Any experience of The Brilliant Club Scholars Programme

[NaffName]

Just wondering if anyone has DC who have taken part in the Scholars Programme run by The Brilliant Club and what their experience of it was? Did your DC enjoy it? Was the work interesting? My DC has been offered the chance to do it and has said yes, I’m just curious about other people’s experiences.

For those who don’t know, it’s a scheme aimed at giving kids exposure to higher education. They take classes with Ph.D students, have to submit work that is graded and get to visit universities. It’s particularly aimed at encouraging those who might not otherwise consider higher education, but not restricted to just those kids.

My ds did Brilliant Club for History and did a really interesting dissertation type piece on Napoleon, working at the level required of first year at uni. He is now doing MFL at uni but it really helped with his History A Level.

Friends' sons at a different school did Chemistry and one is now at uni in the States doing Chemistry, the other is doing Computer Science. It seems to work well to stretch the really able kids and to try and level up university access within state schools.

My DD did it for DT. It was a bit rubbish if I'm honest. The theme was really interesting, about the use of 3D technology in medicine, but it was really difficult and the PhD student didn't really know how to teach the content. She assumed all the kids would just get it. For context, it was a Y9 class doing sixth form level work.
She has friends who did it in science and maths and loved it, it seemed much better. I think it probably depends on the tutor you get but it is a brilliant idea.

Dd did it. She's autistic and struggled a bit with the write up at the end but generally she enjoyed it. It was during covid restrictions and there were technical issues.

Thanks all, good to have some feedback, and mostly positive. I imagine a lot does come down to how good the individual tutor is. Fingers crossed for a good one!

I think that's absolutely right - it's only as good an experience as the PHD student doing the club.