 Hello, everybody. I'm sharing my screen so I can see very much how many are here, but I'll be, I'll stop sharing in a minute. My name is Kasia. I'm one of the foundation year leads as I'm one of the people who manage the foundation year program. And I'll be here just to talk you briefly through the program through its aims, objectives, what's on offer, what are the benefits and how does it work. And I'm happy here with me, Denny, who's one of our current students, who will be also sharing her experiences on of the program with you. Denny is actually one of my classes. So Denny, over to you to introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Jenny and I'm in the business management economics and law class. And yeah, I hope you all enjoy this talk. I decided to come to saw us next year. Brilliant. Thanks, Denny. So as I said, we'll just talk you through some of the key elements of the program, benefits. And then at the end, we will move to our Q&A session. So like Laura said, you can pop your questions, I believe in the chat box, I believe. So some of you might have seen this on our website, we have two foundation year programs available at saw us, apart from the international program. So so this is a separate foundation programs we offer. The two pathways are social sciences, arts and humanities. And the other pathway is business management economics and law. In terms of the setup, the foundation year program at saw us or either one of those two is set up in a form of an extended degree, i.e. if a student would traditionally let's say enroll on a three year program, if they decide to do enroll on the foundation program as well, that automatically extend the duration of their overall program into four years. For some degrees at saw us, particularly the language courses, which normally are four years, the foundation year program would then make this a five year program. That's in terms of the registration. So we see straight away as a student of saw us and with the intention obviously to stay and to progress to one of the existing courses. Now, in terms of the two pathways, I'm going to show you in a minute, the modules that are covered on each one of the pathways. They are quite similar with one of the core modules being the biggest difference between those two. Both programs are allow students to progress to any degree available at saw us. So for example, if there is a student who's considering progressing into I don't know economics, we would obviously strongly encourage them and suggest that they actually follow or enroll on the business management economics and law pathway. However, nothing is stopping them to, let's say, sign up to the social sciences pathway, explore other options available. And if at the end, if they still wish to do economics, that is absolutely not a problem. Sorry, I'm trying to move to the next slide. So who is the foundation program aimed at? We believe it's an, you know, excellent preparation for students who, in some cases, maybe out of education may happen out of education for a while, or would benefit from another year of study before actually starting the degree. In some cases, that would be students who applied for direct entries or applied for a particular degree at saw us. However, they may have missed out in the tariff. If they then meet our tariff requirement, we would offer them foundation year program and see it as a bridge really between their previous education and joining a degree. We also have a number of students who are maybe worried about jumping straight into year one. They're not quite sure which degree they would like to progress to or choose. And foundation year is that extra year, which allows them to really explore what's available, the different options that they can pick from, and then to make a better, more informed decision. I would say that this is particularly important at saw us. I'm sure as you've seen on our website, there may be other open days, speaking to alum speaking to fellow students, how many different degree choices are there available at saw us. It's absolutely fantastic. We offer very unique combinations. We're quite often the only place in the world that offers a specific combination, or definitely in the UK. And quite often those degree choices, those subjects don't have a direct equivalent. And students often don't know about them. So I would say that one of the key benefits of foundation is being that extra year at school, being part of the cohort, being, you know, joining the society, speaking to other students, speaking to lecturers, allows students to really know what they would like to do, and then make an informed choice in terms of progression. We obviously have academics co support that the students in making those choices guide them, you can discuss your worries, queries, any questions you may have with the departments you're thinking of going to. So I would say that extra year is extremely beneficial, not to mention everything students will learn on the program. Sorry. So what does the curriculum look like? You will see all the modules that we offer. So on the in the first column on the left hand side, you have the module name, which I'll talk briefly about credits without getting too technical here. These are academic credits that, you know, count towards your degree. And I include it in this slide because you can also see sort of how how big, how heavy the modules are, and how long they last. So you will see from the third column that some of our modules last only one term, so either term one or term two, some