 Hello everybody and thank you for joining me today. I'm Kim Triton head of student recruitment at SOAS University of London. I'm going to take you through a short presentation to tell you a bit more about SOAS, about our programs, about our staff, about our facilities, but most importantly about our students and see if we might be the right fit for your students. In terms of why students might choose to study at SOAS University of London, we are located in the heart of London. We are a global top 50 for arts and humanities, we have world-class facilities, small class sizes, flexible and interdisciplinary at degrees and we have a very diverse international student and academic population. In terms of our location as I say we're located in the heart of the city in Bloomsbury and if you can see we're close to a number of different transport links but even more so we're close to a number of different historical sites, entertainment areas, academic areas and really at the heart of everything you could want in London. In terms of our world-class rankings, we are ranked as I say in the global top 50 for art and humanities, we have six subjects in the UK top 10, we are fifth in the UK for student staff ratio and we are third in the world for peace justice and strong institutions. In terms of our subject rankings we're first in London for business and management, sixth in the world for development studies, 13th in the world for anthropology, 18th in the world for politics and 19th in the UK for law. In terms of our world-class facilities, we are made up of four main buildings at SOAS. The newest of our buildings is the Paul-Webley wing and this has state-of-the-art lecture theatres, the student hub, careers and student support, well-being centre, formal and informal study spaces. We also have the SOAS library which is one of only five national research libraries in the UK. It specialises in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It has the largest collection in Europe for East Asian so that's Japanese, Korean and Chinese. It is also one of the largest for the Middle East and Central Asia within Europe. We also have the Brunei gallery which is a gallery that showcases changing regional exhibitions and also has a Japanese reef garden on top. In terms of the subject areas we teach, I've listed them here and you can see there's quite a range. We are a specialist institution in that we focus in on the social sciences and the humanities so we don't teach any of the pure sciences but we are also very interdisciplinary. So students can actually study anthropology but also take classes in media studies or in development studies or in gender studies as they go through their programme and how we do that is that each year students will have at least two elective modules that they can take in any other areas but we also allow a large amount of auditing which is in common in most universities so students can actually audit up to three additional classes per year if they would like to and that just gains more and more exposure to different areas. Each of our academic schools also hosts a range of open sessions so these are open to the public as well as to our students and to other students from other universities and these can be held in the daytime or in the evening and these can range in terms of film screenings to academic debates to networking sessions so there's a range of those that students can take part in and in terms of our academic staff they are leaders in the field their research impacts what is happening now a lot of them are practitioners in the field so they will have and will be working on various different policy boards working with various different NGOs working with various different government offices. In terms of our programmes as I say there's over 300 different singles slash joint honours degrees that they can take with us and those will range between three and four years we have over 150 different postgraduate degrees which range from one to two years foundation programmes online and distance learning and also what we call MOOCs which are massive open online courses and are free for any students or anybody to take they are online taster courses that last about four to six weeks and take up about two hours of your time each week. In terms of languages SOAS offers one of the largest language offerings in the world not just in the UK and we are a very non-traditional language university in that we do teach the modern languages but you can also learn a range of languages from around the world and this can either be the focal part of your programme and it could be your your major if you like or it could be an additional class that you add in each year and so or up to two classes each year that you add in. The students could actually study a range of different languages on their undergraduate programme. In terms of what our staff and our students say I think this is the really good comment by Dr Sean Hawthorne from our School of Philosophy Religion and Politics and she said if you're interested in the wider world different cultures and new ways of thinking come to SOAS. I'm proud that people are impressed I work here SOAS is considered a world leader it really marks you out if you've been here it's an accolade and I think that's something we really want to focus on so SOAS is a specialist in terms of the social sciences humanities but we're also a specialist in terms of our regional focuses so we focus in on the Middle East and Africa on South Asia on Southeast Asia on East Asia and in terms of all of this what we're doing is looking at different subject areas from different lenses and different perspectives but also we want to be thinking about tackling the global challenges of our time from the perspective of the most disadvantaged. In terms of our entry requirements we look at A star AA to ABB if you're looking at A levels we have an IB of 35 to 37 if you are looking