial was how accessible it was. I had many misconceptions of the “typical extraordinary Imperial undergraduate”. However, after talking with the mentors it was clear that they weren’t superhuman at all. It was apparent that they were very hardworking and very passionate, but they were just once AS students like we were.

The accommodation was lovely, we stayed in the Eastside halls. There was a common room on the ground floor which was a great place to talk to people who weren’t in your subject strand. I was allocated to share my room. At first I was quite nervous, but it actually became very enjoyable! It was great to have someone to discuss the things we had done in the day. He was on the Biology strand so the academic sessions we had were entirely different. He was also from London so he travelling experience was also a lot shorter than mine.

A memory that sticks out the most about my Summer School experience is the free hoodies we received. When it was said that “We have something to give you” I was expecting the usual: pens, tote bag, prospectuses. But then the mentors brought out these boxes of high quality hoodies. I was in awe.

If you are considering applying to the Summer School programme I was 100% encourage you. You will learn some incredible things: things about your subject and also things about university. You will use equipment that you didn’t know existed.  You will meet young people across the UK and laugh at their accents when they laugh at yours. You will eat some great food and receive some great gifts! Many of my friends wish they applied if they had heard about it, if you’re in a position to apply, you would be silly not to!