of them are a little bit longer, and last a full year. Now, I'll start from the top. So academic practice, this is our core module, I would say it's probably the spine of the program. So it's the module which really polishes the skills that our students come with and make sure that the students are fully ready for an undergraduate degree in terms of their academic skills. So in those classes, students practice things such as critical thinking, critical writing, analysis, presentation skills, and definitely a lot of research. Actually, a research project is is a mini research project is part of that program. In addition to this module in term one, students also have a digital skills and technology module, which obviously, again, refreshes their digital skills. We also have an employability element. Their students are asked to do virtual, maybe not a full CV, but an element of a CV, very, very interesting module with a lot of positive feedback. I would say that one of our most popular modules is the World from Sauce module. So that's the third one on the list also delivered in term one. And as you can imagine, this module focuses on key themes currently going on in the world, and the source view on them. And I would say students really enjoy this, we get a lot of positive feedback about this module, because it maybe highlights shows other points of view, and students really enjoy it. I will now take you down. I'll skip the next lines to the bottom two modules, you'll see the introduction modules, so introduction to social sciences, arts and humanities, with a little asterisks, and introduction to business management, economics and law with a little asterisks. That simply means that students would only do one of those modules, depending on the pathway which they're also IE, depending on the foundation program that they chose. So for example, Jenny witness today, she's on the business management economics and a law module. So this module introduces those four disciplines throughout the year. So students will have few weeks of business, few weeks of management, few weeks of economics, few weeks of law. As an example, right now, we just started term two, we just finished our first week of term two. In term two, we move to the second part of this module, economics and law. And this is the time where we actually bring the economics department we bring the law department, who deliver the lectures for our students. And that allows them to sort of see what they can expect if they choose to progress to those programs. Same goes for social sciences, of course, one term. One, we do more of a, I would say similar to history class and current events as well. But we also in turn to bring lectures from various other departments who share their research, what they're interested in, what their departments are about, what their programs are about. And again, allowing students to make that slightly more informed choice. And now I'll come back to the middle of this table. So the last two term two modules are cultural fluency, which is a nice natural follow up follow on from the world from so as module. And my personal favorite numbers in context of reasoning. So this is not a max module. I think I need to stress that this is more of a module in how to work with numbers, how to present numbers, how to incorporate numbers and feel comfortable with them and to individual research that our students will conduct later on. So that gives us the overview of the program. So these are all modules are compulsory again, just bearing in mind the asterisks one of the Baltimore students and we do one of the two depending on the pathway. In addition to that, there's plenty of curricular activities going on in terms of the actual timetabled classes. This is how the program looks like. So it is one year. And at the end of the year, so the academic year, students let us know then what degree they like to progress to and we'll take it from them in a minute. I'm going to talk a little bit more about how the progression works from foundation to two year one. But moving on with just a few slides of my presentation. So what will the program allow you to achieve? Like I said, the skills element I would say is is the core of the program. So make sure we make sure that students are ready to to thrive and really do well in their undergraduate programs as they move on. As you can imagine with so as being quite a distinctive institution, with no strong values at our core, we introduce students to this. I mean, a lot of them already know this. So we really engage with the students into those conversations and building a global university together. In terms of providing students with insight into the different academic disciplines, I touched on this a little bit at the beginning. And I can't highlight this point enough, especially with the huge choice that students have at SOAS. So this is currently in our third year of delivery. I've been on the program since the very beginning. So I always have a look and sort of see how the trends are changing. And in terms of our students choices. And one very interesting observation I just personally made is we ask students when they arrive, which degrees they're thinking about. This is in no way written in stone. We don't change their profiles. This is just to allow us to plan better to know which departments to engage with, to extend particular invites to students, to make sure that we give them the best experience. And then at the end, I actually compared this to what was the choice they actually made at the end of the