Support for Success

Before your arrival at UMONS, the University will offer you preparatory courses in biology, mathematics, chemistry and physics, all of which form the foundation of the scientific reasoning used within biomedical studies (for more information, go to www.umons.ac.be/courspreparatoires). These courses can allow you to boost your level in the subject matter and help with the transition from compulsory to higher education.

The main objective is to give students the chance to have the necessary basics before starting university and to evaluate their own level of knowledge against what is necessary to cope with in the first year of the Bachelor’s. While these preparatory courses are essentially designed to help future students of medicine, they can also be taken by students of other disciplines at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy who feel that their skills in these areas are not adequate as a result of the courses they followed in secondary school.

At the end of August, the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy also organises activities to ‘integrate’ the skills acquired in secondary school. Once more, these teaching activities are organised during the school holidays and are for all future students. The main goal is to prepare the students for tests, particularly the admissions exam for studying medicine (see below).

During your studies at UMONS, a syllabus (course booklet) is made for each module in the first block (first year of studies) of the Bachelor’s degree. These books dedicated to the material to be taught can be consulted or bought.

The majority of the subjects are supported by an online platform, Moodle, which has lecture notes, a forum and online exercises, and offers another means of interacting with the teachers. During the first year of study, additional revision courses are organised, and guidance is provided, by selected teachers.

Personal assessments on skills acquisition are carried out through written tests, which are corrected in supervised activities.

Other activities are held throughout the year according to the study programme followed:

• Two-hour mathematics exercise sessions to help with the transition between secondary and university education
• Question and answer sessions, nearer to the examination period, which are organised by the course leaders.