Natural Sciences 2015 Entry Applicants

Oh that's good to hear!! I only got a reply from Nottingham, a conditional offer A*AA. The rest I'm still waiting on. It's so exciting yet scary waiting for a reply. I think Bath cause they have a year in industry but I'm still not sure!

What courses have you applied to?

Congrats with nottingham!! I was almost gonna apply there but I prefer the exeter course!
When'd you send your ucas off?
I applied tooooo bath cambridge durham exeter and leeds. Have a*aa offers for all but cambridge, which I hear back from in about 2 weeks!!!


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Does anyone have an offer from Durham yet?

I got one around a week and a half ago

ooh well done! out of interest, how long ago did you submit your subject choices?

Submitted them along with my application on 7th October!
Where else did you apply to?

fair enough! I didn't find out about it until they emailed me in november so I replied straight away and then got the exact same email again last week because somehow it didn't work the first time
oxford, sheffield, exeter and durham twice

Ugh that's really annoying haha. Mine aren't even accurate anymore like I chose earth sciences as one of my subjects and no way do I wanna do that anymore :')
Ooh that isn't natsci everywhere, is it? I've applied to Exeter for NatSci ) Ooh you hear bacK from Oxford on Tuesday

I'm starting sixth form in September so I've got loads of time to worry about this stuff but I know I want to do PhysNatSci and wanted to know if there's anything you can recommend (extracurricular-wise) to help with uni applications and that sort of thing? I figure the sooner I can do all that the better


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Finally a Natural Sciences thread! I have had all the offers now and I'm firming Queens College Cambridge and having UEA as my insurance. Anyone else putting either of those two down?

I'm potentially a 2016 applicant but I'm pretty indecisive about what I should do. I've had a look at the options so far but it's very difficult to decide what to do. As an AS student I haven't had a full idea of my courses yet which doesn't really help. However my main areas of interest are genetics, evolution, quantum physics and astrophysics. I've started a bit of further reading with a brief history of time and the ancestor's tale.

The thing I'm wondering is whether mixing up your options gives you worse chances later on. For example if I decided to do evolution and behaviour, materials science and physics, would that give me a worse chance in those fields later down the line than someone who specialised more for their science. If a person mixes physics with biology will they have worse prospects later on than someone who did pure biology?

So I really don't know which choices to pick but it's probably a mixture of: the biological courses, physics, chemistry, materials.

I would focus on getting in first, and that really means working on maths, extended problem solving questions, and doing some consolidation and extra reading.

In your situation, you would likely apply as a Physical NatSci. To answer your question; in first year - no, you wouldn't have worse prospects later on really. Doing lots of biology options is an advantage because your courses will compliment each other and you will see some overlap. Similarly, for physics the *only* requirement for 2nd and 3rd year is to do 1st year physics and 1st year maths.

However, realise that the course is not as flexible as you think. You cannot, for example, realistically do IA maths, Chemistry, Physics, Materials, and biology course(s). I did 5 subjects in first year and that was a mistake.

Also, for later years you pretty much have to specialise or at least cut this down to 2 options. So you could potentially do Physics A, Physics B, Materials. Or perhaps 2 biology courses + Chemistry B. This is then further compounded by 3rd year, when you choose a single subject. There is also an option to stay general, but this is basically a cop-out which involves doing half of 2nd year again.


I'm also going to point out that you will likely find the biology modules tedious and frustrating. Evolution and behaviour, as reading, is interesting. But learning thousands of different species, examples, exceptions and then writing a lot of essays on that will take its toll. My experience with this is that something like 30% of the course is new and interesting, but then gets tedious when you are made to learn it inside out. About 40% of the course builds from previous knowledge in an interesting direction, and this becomes more tedious faster. And roughly 30% of the course is just boring anyway.

If you have long-term aspirations as a geneticist or biologist, then it's probably a better idea to focus on chemistry and/or biochemistry in your degree, and then specialize and take a different route later on. Similarly, if you want to eventually specialise in chemistry/ Materials Science then it might actually be a better idea to just do a physics degree as an undergrad due to the skills, practice and knowledge you will gain. And if you are really serious about becoming a quantum physicist then you're better off just applying for a pure maths degree.

You can do 5 subjects?!

Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Cells and Materials for example?

Although it's more the narrowing in second year I'd struggle with, which is why I'm thinking just switching to ChemEng so I can do maths/physics ,bit of chem (even a focus on bio tech) along with the language option

Officially, on the system you do 4.
But it wasn't particularly hard to force my way into supervisions and practicals. And, of course, any student can attend any lecture. The problem was that I was juggling too many ECs as well, and then once I started falling behind on work, suddenly I was very far behind. I was so far behind that I missed a lot of Easter term work, which is probably the reason I missed a first. You'd think that I would have learned from this, but the exact same situation happened again this year (trying to do too much), except this year I then did significantly worse in my exams because it became actually impossible to catch up properly.

2nd year chemistry still has a lot of maths. Chemistry A should really be re-named "physics for chemists" or something. It covers quantum, mathematical symmetry, huckel methods, statistical thermodynamics and solid state physics.

A (likely) demanding, yet rewarding, set of options for 2nd year could also be double Physics + chemistry B. This would allow 3rd year physics or chemistry. But you would be doing about 3.5 subjects because of the forced supplementary maths course for physics.

I don't know anything about ChemEng. I only know people who are doing it, and say it's good.

What ECs did you do if you don't mind me asking?

Hmmmm... I would also want to do the neuro and pharmacology so was thinking those 2 and Chemistry B. But I'm not sure if that would be a decent combination

Hesitation with ChemEng is not a lot of the Chemistry theory, just the scaling up and such