course. And students sometimes change their minds that that is the case, where they originally came with a with a different idea with a different plan. And at the end of the foundation program, they might have come to see me and say, I've been, I don't know, attending the economics lectures, absolutely love it. I've changed my mind. I would like to do that. But another interesting thing is that a lot of students actually add a language to their original choice. And that wasn't necessarily their idea when they were coming in. But having explored that throughout the year, they quite often go for for a joint option. I think this is also probably a good point to talk a little bit more about the progression and how does the foundation year blend into the whole four or five year degree, depending on the remainder of the course. So like I said, students who come into the program are automatically enrolled on a four slash five year degree, depending on the duration of the rest. At the beginning of the academic year, they give us an indication what they are maybe thinking about. But this is not their final decision. We're very much aware of that and communicate that obviously with our cohort. They're allowed to give us multiple answers. This way, we can plan the year better. We can put events for our students, we can invite them to open talks, we can bring lectures from other departments over, we can invite the students. What that also allows us is to run our mentoring program a little bit better. I'll talk about the mentoring program in more detail in a second, something we're piloting this year. But very briefly, it allows us to body up students who wish to do so with X foundation students who are already in year one and year two. And we quite often try to do that based on the programs they're telling us they would like to progress to. So for example, if there's a student wishing to progress to law, we would naturally try to match them with an X foundation year alum, who's currently doing aerobic. So again, that I suppose helps and gives students more insights into what they're planning to do later on. At the end of the year, as long as the students as long as the student met the progression criteria, which are the same at every level of study, if there is nothing special between in terms of progressing from foundation to year one or progressing from year one to year two, or from year two to year three. So as long as the student met the progression criteria, we update internally their student record, and they just naturally go on to that degree. So there is no need for a second application. There is no need for another UCAS application. We already, well, those students are already, you know, students on a four year degree from day one really. I would say this question comes up sometimes, is it possible to change the degree? I mean, yes, this would be depending on when the student wants to wants to do that. I would say as long as it's done before the first year starts, then absolutely. Once the first year starts that that might be slightly more complicated. But of course, before it starts, yes, I will also stress that we don't have any prerequisites, which means, let's say if a student wants to do economics and law, I think this is the example I use quite a lot because a lot of foundation year students progress to those two programs. So we don't have, I don't know, a minimum grade set up apart from obviously passing the program. But we do not have, I don't know, you must get at least 70% in such and such exam. No such things exist. Those students need to pick a particular pathway to be able to progress to a degree. Also, no, we would strongly encourage obviously, and our admissions team is really, really good at documenting the correct pathway or the more applicable pathway to the students. But at the end of the day they are, we allow students to progress to any degree they want from any of the pathways. And if there are any questions about this, I'll happily answer them obviously at the end of this presentation. I think this is also important. So what support is available to students? They are fully SOAS students, so any services, options, I don't know, departments which run at SOAS are available and open to foundation year students. Their cases in which foundation year students have maybe a priority as well. Seeing as they are well the freshmen, so year one students. At the very, very beginning of the foundation year program, we assign an academic advisor to every student and they have the same academic advisor, which is an academic one of the academics from the team throughout the year one. Some of the meetings with the academic advisor are scheduled and obviously we strongly, strongly encourage students to reach out to their academic advisor. If they don't, the academic advisor will reach out to them just to make sure they're on track, just to make sure they're doing well and to answer any questions they may have. We also have a whole team of lecturers. So even if a lecturer is not somebody's academic advisor, students of course can reach out to them for help. We have module conveners as well, so lecturers who are in charge of a particular module or myself or my name is David Webster, my manager or my colleague Robin Carney. Of course we're all here, always happy to help. We have a very strong administration team. So we're also based in an office on campus, but we also provide online services in terms of administration so students can arrange an online meeting or a face to face meeting and they could help students