Best Scottish University for Life Sciences.

Hello!
Just wondering, if I wanted to study an undergraduate degree in say Life Sciences/Biological Science/Biomedical Science which uni in Scotland would be the best to do it at.
Thanks in advance!

I don't think Edinburgh and St Andrews offer Biomedical Sciences at undergraduate. Also what are the advantages of doing a course like Biomedical Sciences compared to a more specialised course like Pharmacology or something like that? Thanks anyway

Wow, thank you!!! I didn't know about the Medical Science course at Edinburgh. It seems interesting. Do you know which course would be best for a career in a pharmaceutical company or developing drugs? I was thinking maybe one of Biomedical Science or Pharmacology. Are you applying to a biomedical science course? Sorry about bombarding you with questions...

Interesting how once again only the famous unis are mentioned: Edinburgh, Sandrews etc.

Dundee is consistently ranked as one of Europe's (and even the world's) best universities in Life Sciences, well ahead of the more famous universities such as Edinburgh and Sandrews. According to Thompson Scientific the School of Life Sciences has the highest research impact in molecular biology, genetics, biology and biochemistry of all UK universities and on average more citations per paper than any other European university except for Göttingen (including Oxbridge and the likes), largely due to the contribution of the College of Life Sciences.

And there is a reason we have the second most cited biologist in the world

Dundee hits way above its weight for its overall uni reputation, but Edinburgh is still better. Edinburgh was rated 1st in the UK in the RAE for hospital based research and is pretty famous for its Queen's Medical Research Institute. It also has 6 MRC (Including the Stem Cell center) research centers and the BHF's Cardiovascular Institute. Not only that funding is pouring into the Edinburgh's BioQuarter. I visited recently and there is constantly building going on. The Royal Hospital for Sick Children is moving there as is the Neuroscience research institute in the near future. They also have a number of startups at the location.

If it were up to me it would be Edinburgh then Dundee and then Glasgow, St Andrews and Aberdeen.

Dundee has been voted one of the ten best places to work for scientists in a global survey, scores well above Edinburgh in the Leiden Ranking - which only measures research impact through citations, not income or other crap - for Biomedical and Health sciences (37th globally, Edinburgh is 53rd), has its medical school in one of the largest university hospitals in Europe (Ninewells), houses the Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression and is just about to inaugurate a new research centre for translational research, is the first university in the UK to use the advanced Thiel embalming method, has the UK's most acclaimed human anthropologist ... I could go on

Aaand I will: The College of Life Sciences won the 'Greatest Impact' Award by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council in 2011, research funding for the whole university increased drastically in 2013, also thanks to a whopping £24m grant for Life Sciences from the Medical Research Council to support some protein research unit over the next five years.

Call it a draw?

... but Ninewells may be the largest single hospital, Edinburgh does have both the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Western General and a children's hospital Royal Hospital for Sick Children.

We do have Adrian Bird, who may be up for a Nobel Prize.

... but you have to remember that Edinburgh still was ranked in the world top 25 for Life Sciences and top 30 for Medical Sciences this year in THE and QS.

I don't really trust the Leiden Ranking after it ranked the University of California, Santa Barbara, widely know as one of the best party schools in the US, 2nd in the WORLD.

Fine, both universities have plenty of space for medical teaching and research.



We have the second most cited biologist on the planet, as I mentioned, and we also have the youngest mathematical biologist on the planet who also has a claim to be the youngest person ever to have presented a scientific paper at an international conference. And I didn't know that 'may be up for' is something relevant. It's like advertising a book with 'may win the Man Booker Price some time'.



This is a pretty ridiculous statement, as in fact it's the other way around. Leiden is trustworthy, the others aren't. QS significantly factors in reputation, a highly subjective concept. What exactly does employer and academic reputation say about a university? Many major employers which are interviewed by QS either do not keep track of which graduate from which university performs better than someone else, and the ones which can really make statements are the ones who prefer to higher from certain universities (usually 'top ranked') anyway, in this case there is so much wrong with it from the psychological side, I will just throw in stuff like availability bias, dissonances etc. This cannot possibly be a serious factor in uni rankings! It only helps students to choose a university in regard to their chances to be hired by certain employers later.

Leiden, on the other hand, only factors in empirical (i.e. measurable and observable) data. It is all about citations and their impact which, in the world of academia, is the currency of research. In this aspect Dundee fares significantly better for Life Sciences than Edinburgh is, meaning it objectively produces better research. If you look at the mean citation score (i.e. how often on average a paper is cited), for Biological and Health Sciences Dundee ranks 20th in the world, only behind Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.

If you only want your conception of universities' standing confirmed (known as confirmation bias), look at reputation rankings and ignore other data. Disregarding the Leiden Ranking simply because it rates a university highly which you perceive as a party uni is, ahem ... not really empirical, is it?

Dude you just need to calm down and not get so excited over all of this. I honestly don't care that much. If you want me to say Dundee is the same as Edinburgh i'll say it, like that will make much of a difference. Lets just agree that we both hope that our degrees take us to where we want to go in life