Student Spotlight: Oumou, BSc Population Health

What attracted you to study your programme at UCL?

Having visited UCL before applying, I was already captivated by the atmosphere on campus. When this was paired with the quality of research that UCL put out, and its global ranking and prestige, I was of course drawn to study here. At school, I was always attracted to many different subjects, I chose to apply to the BSc Population Health programme because the multidisciplinary nature of the course allowed me, to some extent, to continue this. It enabled me to maintain my interest in the broader subject area of health, disease, social and population factors

What are your future goals post-graduation? 

Once I have finished my undergraduate degree, I plan to take on further study. The department has really helped me to realise my enjoyment in learning, and with a range of MSc courses available, I hope to continue this here. 

What do you like about your programme and why?

As a relatively new programme, the quality of learning feels really rich due to the small class sizes and the willingness of tutors and lecturers to support and help students in the department. Also, it is engaging to learn about topics, such as the social determinants of health, and frontiers of knowledge in population health, that reflect society in a way that is useful for our careers and life outside of the degree. 

What can a student expect to learn on this course?

We learn a lot of statistical skills on the course, they are challenging but vital for future employment, and give students the power to analyse their own data for their own research at a highly advanced level. We also learn a lot about the ways of monitoring, measuring and analysing health, as well as studying diseases and the biological processes that make them work, and up to date advances in health and bodily sciences. We have also looked at health from a sociological perspective evaluating how the ideas of sociologists such as Durkheim and Foucault have framed our perceptions of health.  

What were you doing before you became a student at UCL?

Before studying at UCL I took two years out of education, where I moved to London and worked.

What piece of advice would you give to new students? 

Utilise the support offered by the department! Also make sure to engage in the events, panels and talks that are put on at the university outside of your degree, by UCL’s many societies. They can be really interesting and bring another dimension into what you already learn in lectures. 

Where do you identify as home?

London is my home, I grew up in Brighton but I’ve been in London permanently for almost four years now, so London is really my home.