HELP!!! How hard is studying Chemistry at Oxford??

Obviously entering any University one should always work their hardest but, I want to know if I'll be able to even have any personal time. Is it very little time to yourself or incredibly hands-on. I want to be able to visit the people I care about on a semi-regular basis, so will that be a major bone of contention if I spend a day of the week somewhere else (assuming I have nothing on that day)? Will it have an affect on my results?

Reply 1

pupil1809

2

Original post by Chubbiepanda

Obviously entering any University one should always work their hardest but, I want to know if I'll be able to even have any personal time. Is it very little time to yourself or incredibly hands-on. I want to be able to visit the people I care about on a semi-regular basis, so will that be a major bone of contention if I spend a day of the week somewhere else (assuming I have nothing on that day)? Will it have an affect on my results?

I'd like to know this as well! Are you applying for 2016 entry? If so, what college are you thinking of applying to?

Reply 2

Lucilou101

18

Original post by Chubbiepanda

Obviously entering any University one should always work their hardest but, I want to know if I'll be able to even have any personal time. Is it very little time to yourself or incredibly hands-on. I want to be able to visit the people I care about on a semi-regular basis, so will that be a major bone of contention if I spend a day of the week somewhere else (assuming I have nothing on that day)? Will it have an affect on my results?

With Chemistry you won't have any days free during the week - every day has lectures or labs. Chemistry has a lot of contact hours with lectures, labs and tutorials. But if you organise your time well then you can relax during the evenings/weekends.

Reply 3

BJack

19

Original post by Lucilou101

But if you organise your time well then you can relax during the evenings/weekends.

Reply 4

Lucilou101

18

Original post by BJack

Really that bad? Most of the Chemists I know seem to have a decent amount of free time compared to most other courses - even with all those contact hours.

Reply 5

BJack

19

Original post by Lucilou101

Really that bad? Most of the Chemists I know seem to have a decent amount of free time compared to most other courses - even with all those contact hours.

That wasn't my experience of it, and the high (by Oxford standards) drop-out rate for chemistry seems to suggest otherwise. :dontknow:

Reply 6

Lucilou101

18

Original post by BJack

That wasn't my experience of it, and the high (by Oxford standards) drop-out rate for chemistry seems to suggest otherwise. :dontknow:

I guess it depends from case to case, I dated a Chemist and for the last two terms he had lots of free-time. The rest of the Chemists I know seemed to manage reasonably well, some having a lot of spare time and others less so. One person in Univ did change course and another rusticated, but the other 6/7 seem to have managed okay while maintaining a decent personal life :smile:

Reply 7

Plagioclase

21

Original post by Lucilou101

I guess it depends from case to case, I dated a Chemist and for the last two terms he had lots of free-time. The rest of the Chemists I know seemed to manage reasonably well, some having a lot of spare time and others less so. One person in Univ did change course and another rusticated, but the other 6/7 seem to have managed okay while maintaining a decent personal life :smile:

How many people change courses, actually?

Reply 8

Lucilou101

18

Original post by Plagioclase

How many people change courses, actually?

That's a pretty hard question to answer - it varies massively from year to year and college to college. In my year at Univ, two people tried to change - one person was successful (Chemistry to Earth Sciences) and the other was unsuccessful (Classics to English). I've heard success stories at other colleges, but I'd have no idea of stats for it - a couple a year would seem average but that's just a guess really.

Reply 9

Duck Soup

Original post by Lucilou101

I guess it depends from case to case, I dated a Chemist and for the last two terms he had lots of free-time. The rest of the Chemists I know seemed to manage reasonably well, some having a lot of spare time and others less so. One person in Univ did change course and another rusticated, but the other 6/7 seem to have managed okay while maintaining a decent personal life :smile:

Worth mentioning that the guy who rusticated did so for medical reasons and not explicitly due to the course being too much, and the guy who changed course wasn't really into it that much from the start. Having said that, from what I've seen the chemists probably spend the most time working out of all the scientists - with the exception of perhaps the medics/biomed. They spend the most time in labs and have to do a bunch of pre/post lab stuff that we've never had to do (physics), and their tutors set them a relatively large amount of work. As with all of these things though it will really vary from college to college, don't let it put you off.

Reply 10

Chubbiepanda

OP

Original post by pupil1809

I'd like to know this as well! Are you applying for 2016 entry? If so, what college are you thinking of applying to?

I was thinking of applying to Worcester college

Reply 11

Chubbiepanda

OP

Original post by Lucilou101

With Chemistry you won't have any days free during the week - every day has lectures or labs. Chemistry has a lot of contact hours with lectures, labs and tutorials. But if you organise your time well then you can relax during the evenings/weekends.

Thank you for replying! Do you know anything about maths? What is life like for math students there? Along the same lines or do they generally have more spare time?

Reply 12

nexttime

22

Chemistry has a LOT of maths involved, far more than most people seem to realise, is all I would say.

And yes my experience was also that most chemists would have time to relax. Perhaps not every evening or every weekend, but plenty.
Some anecdotes: I was close friends with a few chemists - with one we would go kayaking for 3-6 hours every other weekend or so plus did rowing, another was heavily involved with the cross country and walking clubs, regularly taking weekends in the Lake district etc, another was actually our boat club captain and trained 8x per week for the first boat, as well as doing uni-level orienteering and cross country. Conversely, two of the six chemists did actually change course after the first year primarily because of the workload. Both changed to biochemistry (which is less maths-intensive, a big part of their problem) and coped fine after that.

Reply 13

Duck Soup

Original post by Chubbiepanda

Thank you for replying! Do you know anything about maths? What is life like for math students there? Along the same lines or do they generally have more spare time?

I think that to some extent with maths it is one of those subjects which if you are really astoundingly good at it you can basically just breeze through it. It's pretty rare though that people can do this.
Most of the mathematicians I know do spend a lot of time working, although it seems to really vary based on what areas of maths they enjoy the most, some hate analysis and the more pure maths stuff, some find this stuff easy and so depending on your course/what options you take the amount of time spent working will fluctuate a bit. I'd guess that they probably spend a similar amount of time to the chemists doing self study stuff, although perhaps a little less as there's less outright remembering stuff that you have to do. (Having said all this, most of the people I know doing maths are doing Maths & CompSci - the pure mathematicians are generally a little less social and spend more time working)

Reply 14

Plagioclase

21

Original post by BJack

That wasn't my experience of it, and the high (by Oxford standards) drop-out rate for chemistry seems to suggest otherwise. :dontknow:

Was memorising the periodic table as painful as it sounds?

Reply 15

BJack

19

Original post by Plagioclase

Was memorising the periodic table as painful as it sounds?

Not really. The groups and transition metal triads are pretty easy to remember. I think the hardest part is remembering the ordering of the lanthanides (and actinides to a lesser extent) because you can't match them up as easily with other elements, and you spend less time studying them than most of the other elements.

Reply 16

nexttime

22

Original post by BJack

Not really. The groups and transition metal triads are pretty easy to remember. I think the hardest part is remembering the ordering of the lanthanides (and actinides to a lesser extent) because you can't match them up as easily with other elements, and you spend less time studying them than most of the other elements.

You had to do that?! I thought it was a Merton specific thing!

I was under the impression that if Merton's stereotype was true for one subject, it was Chemistry. But if everyone had to memorise random **** like that maybe I was wrong...

Reply 17

Plagioclase

21

Original post by BJack

Not really. The groups and transition metal triads are pretty easy to remember. I think the hardest part is remembering the ordering of the lanthanides (and actinides to a lesser extent) because you can't match them up as easily with other elements, and you spend less time studying them than most of the other elements.