How is chemistry like at Uni?

Really mathematical, I'm told. All about entropy. Unless you love chemistry and maths and are a geek I would chose something a bit more vocational and/or lighter..

A good amount of contact hours - expect to be out at university everyday. Probably in the region of 20 - 25 hours depending on your university/modules.

Labs are long days, but I found they went quite quickly. The preparation and write-ups are an effort, although very useful in most cases. The actual practical stuff I didn't like very much in first year - very out of my comfort zone. Soon as I started in second year though I loved it, because I was understanding what I was doing more, and why I was doing it. It's one a week so you really need to keep on top of it. They're assessed though so it can be quite easy to suddenly get stressed when it all goes wrong, but actually it's not so bad.

Inorganic/Physical/Organic - you'll like what you like, and hate what you hate I suppose. I loathe phys chem personally so that's a bit of a pain. There's plenty of quite cool or interesting bits in everything.

Weekly tutorial or workshop assignments are good for discussing and basically is just a bit of practice after a course of lectures to see what you've taken from it. They helped a lot personally, i'd recommend attending them.

You'll have time to do things on the weekend and some evenings, but don't expect to be going out on bar crawls in the week all the time. I had 9 am lectures everyday during first year.

Honestly, I highly doubt it's the right field for you.

I mean imagine the consequences of a bunsen burner, conical flask filled with water and an egg. I'm just looking out for your safety here Mr Egg.

Thank you. Perfect response.
Why did you like the practical in your first year? What kind Of things did you do?

So the courses are typically designed to cover a range of skills.

Inorganic
First Year - I think we did a titration the first week (familiarity! but it's the only one we've ever done), can't remember much else...
Second Year - Separation of enantiomeric complexes, making silly putty and another polymeric compound, synthesis and acetylation of ferrocene, something with chromium...

Physical
First Year - we did a study to estimate the volume (?) of a football using the pressure/weight relationships, something to do with popcorn...
Second Year - kinetic studies, elastomers and measuring young's modulus/material properties, stability constant of an Fe(III) complex, flame emission spectoscopy, solution calorimetry

Organic
First Year - typically experiments with key techniques - reflux, TLC, recrystallisation, rovap, distillation
Second Year - grignard experiments (with column chromatography), we extracted limonene from orange/lemon zest, the wittig reaction, oxidation/reduction of aldehydes/ketones

Inorganic and organic labs are similar in some ways, and similar skills are used (so the ferrocene experiment also used a column to separate, for instance). Phys lab experiments are usually kind of...boring, and really it's all about the data you collect. You'll run some analysis on your compounds as well so in second year we had to run FTIR/NMR on pretty much everything, used GC a couple of times, UV-VIS

Some of the lab theory will tie into the lecture courses as well - but depending on your rotation you may not have covered the lecture material when you do the labs etc. so it's not always so straight forward, but the lab helpers were very good and they do explain things if they know it hasn't been covered yet.

First year had some demonstration bits before you do the experiment so 'this is how you set up x' or 'this is what you're aiming for' with a piece of apparatus left at the front set up. Second year you're expected to go in and be able to do it yourself without needing that (if it's a skill covered before - new things were occasionally still added in as necessary).

Thank you so much for the detailed information! It seems pretty interesting. I just wanted to know what I'll really be getting myself into.

Overall which one did you enjoy most our of inorganic, organic and physical - no just the lab work but lectures.

How are the exams like?

Not sure really between inorganic/organic. When i'm in the mindset I love organic - it's just problem solving through and through, and very engaging. It's so nice that it can encompass everything you've learned depending what's in the molecule or what reaction you're trying to do. There's some beauty in possibility as well because there's never only one way. If you're designing a synthesis then you can take many routes. Even if you're considering a given reaction there are often side reactions you need to control or consider in order to get the most out of it.

Inorganic annoyed me in some places. It's more segmented, so two topic areas within aren't necessarily going to cross over at all. I found it was all a lot of information at times, because I suppose unless you know how all of these elements behave then you're not going to be able to do much. With organic you really only need to know about carbon/oxygen/nitrogen/hydrogen and occasionally things like sulphur and specific groups (but you can work out how some groups react based on what they're composed of). Some areas of inorganic I really liked though - particularly looking at the coordination complexes d block/f block way. We did group theory in second year, which was quite fun.

