Immerse Alumni Marie Shares Her Journey Since Immerse

After taking part on my Immerse programme in Cambridge, I finished high school at Bonn International School in 2016 and decided to take a gap year. During that time I did an internship at the paediatrics department of a hospital in Lima, Peru where I’m from. In July of 2017, I got accepted to a 6-year medicine programme at the University of Navarra. So far, I have had five fulfilling years with relevant hospital experiences where I was able to learn how to deal with patients and empathy.

Marie graduated in May 2023, and after that, she started an intense 8-month course to prepare for the MIR, the final medicine exam in Spain that would determine where and in what area she would do her residency. She hopes to secure a spot in Endocrinology somewhere in the south of Spain.

My time on my Immerse Medicine Programme taught me that I needed to do a lot more work on myself before heading off to university. I learnt a lot from my experiences during my two weeks there. The mock interviews taught me that I needed to learn how sell myself well, and that was something that I needed to personally work on before applying to medical school.

The experience also taught me that I needed to work a lot more on being open and outspoken, as it was very hard for me to involve myself with people outside of my close circle of friends. Lastly, it gave me a wake-up call as to how difficult medical school admissions really is. While discussing application processes such as the personal statements and the interviews I realised that all candidates would be just as qualified or more qualified than me and that I needed to work even harder than what I was doing at the time to obtain a spot at a good university.

My advice would be to be open to everything. Be open to meeting new people, making new friends, and to new activities outside of your comfort zone. Say yes to plans even if they don’t seem like your cup of tea, as I’m sure you will meet new people and learn a great deal from them. I also think it’s as important to engage with the social programme as much as the academic programme.

Some of my biggest learnings while at Immerse were from social experiences, stepping outside my comfort zone and talking to the mentors. If there is a mentor that is currently studying a course that you are interested in, don’t hesitate to approach them and ask them about their experience. You can learn a great deal more from someone who has dealt with the process first-hand rather than from reading about it online.