with any admin related problem you can think of really. We have them moving a little bit more into the kind of central services. We have students in well, a single being service, so very, very core key service at SOAS, closely linked to the mental health advisors as well. They work on the one department I believe right now and we often refer students to them. So more detailed information about those services is available in our website as well as the disability services, as these are the centrally provided services. I think I've also missed out there is plenty of different societies that we would encourage students to engage with. I think I'll pass on to Jenny for a second before I go to the FAQs so she can talk to you a little bit more about the student perspective and what are her experiences so far and how does the student life look like? Would you have some first hand experience? I'll stop sharing my screen. Off to you Jenny. Yes, so before I came on to the foundation year, I didn't realise that I could literally do everything that was available to me at the university. So no matter what society you want to join, you can just join it. There are loads of societies as academic ones, so we have like the Open Economics Forum, we have the UN Society and then we have some more like leisure societies, like the Anime Society, we have Creative Café and there's Music Societies. So I feel like the societies are so as to cover a broad range of topics you can do if you want to enjoy or if you want to do a bit more academic to help your studies and then on top of that we also have our Student Hub, that's one thing, and then we also have our Union. So we have a Union Bar at the bottom of the Junior Common Room. Everyone goes there all the time. You don't have to particularly drink, but people just sit there and study as well. It's a nice show place. It's really good vibes, honestly. Everyone's so welcoming, you can just talk to anybody there and they'll be open to talking to you, listening to you. It's just such a nice atmosphere so as everyone's just so lovely and welcoming. I've made friends who are mature students, which I did not realise I could do that. I didn't know they would be willing to talk to me because I am only first year, but everyone's so lovely. Thank you, Jenny. And I just realised that I wanted actually your view, maybe your experience in one of the modules, but I forgot to train when I was in the zone presenting. Sorry about that. So, well, like I mentioned before, Jenny's currently studying, so you haven't done terms for modules yet, but can you share your experiences with us, maybe of some of the things you've done in class or how did the classes look like? What's your experience? So, one thing I noticed at the very beginning, academic practice, I when I saw them, when I saw the topics, I didn't understand why we had to do them, honestly, but coming to the end of it, I realised the importance of it. It seems like it's supposed to be so simple, but it's really not. And especially coming on to the essays at the end of term one, you are going to realise that you use all of the skills that you have learnt in term one of academic practice in those essays and in those portfolios. So, I really learnt the importance of those skills and definitely bringing them forward into the rest of my university career. So, it might be a bit of a bore at first, but just know it is really important. Brilliant. Well, thank you. I'm just thinking, and I don't think I'm going to go back to the presentation, because all I have on there is some FAQs, which I can just read out maybe to start the conversation going. So, please, feel free to start putting your questions in the chat, and between me and Denis will answer them. And maybe just to kick off, I picked two common questions that came up, I think in the last open day. So, one of them was what are the typical teaching methods on the programme? So, I'll start with maybe the pandemic part. So, we currently teach face-to-face. So, all our classes are face-to-face this year, depending on any changes to government advice. Apart from lectures. So, lectures would be normally delivered in big lecture theatres, and we thought that with the current social distancing and just precautions in place, we've moved only lectures online. So, students are able to log in to them and we deliver them via Zoom. Other than that, we teach everything face-to-face. Pre pandemic, obviously, everything face-to-face, but we had big lectures with, I would say, over 100 students in the lecture, but that would be two hours a week. No, one hour, two hours, yes, two hours in term, one, one hour in term, two of lectures. And everything else was delivered in the form of a seminar. So, smaller group students are grouped into cohorts of about 23, 25 students, depending on the group, and they would attend this in a smaller group session. So, with their lecturers, they're more practical, I would say. So, like Jenny was saying, you practice your skills, you do your assignments, you work on your portfolios. And traditionally, the IT class is delivered in an IT lab. And the second FAQ that I have just from the last session is another last similar opening, is what assessment methods are used on the program. So, Jenny already mentioned essays, there will be a lot of that, reports, portfolio assignments, which, well, I personally prefer because students are able to build on them as they go throughout the year, as opposed to have that one all-or-nothing assessment at the end. We also have not many, but some exams