Should I intercalate? A guide for medical students
I decided to intercalate between my fourth and fifth year of medicine. I chose Neuroinformatics, a subject which I knew a bit about the first two syllables, and little about the rest. I was one of two medics on the course compared to others with computer science degrees, masters, and senior lecturers, and at first, I was terrified.
Intercalation was the best year of my undergraduate studies, and set me up for the rest of my career (now doing a PhD).
In this post I hope to share my own experiences, and provide a positive spin for anyone considering intercalating. With that said, every person is an individual, and I can’t hope to cover all of the aspects that matter to you. Do not be pushed into doing a year that you won’t enjoy!
What is intercalation?
Intercalation is an opportunity to take an additional year out to study something that is tangential to medicine. Medical schools vary in what they will permit, but generally these are MSc/MRes/MA courses within or without the university.
Why intercalate?
If you have an interest in something, the decision is a lot easier. You can do a deep-dive into the subject, learn new skills in the lab, meet supervisors for future research.
But even if you don’t have a specific interest, intercalation is a fantastic opportunity. You get treated as an adult learner, with a project that is truly your own to manage. At the end of it, you can proudly hold a dissertation and say ‘I made this’.
It can feel at times that medicine is a conveyor belt, pushing you up the rungs of a ladder that you started on at the age of 17, with the summit of FY1 at the top. Intercalation provides some much-needed breathing room and allows you to focus on the areas that make sense to you.
“Are you ever going to graduate? “
— Dad
Funding for intercalation
I’m not going to paint a rosy picture- this is not straightforward. You might be able to get support for your costs by submitting applications to medical charities, but with many medical charities facing financial difficulties in 2020, these may be restricted or withdrawn. Truthfully, many intercalating students self-fund. Masters level tuition fees and living costs aren’t cheap, so its worth planning ahead for how you’re going to support yourself in this year.
What about my clinical skills?
Every medical student who intercalates is concerned that on their return they will have forgotten how to use a stethoscope. It’s utter nonsense and an affront to your education and training. Myself and all my intercalating peers performed equally as well in final year and FY1 as those on ‘run-through’ medicine. If you are really worried, you could:
- Make sure your medical notes are up to date, legible, and organised.
- Review your notes from time to time (I set out a day a month for this)
- Attend revision lectures (I went to the final year revision lectures which my friends were going to)
What I gained
I learned loads of academic skills- I learned to use academic software like MATLAB, BioSeq. I learned how to write a dissertation in LaTeX (short answer: don’t). But first and foremost, I learned how to learn. Medicine gives a very prescriptive syllabus, whereas an MSc you are left to get on with it, and you learn that there are many ways to attack a problem.
But the main thing I gained doesn’t fit on my CV
I found my passion
It turns out, I absolutely love neurological signals. I love writing programs to analyse them, displaying them in multicolours, predicting them. It’s art as much as science, to me.
I want to do research, but I can’t intercalate
Don’t worry! Many of my research colleagues didn’t intercalate and are progressing just fine along the clinical academic track (and faster than me who faffed around for a year). All it means is that you have to be creative about preparing for selection down the line. Can you write up an audit into a poster, and present that at a local or national meeting? Are there any prizes that you can compete for within or without your medical school? Most importantly, you will have to work harder to network. Find a research supervisor who has an interesting small-scale project that you can work on in your own time. Aim for a low-impact publication, or national presentation. You can quickly catch up with intercalators.
If the qualification is important to you, you can come back and do it after medical school, and locum while you do so.
Pros
- New letters after your name
- Additional points for FPAS and every specialty application thereafter
- Become a student on a different course- learn different skills, live life as a different kind of student
- Learn lots of specific niche skills
Cons
- Expensive- tuition fees and living costs to consider.
- It’s a long slog, especially if it’s not something you’re interested in
- You will be in final year while some of your friends are doctors.
- Don’t expect the skills you gain to help you on the wards
About the author
Stu Maitland is an NIHR Clinical Doctoral Fellow in Neurophysiology
You can get in touch to ask questions about intercalation or anything else:
