Should I take biochemistry??

I’m a year 13 student doing a levels Biology, Chemistry and Psychology and still have no idea what I want to do at university.
My thought was biochemistry but does anyone know if this degree is more on the biology side or chemistry side of things?? Bc right now my biology is my weakest subject and not really my favourite.
What course does anyone recommend me looking into if I’m more interested in the chemistry side of things? But still gives me a lot of choice in the future??

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I’m a year 13 student doing a levels Biology, Chemistry and Psychology and still have no idea what I want to do at university.
My thought was biochemistry but does anyone know if this degree is more on the biology side or chemistry side of things?? Bc right now my biology is my weakest subject and not really my favourite.
What course does anyone recommend me looking into if I’m more interested in the chemistry side of things? But still gives me a lot of choice in the future??

Pharmacy, pharmacology, chemistry itself, biochemistry etc

Hi there
I'm a 3rd year Chemistry student at the University of Southampton.

I hate biology

Don't do biochemistry if you don't like biology. It's biology with a few chemistry modules in a nutshell. One of my closest University friends who really enjoys cellular biology actually switched from first year chemistry to biochemistry. She does (out of 4 modules) 3 biology and 1 chemistry (integrated across general chemistry useful for biologists (ie not in as much depth as I do it)). So it's super biology heavy.

I much more enjoy the physics/maths -chemistry side of things and have been incredibly lucky to have almost avoided any biology. In fact, this is my 3rd year of study out of 4 and it's the only time I've had to understand what DNA is and something about monosaccharides

So I would highly recommend chemistry! If you want to further discuss anything about it - please feel free to ask me any questions.
You can't avoid the organic chemistry side of things but it is still very chemistry-based and is quite interesting!

Hope this helps,
Cheese

Biochemistry courses vary a bit, but usually in the UK a biochemistry degree is essentially a degree in molecular and cell biology. This necessarily requires some chemistry to support it, but the "biochemistry" pretty firmly falls on the biology side of things usually. There are however some exceptions; for example I believe the Oxford biochemistry course (ironically given it's alternate name of "molecular and cell biology") has more chemistry content than the average biochemistry degree.

If you're more interested in the chemistry side of things, look at chemistry degrees - these usually include some biological chemistry content, if you did want to maintain some link to your biological background, but will primarily be focused on chemistry of course. You might also want to consider something like materials science or bio(medical)materials, which again is more chemistry/physical sciences oriented, but can have a lot of biological applications (although that don't necessarily need much of a biology background and tend to be approached more quantitatively).

Moving further away from courses that are directly chemistry related, you could also look at courses in the earth sciences regime. There are lots of "flavours" of courses there, ranging from geology to oceanography to environmental science. Often these use aspects of chemistry (and sometimes, e.g. for palaeontological aspects of geology, or marine biological elements of oceanography, biology) to look at the science of the Earth and associated issues in a broader context or from multiple different scientific perspectives.

@CheeseIsVeg is doing single honours (I think) chemistry at Southampton and might be able to advise on how much biochemistry content there is in that course specifically!

Thank you for your help this is really much appreciated! Out of curiosity after you get you chemistry degree what are you going to go into after? if you don’t mind me asking, as taking such a broad degree like chemistry I’ve always wondered what do people go into doing after.

so am not sure but have done a summer project in analytical chemistry and will be doing nmr for my research project. am doing a placement next year in I industry so if I like that I'll do that if not I'll maybe do a PhD somewhere

chemists get up to many things! it's a v broad discipline so you can do nuclear stuff, X ray stuff, analytics, synthesis, pharmaceuticals and then all sorts else. lots go into accounting and law and business too , up to what you enjoy!!!

Ah I see thank you for your help! One last question, would you say you need a levels Maths in order to not struggle doing chemistry as a degree?

Hi there - no problem!
I did do A level maths and it definitely helped me so I didn't have too many problems. You do encounter a lot of maths and it cannot be avoided.
I would recommend it, however (on my course) we did have supplementary maths lectures and workshops for those without the A level or whom were not as confident with the maths.

This does depend on which University you should wish to choose.
Please check requirements on their websites/prospectuses for the course!
Usually the more demanding courses will require the Maths A level or it will be 'desirable'.

All the best,
Cheese

I’m a year 13 student doing a levels Biology, Chemistry and Psychology and still have no idea what I want to do at university.
My thought was biochemistry but does anyone know if this degree is more on the biology side or chemistry side of things?? Bc right now my biology is my weakest subject and not really my favourite.
What course does anyone recommend me looking into if I’m more interested in the chemistry side of things? But still gives me a lot of choice in the future??

Hello,

I would definitely suggest taking a look at Natural Sciences courses. In NatSci at Bath, you choose a major and a minor subject from Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Physics, Pharmacology and Environmental Science, as well as an optional module (another science module, maths for life sciences, education, psychology or management) - it's essentially a joint honours. You can find more info about the available combinations and what the modules entail here. Based on what you've said, an ideal combination could be Chemistry major with Biochemistry minor and potentially psychology as an optional module?

Biochemistry is basically just the chemistry of biological processes, so it is quite heavily chemistry based. Regardless, the contents of biochemistry modules is really interesting and you get to do a lot of lab work which is great! If you want to see more detail about what you'd study in biochemistry, check out the page I linked above.

NatSci courses are amazing for people in your position as they allow you to study multiple sciences to the same depth and quality as someone on a single honours degree (i.e. just biology or just chemistry), but you just don't do every module since you are taking modules from 2 sciences. For example, someone on a single honours chemistry degree will take Organic, Inorganic and Physical chemistry, whereas on NatSci you usually just choose 2 of these but you do them to the same standard as people on the single honours (i.e. same lectures, labs, exams). This is actually really nice as it means you don't have to do modules you don't want to do. The course is very interdisciplinary, which puts you above single honours students as you have a more varied understanding of the subjects.

Another benefit is that NatSci allows you to keep your options open. Since it is basically a joint honours, you could pursue a postgraduate/masters degree or career in either of those 2 sciences. The Bath course is also incredibly flexible, so at the end of your first year you can sometimes switch onto a single honours course if you decide you want to specialise in one (i.e. do single honours Biochemistry instead of biochemistry and chemistry through NatSci). You can also switch your major and minor around up to a certain point.

The interdisciplinary nature of the course, and the flexibility of it here at Bath both make NatSci an amazing course for students like yourself with a strong interest in multiple scientific field but who have not yet decided what they want to specialise or work in. You might find this thread that I started about NatSci at Bath helpful, or also this detailed breakdown on another thread.

I hope this has helped, and please let me know if you have any more questions
Jessica, a third year NatSci student

Thank you so much!! This has helped a lot and I will be sure to look into Natsci