so I believe we try to make sure that students take one exam a year. Jenny, you will be happy to hear not this year, but from next year exams are back. We also do presentations, student recordings for us. So, we have actually quite a wide selection of assessments. So, it's not the very traditional and standard exam and course work or, you know, essay and an exam at the end type of setup. I would say these were my main two questions and I think the other most popular one is the progression one. So, how does the foundation link with year one and how does that work? I hope I covered it well enough earlier on when I was talking to one of the slides, but please, please put your questions in the chat. I can see one message in the chat. Oh, it was just to me that we can now start the presentation. Q&A. Right, there I am. We do have one that's come up in the Q&A session. Thank you, Sira, which is about the kind of topics that are covered in the cultural fluency module on the foundation year. Let me, so I know that, see, this is not my academic background. So, I'm from the Economics, Law, Business, Management and Maths background. But saying that, if you just give me three seconds, I will be able to tell you this. I am very quickly checking that our latest syllabus, we do update our modules every year to make sure that they're current, that we're using the latest reading lists and research on to them. There I am. I'm just checking it live. Give me one second. I'll be able to talk you through it. Right, so this year, because we had a little review over the summer, we did a whole review process where we looked at every single module and took account students feedback, feedback from other departments and made sure that those modules are fit for purpose. So this year, I wouldn't say there are huge changes, but we definitely polished them and made some small changes. Hence why I wanted to check that I'm definitely still remembering what's in them exactly, if I don't teach this particular module. So, for example, in cultural fluency students, look at cultural diversity and global citizenship. They discuss and make sure that they can demonstrate an understanding of the importance of language and communication and cultural fluency. And let me go through, there I am, cross-cultural understanding in addition to that globalization, obviously this is a topic that will also be touched on in the world from SOAS. They don't, maybe by the titles, they don't look like they're linked, but there's a very nice natural progression between those modules. And I would say a lot, a lot about cultural diversity in there. In that module, I think I believe that this year we've also linked it with a SOAS something that's very important well throughout the world, but we definitely make sure we cover that and our students are familiar with this and comfortable discussing those topics. We've merged a huge part about race and belonging into the cultural fluence module as well. I hope that answers it a bit. Is that another one? Regarding lectures being done online currently, are there expectations to return to the lecture theaters in 22-23? I mean, at the moment, yes, we are hoping that we can return back to lectures next year. They were fantastic in your one. I delivered a lot of them. It's personally, I prefer the face-to-face lectures. However, I understand the benefits also for the students who can do it in their own time and lobbying from wherever they are. So this year, until the end of the academic year, we will continue with the lectures online and pending government guidance. At the moment, we're doing seminars face-to-face. If anything changes, we obviously have the infrastructure to move it immediately online. But yes, the plan is hopefully to come back to a fully face-to-face teaching next year. And there's a second part of that question. Additionally, does this impact any potential guest events talks? With people coming into source from other institutions that students would be able to access, we currently have all of those online. So any extra talks, any lectures delivering anything on foundation, we do everything online. So it doesn't impact it. In year one, we've done, because we moved online at the beginning of term two. So our first year of delivery, so the 2019-2020 academic year was interesting to say the least. So we've done term one face-to-face. And some of those guest talks, some of those events for foundation year students were done face-to-face. And I think we moved online a little bit more in line with continental Europe as opposed to the UK guidance. So I think we moved online probably three weeks before. It was made a little bit more common in the UK. So our term two events were online. They both work well. They both have, I would say, drawbacks as well as advantages. So a tricky to say. I think most students prefer the online lectures. I prefer the face-to-face lectures. How does that, onto another question, how does the foundation course blend with combined linguistics and Japanese? Right. So because you're mentioning Albert a language degree, so we do not offer language on foundation specifically. So unfortunately languages are on not one of the available options. I'm sure you've seen from the little table I showed, we don't have a language there. What we do is talks with the departments. But I understand that doesn't quite substitute a language class. So what students can do is they can sign up to additional language courses if they wish to. But this is in addition to the foundation year, not part of a foundation