to take one of our finance or management you would need to think about possibly taking an A level math we don't require the L NAT and we do recognise a range of qualifications from all around the world and you can either check these with our international managers or through our website in terms of our tuition fees we've set them out here in terms of home slash EU and international but obviously bear in mind with this year in terms of EU it would be pre-settled or settled status if not they would be paying the same fees as the international. We do have a range of scholarships to support our students and those can be found in our scholarships part of our website. In terms of student accommodation we do so have student accommodation within walking distance to the campus and this can range in size and price but some of the cheapest accommodation is some of the most affordable both in London and outside of London and this just showcases how close those accommodations are to our site. Now the main thing I want to talk about here is our diverse active and international student community because this is really what makes so us. So we have students from over 135 different countries we have 6,300 students on campus and around 4,000 distance learners. In terms of the makeup of our student body we are 54% international and EU students and 46% UK students. We also have 51% undergraduate and 49% postgraduate so you will be meeting students from all around the world if you come to us and part of that approach that we take to this interdisciplinary learning is that what we're hoping is that because we are a specialist in the social science of the humanities you could walk out of any lecture that you found particularly interesting and stop another student on the campus and they would be able to have a really good dialogue with you even if they weren't in that session themselves. And I think this is summed up very well by Gavin here who says it is not just doing a degree it's about those experiences. I'm not just learning about different things that have happened in the world and different crises going on now I'm supporting people and doing something about them. So SOAS is known as a University of Activists and what we mean by this is yes it does mean protest and we do actually support our students in taking part in peaceful protests. However it's also about building dialogue and it's also about educating people and it can be educating people from all walks of life at all ages and all stages of their lives. And it's really about talking about uncomfortable areas but thinking about it from someone else's perspective and they're not being necessarily a wrong or a right way of looking at things but really just understanding why people approach things the way they do. So we have over 200 different societies but what you will see is a number of them if you go on to our Students Union page are very much focused on this kind of social change aspect of our student community. So just to name some that we have there we have the Spoken Words Society, the Upreach Social Mobility Society and then we also have Salish SOAS so it's a bit of everything. We also have a common room shop and bar for students, live music, film screenings, cultural events, campaigning and fundraising and we're also very closely located to the University of London Student Central. In terms of London life well you know there is so much for students to explore in London and we are easy reach of everything. There are over 300 different languages spoken throughout London, a number of them you will find on our site. There are over 17,000 music performances that happen at London venues, there are over 250 different festivals, there's 170 different museums so there's really something for everybody and there are also 350,000 students in London so they're going to meet lots of students from other parts of the world and other parts of the UK and other parts of London and I think it's really summed up very well here. When they say it was a comfortable environment I could see people of all cultures, ages and backgrounds it seemed very inclusive and when I started I was right. It was more than the people though, it was a real diversity of thought there too. In terms of our alumni we have a range of alumni and what you will find is there are a lot of common themes in terms of what our alumni go on to, a lot of them go to work in government sector, in NGOs, a lot of them go to work for the UN. If you trace back a lot of the ambassadors too you'll find that they came to SOAS so I've just listed a few here in terms of our alumni and it showcases that they are over a range of different areas from the arts to international relations to music to journalism in the media and to sports and in terms of career support at SOAS we have country specific careers information and advice, we have access to jobs paid internships, volunteer opportunities through our career zone, we have in student ambassador jobs which are very flexible way of students earning money and then we operate a number of different careers fairs and workshops throughout the year and these are just some of the employers that we interact with throughout the year in different areas. Lastly we are part of the wider University of London so that's over 18 different member institutions and basically students get to share sites and facilities of all of these and be part of a larger student group. It is the largest student centre in Europe and as I say you just get to meet more and more students from around London. So in terms of when you apply to us what to expect it normally takes about four weeks to review an offer and make an offer, you will get a conditional or unconditional offer and then you would need to select your firm or your insurance. So I hope that's given you some insight into SOAS and if you have any other questions please do feel free to email me at k.tritton at soas.ac.uk. Thank you.