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“We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character."

Henry David Thoreau

 

Student Life

While the NIH-Oxford-Cambridge Program requires its students to be highly self-directed as they engage in their academic research including many hours spent in the lab, the program also offers students access to an impressive array of personal enrichment and professional development opportunities. Each year, students and their mentors along with guests and distinguished scientific leaders gather for the program's annual Colloquium.

Click here to view our Colloquium photo gallery.

Other student activities include participation in a monthly Journal Club and access to programming supported by the International Biomedical Research Alliance, a philanthropic organization that supports the program in many exciting ways. At the close of the 2007 Colloquium held in Cambridge, for instance, IBRA collaborated with the Lasker Foundation in order to sponsor a two-day UK-based leadership program. Students traveled together from Cambridge to Down House, home of Charles Darwin and site of his work for more than 40 years. The group then traveled to London where they had a unique opportunity to meet leaders whose work significantly impacts the current and future course of science policy in the UK. Students visited Parliament to meet with members of the House of Lords and House of Commons, engaging in discussions with the nation's top leaders of prominent science, technology and innovation initiatives.

While at Oxford and Cambridge, students can take advantage of the wide array of extracurricular activities offered by the University, ranging from athletics to social events offered the numerous colleges.   Each student belongs to a college within the University that provides a smaller, more closely-knit community within which to live and socialize.  The NIH also offers group housing close to campus for many of the Scholars and students of other NIH graduate partnership programs.  Students also have the option to seek their own housing in Washington D.C. or Maryland if they wish.

To speak directly to current students about these and other matters, visit our Student-to-Student Forum.

 

For a more general sense of life at Oxford and Cambridge, check out the YouTube links below.

Cambridge Views

Day Trip to Cambridge

May Bumps at Cambridge

The Cambridge Experience

"Cambridge in America" Video Collection

Pembroke College Cambridge University

Oxford University Student Interviews

University Park at Oxford

 

Current students have designed and manage web sites that reflect other dimensions of student life (see links below).