Firstly, the Highfield Campus is fairly easy to get to (by car anyway) and if I'm honest, location has always been a factor in my decisions. Yes, I know I applied to Hull and Leeds which are bloody ages away and a pig to get to but I still think it's important. Don't get me wrong; I'm not clinging on to Mummy's apron strings and I'm not planning on using home as a launderette, but I do think it's important to at least have access to home. I want to be able to come back for somebody's birthday or Mothers' Day, I want to meet Dad at Reading to watch the rugby, I want to know I can make it back if something happens. Plus, living in Hull would require a full-day's travelling. That's a day home and a day back. In Southampton I can (in theory at least) come home on a Wednesday afternoon and be back for lectures Thursday morning.
The campus is lovely too - really village-y with a relaxed, safe vibe. The hospital (where students are based) is a 20 minute walk, and most of the accommodation is within 10 minutes of the campus (you have a bus pass included within your rent so at least transport is sorted). There's all the usual things you'd expect (bar, pub, library etc) and next door is a really pretty common (always good to have a sunny spot to sleep in around exam time).
The course is pretty fab too: most teaching is at the hospital, so lots of clinical experience and also getting used to being in a hospital, where most of us are going to spend the majority of our lives. Southampton are hugely focused on research (they're part of the Russell Group) and the fourth year of the course is mostly based around completing a BMedSci on a topic of your choosing - this means getting an extra degree in the same amount of time. (You can also intercalate, which would give you three degrees. Greedy pig.)
The only downside is that Southampton practice prossection rather than dissection. Essentially, in dissection you do it yourself, prossection somebody that knows their way around a scalpel gets to do it. Initially, I was really keen on dissection, but the more I think about it, it seem like a novelty and a lot of time is dedicated to the dissection room (presumably this is where Soton find the time to squeeze in another degree.) Anyway, at Soton in your third year you are essentially given a free pass to the hospital - so as long as you ask somebody first, you can turn up wherever and just lend a helping hand. Personally, I would like to spend some time in the mortuary, at least getting some experience of dissection via post mortems and other gory going-ons...
Very lastly, Student Life. We had a Q&A session with current medical students and unsurprisingly the question of 'where to drink?' came up. The students all suggested 'Jesters', with the ominous warning to 'leave your nice clothes at home. Buy a pair of shoes from Primark and just hope it doesn't soak through.' Obviously, we all laughed. And then I googled Jesters and found this:
"Widely regarded as the scummiest licenced establishment in the South, if not the whole of the UK, and largely resembles a large 'bucket' of alcohol, vomit and faeces in which drinkers 'swim' around in (bring wellies), usually naked to boot (on Wednesdays, mandatory for sports teams).
Beware of snakebite ripcurrents, usually located in and around the dancefloor. If you manage to walk in and avoid having various drinks (this term is used rather broadly, since most of them can usually be found to have bits floating in them) spilled over you by vast numbers of drunken Jesterers, consider yourself very, very lucky."
On the plus side, pints of lager are 50p and Snakebite the fact they advertise Snakebite says something are just 80p. Bring on Freshers!
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