year. And in terms of progression, that's absolutely fine the same as with any other degree. If the degree is available at SOAS, running in the current year, foundation year students can progress to it without any issues. We actually got some very interesting data just a few weeks ago. So we're still analyzing it on how the foundation year students, so the last two cohorts, the first two cohorts who progressed from foundation to year one, how are they performing, how are they doing in comparison to students who entered directly into year one without doing the foundation element? And I remember that they're all doing or equally well, it looked better in some cases, but I remember the linguistics in Japanese one because we had some worries a little to be honest about this because we don't offer Japanese as part of the foundation saying that very few students come with prior, you know, knowledge of those languages. So they were doing absolutely fine and that's a very long way to say yes, you can progress to that degree. We also have a question that's come through the chat as opposed to the Q&E which is just a student looking for some reassurance. Is this foundation year for every subject or just for specific subjects? And I know you've touched on that throughout your talk, but I didn't know if you wanted to just come back to that. Absolutely. So it's not for a specific subject. It's, I would say it's quite a generic foundation. I want to turn it over because it gives you a good introduction on how to be a strong student with all the kind of important graduate attributes. So there will be an element of history in the course, obviously, but with the type of institution so as I can't imagine us doing it any other way. And I think that will give you a very, very strong start and grounding and prepare you for the degrees you can progress to. But it is not a history specific or any module specifically foundation. So I would say the more the two key elements of it or first of all, definitely, definitely skills. So it's making sure that we bridge any potential gaps between the qualifications and the educational experiences that our students had coming in and what is expected of them and what do they need to know and be able to do in order to slide in their undergraduate degree? That's one part of it. And the other part of it is we will definitely be discussing and engaging with topics and areas and academic fields that have very, very core to everything we do as far as history being one of them. Yeah. Could I just jump on to one of your language questions from Albert? So I am actually doing one of the language courses that SOAS offers. It's a paid one, but you get a discount because you're a SOAS student and I'm doing it in Chinese and you can you develop as you go. So you start from like a beginners course depending on how confident you are with the language and you go on and you go on and you go on and you develop term by term. So it's a term by term course and because I don't want to do a language as part of my actual degree but I would still love to learn a language. I think that's one opportunity that you can really take advantage of SOAS. I mean, Jenny, thank you for highlighting that absolutely. So we have so many students interested in Chinese or in Korean is the is her latest test language Japanese but there's obviously plenty on offer. So some of our students do exactly what Jenny does. So if that's in addition to the degree which I think it's just fantastic and the opportunities is there. Why not? So I would strongly recommend this to everyone. And I have now opened both chat and the Q&A and I can see thanks Albert and I can see another question. The foundation here doesn't specifically mean you have to know what subject you would like to study in. If you mean what you would like to progress to that's correct. So you start foundation and we do ask you but this is just a gentle gentle more resource planning and make sure that myself and the team can kind of tailor the experience for you but you don't need to know. So I have a number of students when we asked in October I think what degree they would like to progress to they're not sure and that's absolutely fine. That's the whole point of the foundation program that we want to show you what's on offer. We want you to be sure by the end of it. Some students are sure the beginning equally great but no you do not have to. So in terms of the kind of the technicalities of this are that on our systems in terms of I don't know student finance which a lot of students use. I believe it's called a four-year degree in social sciences or something like that on somewhat deep down in the system and then doing the foundation for us towards the end of it we internally change it to whatever it is that you wish to progress to. Actually Jenny I'm sorry I'm going to put you on the spot. We had a little chat before but what Jenny's thinking of progressing to it's a very difficult choice. I don't envy you. They're both fantastic. I'm not going to you don't say it out loud maybe and give it out just yet but Jenny hasn't till what probably May to make up her mind or April and then if anything happens and you change your mind you can then come to me and let me know and we'll update that. So that's as simple as that and those little conversations for example like I had that 10 to 10 to the way that Jenny will allow me I already have a little note to make sure to put her in touch with somebody or send her and then make sure she attends a specific talk just to help her make that choice. Yeah