Come for one Wednesday.Decide after that.
Train alongside like-minded students, develop leadership skills, take on challenges overseas, and get paid.
Open nights this term.
Register your interest below to save your place. You still sign nothing to visit — turn up, meet the year group, watch a lesson, go home and think about it. Pizza and transport are sorted for the night.
- Free pizza & transport sorted
- You sign nothing to visit
- No commitment to come back
More than lectures. More than labs.
Paid, from day one
You're paid from your very first training weekend. There's no waiting period.
ILM Level 5
A real, internationally recognised leadership qualification, earned alongside your degree.
Adventure, at home & overseas
Ski, sail, dive and parachute as standard, plus a small number of places on exchange with the Chilean Army each year.
The time commitment.
Training in term time, most weeks.
Five weekends across the year. See the training year below.
Training stands down when your degree needs you most.
Annual camp. The one everyone still talks about.
Each weekend teaches a specific skill.
Leadership is much easier to learn when you're busy concentrating on something else. The year, mapped out term by term.
Arrive knowing nobody.
Leave with a section. You'll know the standard expected of you and roughly where the rest of the year is heading.
Two days, no phone signal.
A map, a compass, and no one to make the decision for you. You get there on your own judgement.
An SA80, and a test you have to pass.
Safe operation of the rifle and the weapon handling test. Repeat the drills until they're dull — dull is what keeps everyone safe.
Three days in the field.
Patrolling, camouflage, fire and manoeuvre. The first night is colder than most people expect. Get through it, and your idea of what counts as uncomfortable moves a long way.
A competition. By now you're good at this.
A section competition pulling together everything from the first four weekends. You plan it, give the orders, and run it.
Two weeks people still talk about years later.
Camp starts in barracks, revising everything from the five weekends, then moves into the field and stays there.
A society like no other.
Alpine terrain, après-ski, a week where nothing matters more than being able to stop.
Open water and watches through the night. Nobody opts out at 3am.
Qualifications you'd pay a great deal for anywhere else.
Exactly as advertised.
Soaked through and freezing at 4am, doing something hard because it's worth it.
A small number of places each year to train with the Chilean Army. You come back with strong opinions about how much we over-brief everything.
Once a year the university OTCs play each other at everything. Taken far more seriously than the standard of sport strictly justifies.
Officers and cadets, seniors and freshers, all at the same table. Full mess dress or black tie, and someone always gets the etiquette wrong.
People meet here, deploy together on exercise, and keep going long after graduation.
Led by people who've been there.
The JUOs running your weekends aren't staff. They're students at this university, two years ahead of you, who did the same training year and came back to run it. The same person correcting your section attack can tell you which lecturer to avoid.
“Nobody knows anyone on the Friday. That changes quickly.”
- What a JUO is
- An officer cadet from a previous year, picked to come back in a leadership role. They've done every weekend you're doing.
- Why it works
- They remember exactly what it felt like to learn this, which makes them much better at teaching it.
- Where you could be
- Most JUOs didn't plan on it. They enjoyed the year and stayed.
Gallery.
The things that might be stopping you.
Will it clash with my degree?
Does joining mean I'm committing to the military?
Will I fit in without my old cadet mates?
Is it worth doing if I'm already in second year?
Am I even eligible?
I'm on a clinical placement — can it work around my rota?
Most people join without knowing whether it's for them.
So don't wait until you're sure. Register your interest and come to an open night — you sign nothing to visit.