Project to support state school students to study STEM at university celebrates biggest year yet

Now in its fifth year, in2ScienceUK pairs up promising young A level students with volunteer scientists at participating institutions: UCL, King's College London, Imperial College London, the Natural History Museum, Goldsmiths University of London and the University of Bath. They then gain direct experience of working life in a laboratory during two-week placements over the summer. The scheme is heavily oversubscribed, with over 800 applicants for the 2014 scheme.

In2ScienceUK surveys all participating students to identify what they do after attending the programme, and over its five year existence 72% of the participants have gone on to study a STEM subject at university.

Maria Baez Bano of La Retraite Catholic School for Girls, London, was placed in the UCL Department of Physics and London Centre for Nanotechnology, working on experimental physics.

She said: "As the week began I was both nervous and excited. I was happy with the placement I'd been given-working alongside PhD students, experts in physics, both theoretical and experimental. I could not have been placed anywhere better! On the first day, we had a tour of UCL and we were introduced to our supervisors. By the second day we got into some hard-core experimental physics (or so it felt).

"We got to be very hands-on. As the week progressed we got to see various labs and experiments of physicists working with lasers, dust-free microscopes and liquid helium. But for myself, leaning more towards theoretical physics, the week really got exciting when we began work on differential equations and Schrödinger's Equation."

Supervisor Philip Crowley said: "It was a really good experience to be part of running something for in2science, and I really enjoyed offering an insight to academic science to a group of kids who maybe wouldn't have had that opportunity otherwise. It was heartening to see that they seemed to enjoy and benefit from it too. I was really impressed with the students' genuine interest in the subject, and the steps they had taken to explore this interest."

Rebecca McKelvey, in2ScienceUK founder, said: "With over 800 student applicants this year for 100 placements we now aim to expand the scheme across the UK. At a time when the UK faces the challenge of ensuring enough young people are progressing to university to study STEM degrees, in2scienceUK is a great way of engaging young people from low income backgrounds to take this path. On average in the last 5 years 72% of students on our programme have progressed to study a STEM degree at university and it is our aim to support more students from across the UK to have this unique experience."

Links

• In2ScienceUK

Image

• UCL PhD students Michael Faulkner & Phillip Crowley with in2science students Amara Mighty, Prasana Kalanathan & Maria Baez Bano