I feel like speaking to your subject teachers at the end of your classes is really helpful. I've got a lot of advice I usually stay behind for five, ten minutes just to have a chat and this really helped me over the time it's really helped narrow down choices for me clear things up so don't feel shy just go for it they're everyone's lovely so yeah. And we have a question about their entry criteria so I believe that at the moment it's a triple C and we also do review contextualized well we have contextualized admissions so contextualized offers we review every application so they like traditionally they go through our admissions team Laura you can correct me on this here and I'm one of the admissions teachers so I know that if there are any borderline applications even for students who maybe haven't necessarily met this or have wonderful combination of different both qualifications and experiences and the statement and I don't know live experiences all those applications are reviewed by myself and my colleague so it's not just grades we know that there is so much more to everybody than just that one A level exam that you may have a you know a worse day of but officially I believe it's triple C and then sometimes that that varies in clearing and just to say if you are looking for the IB equivalent or you're studying a particular international qualification then the best place to go is our website and if you go on to the foundation year page you can see what ideally your admissions tutors would be looking for but we do take everything into account likes already being said so the website is the best place and get in touch if you've got any questions and I can't stress this enough we definitely do take everything into account I'm one of the people who reviews those applications and well it's pages and pages and pages of it and I can assure you that it's not just the grades we really look at every aspect of the application as the personal statement at the reference at the subjects the students did so it is you know I've really thought through the decision not just checking grades against the triple C I have another question will there be a talk about undergraduate degrees and talk about subjects I'm so sorry about do you mean right now or at some point in the foundation year because right now I'm going to say no I've said not from me I don't think I'm able to cover all the degrees available and so as I know the open day is running today so I think you're in the foundation here okay thank you I thought you wanted me to give you a quick overview of I don't know 700 options in the foundation year yes so what we do in the foundation year well a we invite our students to events like this as well so even this open day that's also open to to you know people and potential students who are not part of Celsius our students can come to that so that's one thing second level we create special events purely for foundation students so no external guests are invited to those I don't think we do them for every single degree because there's just so many combinations but we definitely do them for all the most popular one an example being I think we just held the event for economics in December so the economics team came over and just did a presentation purely for foundation students already understanding their program already understanding the process already knowing what modules our students do so this is not as generic this is quite a tailored conversations that they're having with the students so we do that in addition to that we also bring lectures in so sometimes if there is another particular pathway a particular degree option where we might not do a to our talk with with the pizza we bring them into our lectures so I think there's a lot of that going on on the social sciences pathway especially in terms to in term two and on the female pathway well we'll have that in the economics and law part as well we also have this is a pilot so I don't brag too much about it but it's you know it sounds fantastic already we also have a mentoring program for students starting this time so I think it's starting next week and what we're trying to do is we are currently recruiting foundation alum as we call them so students who completed foundation in the last two years and right now are our loving life in year one or year two of their undergraduate degrees and we will be matching them with current foundation year students who expressed interest in this program in this kind of initiative and they will be just budding up with each other so we will try to match them based on the degree that the current student wants to do and the FY alum is currently doing so that will also give them I would say more insight and a peer to peer interaction of how it's going and what they can expect I hope that answers it have we got any other questions we have a question from Sarah I think it is in the Q&E which is about the pros and cons of London especially as an international student Jenny can I pass this one over to you so I'm actually from London I grew up in London pros and cons of London so the pros you're going to meet so many different types of people you're going to meet people from countries you've never heard of learn about their cultures it's just it's really lovely that that's one thing there's so many pros of London I love London I wanted to stay in London for a reason transports great you have TFL you have the tubes you have buses buses run till late that's another thing also like the actual city of London is beautiful you're not far from