Medicine without biology?

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Hello there :smile:

A levels are starting in a few weeks for me and many others - I chose my subjects ages ago, which are
Maths
F. Maths
Chemistry
Physics
I don't really know what I want to do for a job yet, so I just picked options that leave me open to high skill jobs (I'm hoping to get A*s in a level). I also researched and found that biology is very oversaturated, and that chemistry and physics jobs are in demand. My question is, could I do something with medicine with these a levels? I know they are physical sciences but how useful are they for doing something in medicine?

As already stated, there are some medical schools who will accept applicants without Biology at A level or AS level. Off the top of my head these are:
Aberdeen, Barts, Bristol, Dundee, Glasgow, Keele, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield & St Andrews. Cambridge and Oxford do not require it, but it is something in the region of 97% of successful applicants who offer it at Cambridge.
A few of the others only require it to AS level.

So you are limiting yourself to 11 out of 31 unis if you do not have Biology in your subjects. 5 of those would be considered pretty UKCAT heavy, 2 very PS heavy (and not having decided you even want to do medicine yet, I am guessing you have not been racking up the volunteering and work experience?). So unless you perform well in your UKCAT (670+), you are limiting yourself to Aberdeen, Dundee and Leeds. Aberdeen has 32 places for RUK students (may go up this year), Dundee about the same, with 510-750 applicants for those places in recent years, so they are very, very competitive, even by medicine standards, and tend to require higher stats than for Home (ie Scottish)/EU applicants (this effectively means a high UKCAT score and high A level predictions/GCSEs). This is a lot of eggs in one basket (UKCAT).
I would suggest doing some work experience rapidly to decide if medicine is for you, maybe sit a few UKCAT practice papers and see how you score and then decide if you need to add biology to your A levels.

Reply 21

GANFYD

Original post by mxdiscott

You do not need biology! It may be recommended but as long as you can justify in interview why you didn't take it it isn't a necessity- you need chemistry and one other science, not necessarily biology.

No, you don't need biology, but you do need to get to an interview! And without biology you are limiting the number of medical schools where this is even a possibility (see my post above). It is unlikely an interviewer will ask you about why you chose not to study a particular subject; it is unlikely they will know what you are studying unless you bring it up, they will just know you have met the academic criteria to get to interview, from there on in, it is usually blind.
The unis that do not require biology are in the minority, and you are limiting yourself to the criteria those unis use to select candidates, eg there are no GCSE heavy unis on the list, so if you have excellent GCSEs but do poorly in your UKCAT, you are in trouble. There is only 1 BMAT uni, so again, poor UKCAT result and you are stuffed. Now everybody is convinced thay are going to do well in the UKCAT, and some do, but many people do not perform as well as they are expecting, and it is certainly not as easy to predict success nor prepare for as exams you will have sat to date, so as already stated, it is unwise to limit your choices in any way in such a competitive field as medicine.

Reply 22

ahorey

afaik you only need chemistry and one other science, usually it is biology for medicine but physics or maths is acceptable too.
Is further maths counted as a A level? I thought it was one of the ones that didn't count for some universities but happy to be proven wrong :smile:

Ask yourself honestly - why would you apply to medicine? If it's because of the prestige of Dr. then I wouldn't, especially if you haven't chosen biology as although you are taught basic biology in medicine (Ie. Anatomy & physiology) it would suggest that you are more "analytical" with doing maths physics and chemistry.

If you would like medicine/enginering type combined you should look at Biomedical Engineering.
It combines medical knowledge and engineering and tbh a lot of schools forget that this degree even exists! There is lots of further potential and could do so much within this career. It was something that I looked very seriously into, however I wasn't sure I would cope with the physics as I'm more of a practical person so biology suited me better.
It sounds like you would maybe suit it better than pure medicine or pure engineering :smile:

Reply 23

GrandMedic

Original post by ahorey

Yes there are several med schools which do not count Further Maths as an A level if taken alongside Maths (which is silly because everyone who does Further Maths does Maths).

Reply 24

Cheesychips1

(I'm a medical student) my friend who hadn't done Biology had to go to remedial classes for our first term to catch up, I wouldn't say she was massively disadvantaged but obviously the classes were annoying to go to, and there was some stuff that was harder for her to learn i.e. we all knew about action potentials and she had to catch up.

I don't know why Chemistry is always compulsory, I feel like my A-level biology knowledge has been far more useful, in fact even Psychology has proved better

Medicine without biology?

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