Further maths for chemistry degree?

I'm currently taking maths and 3 sciences. Is f maths useful/ necessary for a chem degree at a top uni? If so, which of biology and physics should I drop?

Further Maths is definitely not necessary but it would be useful. I'd say it's probably on-par or slightly more useful than Biology, but not as useful as Physics. If you do decide to do Further Maths then I'd drop Biology. However, you do need to consider which you're better at. There's no point taking Further Maths if you hate it, or if you'd do much better at Biology.

Thanks very much, I think I'll take biology as I'd probably do better in that and I think it's a little bit more enjoyable.

It's also useful to consider what you want to do in the long run - whether you want to focus on physical chemistry or go more of the biological route. Most unis will also do maths courses in the first year to get everyone up to the same level, basically Maths A level shout be enough for you in a Chemistry degree. I've just finished first year chem at Lancaster, I did AS Further Maths and it didn't really help much, just means I know a bit more than the others for next year but that's pretty much it.
Hope that helps and good luck!

I'm currently taking maths and 3 sciences. Is f maths useful/ necessary for a chem degree at a top uni? If so, which of biology and physics should I drop?

I would suggest further research. Do you have an idea of where you might go for your degree? See if you can make contact with someone on the course and get their opinion.

I can speak for my course at Oxford. Further maths, despite not being a grade requirement, is almost a must have. I didn't have it and so found the 1st year maths course very challenging. You basically end up doing further maths in the 1st year but with very little teaching compared to what you get at school. It's very much a case of show you the basics and assume you can workout the rest. That's fine if you're naturally gifted at maths but alas I am not. I regret not having done FM at least to AS.

don't people get surprised with the level of maths they have to do at uni?

What do you mean?

i'm saying it's good to do some maths, i presume if you are gonna do chemistry, there might be some calculations in there which could be diffucult plus it'll look good for unis i'd say

I am also considering biology/ medicine so I don't think further maths would be vital ( except possibly for chem at oxford) and perhaps may be a problem for medicine. What percentage of people on your course have further maths?

Not keen on doing 5? I would not usually suggest it, but with those particular subjects there is a decent amount of overlap and given that you have two quite contrasting interests (chem and medicine) its a possibility. Only if you feel you can deal with it though - can't be stressed enough.

Another possibility if you want to keep both medicine and chem open is to not do physics. You should check uni websites but generally speaking I think its chem and maths that are needed for a chem degree - physics less so. Whereas for either medicine or biology have biology is pretty important (though medicine can be done without biology too - just restricts your choices and chances of getting in).

It's pretty confusing . I don't think I want to do five as I don't want to stretch myself too thinly. Also, I heard only the pure modules of further maths are important for a chemistry degree. I'm also not sure I would enjoy the mechanics or statistics modules in maths (Pure maths is my favorite) so having to do M2,M3,S2,S3 just to cover two important pure modules may not be worth it.

It's not worth doing further maths. There's a couple of bits that are useful, but primarily you'll get taught them, and biology is a better option most likely.

If you want to do organic chemistry, then you'll probably end up doing some biochemistry or biology related stuff anyway, the grounding is very useful. It also meant I got a free 10 credits to use on whatever I liked during first year, because I didn't have to do the biology course.

If you're really into the idea of physical chemistry as a specialism, and theoretical modelling etc. then that's the only situation i'd consider further maths being useful for. You probably won't need most of it for the first two years though so eh, not really worth doing a whole a-level based on it.

I've just finished third year. Did maths, chem, and biol to A2 [Spanish as AS]. Physics will be really useful for you, way more than further maths at this point. The only other thing further maths may allow you to do is a more advanced maths module (basically you join the engineers for a while, at my place) in your first year, when everyone else is doing a-level recap or learning a-level maths because they didn't do it.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I just wanted to say though: chemistry courses are not the same everywhere. The chemists where I was were doing mathematics that was way beyond further maths in their first term - matrices as part of quantum mechanics and high order differential equations for rates of reaction stuff. Even given that though, Oxford appear to rank biology, physics and further maths equally.

I suspect your experience is more the 'norm' than what I witnessed though