Biology degree

Hello! I was wondering if anyone studies Biology/Biochemistry/Biomedical sciences (Any life sciences really)! Please I am in urgency lol as I ma applying through clearing!

Is Degree level Biology etc.. similar to Alevel Biology regarding the style of learning. What I mean by this is, is it just a bunch of memorising and making sure you have SPECIFIC KEYWORDS in exams as this is something I really did not like about A-level Biology, how picky the examiners were and just regurgitating the textbook, not much logical thinking just memory. Is it the same at degree level?

Reply 1

University of Sheffield Students

Official Rep

Original post by Possumm8

Hey,
In my masters degree I taught some of the Biomedicine course at The University of Sheffield and spoke to some of the teaching staff, so I hopefully have a fairly good idea of how it works.
There is a combination of ways in which they test you at Uni, but there is much less of an emphasis on memorisation and more on applying information and using it in a way that people would do in real life situations.
For example, some of the exams are open book - as in work you would have access to notes - but you must use what you know to work out a complex problem. Some modules such as anatomy require more memorisation, although many of the questions are problem solving based, there is just an initial level of knowledge you need to answer these. Lots of the exams are multiple choice questions, so you do not have to remember specific words, you just have to work out the best answer from the options and your knowledge. Other assessments are essays, lab reports etc, which do not require any memorisation. From my experience it is very different to A level biology. It may be worth talking to some more students who are studying these subjects currently, Sheffield has a chat platform that you can do that on: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/study/chat . many other unis will probably have a similar thing too!
Evie (MSc Anatomy with Education student at UoS)