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Why is A level chemistry more important than biology for med school?

Most med schools seem to be more interested in your A level chemistry grades than biology.
I’d have thought that biology would have a lot more in common with medicine than what chemistry does. A lot of topics in chemistry are more appropriate to chemical engineering than they are to medicine.
Original post by Ambitious1999
Most med schools seem to be more interested in your A level chemistry grades than biology.
I’d have thought that biology would have a lot more in common with medicine than what chemistry does. A lot of topics in chemistry are more appropriate to chemical engineering than they are to medicine.


Because Biology is applied Chemistry :tongue:

Jokes aside, I do think it's because chemistry as a physical science is a better foundation than biology is... although biology may seem more directly pertinent to medicine, chemistry is more logic based in many cases and explains some of the basic tenants of biology. Some human physical processes also require knowledge of chemistry for a person to understand how they function. Medical schools also don't really teach chemistry in preclinical and they do teach human physiology (and other biomedical related topics)

Skills associated with learning chemistry plus foundation knowledge is my best guess.

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Original post by Ambitious1999
Most med schools seem to be more interested in your A level chemistry grades than biology.
I’d have thought that biology would have a lot more in common with medicine than what chemistry does. A lot of topics in chemistry are more appropriate to chemical engineering than they are to medicine.


This question comes up quite frequently on here and I can understand why it continues to puzzle applicants year after year. I wrote this post a few months back which might be of interest:

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=75422834&postcount=4
Yeah, I don't really understand that myself. May be just "tradition" at this point.

I've heard it suggested that it's because Chemistry is "harder" than biology, but I'm not sure that really stands up to logical scrutiny.
In the absence of evidence I'd be inclined to agree that it is more useful. In terms of having that fundamental understanding of science before being taught the actual medicine, i do think chemistry is the most useful science. If you aren't familiar with what e.g. ions are, or hydrophobia/hydrophillia, its hard to then build a good underlying understanding of physiology, and without that you may as well put everyone on a 2 year PA course and save a load of money.
Original post by Democracy
This question comes up quite frequently on here and I can understand why it continues to puzzle applicants year after year. I wrote this post a few months back which might be of interest:

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=75422834&postcount=4


Very good explanation in your link, thanks.
Original post by nexttime
In the absence of evidence I'd be inclined to agree that it is more useful. In terms of having that fundamental understanding of science before being taught the actual medicine, i do think chemistry is the most useful science. If you aren't familiar with what e.g. ions are, or hydrophobia/hydrophillia, its hard to then build a good underlying understanding of physiology, and without that you may as well put everyone on a 2 year PA course and save a load of money.


That’s a good valid point. I’ve read a few good degree standard human physiology books in the college library and to be honest the chemistry in them is not much more demanding than GCSE chemistry. I guess however when you get to studying anaesthesiology during the medical degree and need to understand blood gas physiology then an understanding of raolts law and equilibrium Kc etc is needed.
The 2 kind of work hand in hand. I think chemistry is the basis of things and how it all interacts, which in turn helps understand biology a bit more. Plus, I think learning about chemistry is a lot more effective than plants and taxonomy, if it's medicine you want to go into.
Plus, I found chemistry to be a lot more work than biology.

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