I'm in the middle of choosing my research project for next year, and really I wish I could say which I enjoyed the most because it would make life easier right now

Exams are okay, but i've always been fine with exams. Inorganic is where I feel likely to get caught out by not having rote learned something. Organic exams are good, because you just work things through but when you start to doubt yourself you can veer off track a bit. A good diagram can do wonders. I think most of my exams were 2.5 hours.

Wow thanks again. Okay last question

How much of the course involves maths, I like maths?

You don't understand how much this is helping me.

It's no problem. Only procrastinating from work I don't want to do it's good to know what you're getting yourself in to.

I did a maths module during first year. My university ran three maths courses - a full year if you didn't do A-level, one semester for a decent A-level (covered some bits like matrices that aren't covered at a-level, with some refreshers on integration, sequences and others), or advanced maths if you did further maths/loved maths. The latter is the same as what the engineers were made to do so it was quite heavy. After that, everything is chemistry rather than pure maths, but physical chemistry is very mathematical. There's plenty of stuff to chew through on the maths side, if you fancy it. Inorganic and organic don't really contain anything further than very basic things (mole calculations, simple formulas).

It's no problem. Only procrastinating from work I don't want to do it's good to know what you're getting yourself in to.

I did a maths module during first year. My university ran three maths courses - a full year if you didn't do A-level, one semester for a decent A-level (covered some bits like matrices that aren't covered at a-level, with some refreshers on integration, sequences and others), or advanced maths if you did further maths/loved maths. The latter is the same as what the engineers were made to do so it was quite heavy. After that, everything is chemistry rather than pure maths, but physical chemistry is very mathematical. There's plenty of stuff to chew through on the maths side, if you fancy it. Inorganic and organic don't really contain anything further than very basic things (mole calculations, simple formulas).

It looks like its pretty heavy on maths at the beginning. What are the options for your research project if you don't mind me asking? and what are you gearing towards career-wise?

I think you need to be comfortable with maths, but you can sort of avoid the worst of it if you want to [with phys chem]. Whether it's just rote learning a couple of equations/how to do something or accepting something as true, and not caring about the derivation. For me, it's not the maths itself which is the issue but more the "why on earth have they suddenly decided to integrate that".

I'm currently working full time, making polyurethane. I've quite enjoyed it - making it, materials testing, analytical work. It's sort of satisfying to have a piece of plastic (or foam) in your hands, compared to the 0.5 g of white powder that you're not even sure is what you hoped it was. Seeing the end product is really very cool, personally.

There's about ~30 research projects I have a list of. A good handful of theoretical ones (quantum modelling and things like that - very mathsy) - i'll probably avoid all of these there is a computational one (so using computational models to try and predict binding of molecules, something that could be quite powerful in the pharmaceutical industry as it advances). There's a bunch of biological ones - mostly organic, some biopolymers looking at drug delivery encapsulation. Inorganics to do with crystals, macrocycles...

I'm not entirely sure yet really. I think the first one i've ear-marked as a choice falls under colloid science. Basically, polymer science way - things like surfactants. It's the sort of thing that will lead to people like P&G, Unilever, Lubrizol etc. who use them for various things (cosmetics, fuel additives).

When I first started I quite fancied the medicinal chemistry route - and I could well of ended up with GSK this year and things could be quite different. I liked organic, but as i've not been doing much of it while i'm here on placement then it seems quite daunting to jump back into it. I think i'll probably seek out something more on the materials side of things, but I suppose in the end i'll go with whoever gives me a job I think I stand a good chance with analytical work as well, but i'm not sure if i'll find that quite boring quite quickly as it seems very routine.

Hey I am interested in chemistry as a degree as well. I was wandering if you have to be really smart to do it because it does seem like quite a tough degree; is it possible to do well in it if your not naturally good at chemistry?
Also, do you think the module content and difficulty varies as you change unis?
Thanks

You see my avatar? That's me in the pic. Do I seem like a normal egg to you? I invented the metallic coating that on me write now but I would like to extend my knowledge further and find other ways I protect eggs like me.

Don't worry about me. I won't die easily. What you should worry about is evil humans eating us.
I'd like to save my brothers and sisters thanks.
Egg.

Is that a Dalek / Egg hybrid in your picture? In which case you've got to study Chemistry in Cardiff, home of the Daleks

No, but seriously, check out whether you can attend an open day, I think Cardiff got one coming up in July.