Student blogs

We’re six weeks in and 37 students have made it this far. Yippee! I thought it might be nice to present the demographics of 1st year Health Informatics students 2020. It’ll give us a good idea of the colourful people our master’s programme is made up of. I was mostly curious to find out which part of the world everyone was from and, certainly, how many women are in this course. You can rest assured, I am very happy with the result.

NB. I was only able to survey 30 students for this blog.

Background education

When I first applied to Health Informatics at KI, I thought the majority of us would be computer science students. I felt intimidated. But in fact, a majority of us have a healthcare background. That’s not to say that those with a computer science background shouldn’t apply or that the programme is irrelevant to them. In fact, our diverse professional and educational backgrounds is what makes the discussions in this programme so interesting.
It’s exciting to see healthcare and IT students so willing to step out of their comfort zone and come together to collaborate.

How old are we?

As you can see, we have students from a range of ages. 3 of our youngest students are 22 years old! That’s really impressive! And our most experienced member is 38 years old. During our discussions, it’s great to hear the perspectives of students who are newly graduated and those with a lot of professional experience. Although, in all honesty, you can’t really tell who has the most experience. Everyone speaks with such energy and professionalism. So if you’re looking to apply to the course but are worried about your age, don’t be!

Sex

I’m always curious about the percentage of women and men who have applied to university courses and jobs. Gender equality has become an important part of Sweden’s identity. I really wanted to see the results for myself. Health Informatics at KI is almost 50/50 women and men.

Nationality

How lucky are we? KI has brought together 30 brilliant minds from around the world to study Health Informatics. We’re collaborating and comparing healthcare and computers systems with people from across the seas. I’ve found the discussions so far to be so interesting, but now I’m even more curious to learn from my peers – What opportunities do you seek in your country?

NB. We had 31 responses here because a student identified as 2 nationalities.

Languages spoken

Because of our diversity, naturally we have students speaking all kinds of tongues. Everyone wrote English as a known language and almost all of us know at least a second language. Impressively, knowing 3-4 languages is not uncommon in this course. A lot of us also either know Swedish or are learning Swedish.

As you can probably sense, I feel very privileged to be able to study at KI with such a diverse group of students. I am eager to engage with my peers over the next two years.

If you’re thinking of applying to the Health Informatics master’s programme, you won’t be disappointed by the range of cultural and professional experiences.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at helen.nguyen@stud.ki.se or https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-nguyen-539782aa/