the Thames that sell us as well so just go take a walk you're not far from Oxford Street or the shops it's yeah that's definitely one thing and then a con of London the weather I right now it's so green and gloomy outside mine is okay it's okay yeah this is natural light coming in only thing is the weather but you learn to get through it yeah that's about it yeah I agree and I think that everything especially if we're taking this in the context of SOAS we're so centrally based so many fantastic things around so well A we're surrounded by universities so even though we're not a traditional campus university as you can I don't know see in American films there's so many universities around you really get that buzz you really get that feel I mean you will see people sitting on benches reading their books and getting preparing for their next class and discussing something and SOAS specifically right next to British Museum which I mean perfect and we quite a few times took our classes there and actually delivered lectures while wandering through the halls just you know there's so few places in the world where you can do that where you can actually discuss a history or heritage of a nation of some country while standing in front of it there's a whole debate I probably shouldn't be starting it here should it be there and that's also in our classes but I think you can discuss it while you're there and you understand it a bit more so the opportunities are fantastic I mean I'm not from London I live in London Sarah I would recommend it it's the place to be and coming to Albert can you discuss the application process and timeline Laura can I do you know this one I'm really sorry because I don't do I don't work in admissions so I really don't know I don't it's no problem I can speak a little bit to it and then if you have any questions afterwards you're very welcome to get in touch Albert but generally speaking we our foundation your applications have come through UCAS so you apply just like any other degree and you can find the UCAS code on the program page once you've completed your UCAS application which you might do through your school or you can do independently then generally speaking it will take admissions anywhere from about four to six weeks to review your application and to respond and that's because like's been said many times we take every element of your application into account we review it thoroughly we look at the entire profile what motivations are you highlighting in your personal statement what's your academic background and do we think that the foundation year is the right choice for you and so because it happens through UCAS it generally follows the standard UCAS timeline if you're responding to your offer making decisions based on the universities and the different programs that you've applied to so that can also be a great resource but if you have applied or you're thinking about applying in the cycle then once you've submitted that application about four to six weeks is the standard and if you're having any trouble like I said you're very very welcome to get in touch and you'll be accepting applications for September for a number of months so you've got time to apply if you like the sound of the foundation year I think what I'll do as well I'm on the chat I'm going to put my email address as well in the chat and I quite often meet usually online our students who are considering joining foundation or if you have any questions that come to your mind after today's chat feel free to email me and we can either arrange a call or I'll happily answer them so I'm going to put my email address you can find me on the website as well but you've got it just I hope I think it went to everybody we've just had one more question and then we'll probably have to wrap up the session that's sneaked in before your message in the chat but it's about is it common to come directly from school into the foundation year or even with a degree itself without a gap I mean yes I think absolutely so we have a proportion of students who took a gap here especially now with the pandemic situation you know that maybe not for everybody but for a number of students that was part of the decision making process I believe but a lot of our students I would say definitely more than half come without a gap so they come directly after their you know previous educational experiences so we have a good mix of both probably a little bit I'm not going to say more but more than usual students coming with a gap now because of the pandemic but I think that was predominantly last year and we're back to our traditional kind of set up and ratios as it was in 2019 so pre-pandemic Jenny do you have any a lot of students in your class I know yeah it's kind of like half half so you have half of them did have a gap year and then half did just come through from school it's about 50-50 yeah that's my experience as well I think I hope that helps I think we might have to start wrapping in up the session but we do have lots more happening in the open days so make sure to check your program you can come along and hear some more subject panels or if you want to hear from more SOAS students then there'll be a live chat starting at 11 Brilliant well thank you all so much and thank you Lauren thank you Jenny so much for all your help today this has been fantastic everybody thanks for joining you've got my email address so I can just feel free to reach out to me and we can schedule a call or I can answer any questions you may have or any of you wish William thank you