Psychology or Biomedical Sciences?

I am really split between pursuing either biomed or psychology for undergrad. I enjoyed psychology A-Level but want to keep options open... any advice or guidance? TIA

Reply 1

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by User_F1

I am really split between pursuing either biomed or psychology for undergrad. I enjoyed psychology A-Level but want to keep options open... any advice or guidance? TIA

If you want to go into biomed, then you need an appropriate degree or at least an IBMS accreditation.
If you want to go into psychology, then you would need a BPS accredited degree.

Both lines of work are incredibly competitive. Both degrees would allow you to go into anything that accept an undergrad in any subject (roughly 600/800 careers).

Personally, I recommend doing the biomed degree because you then can pivot onto doing any other life science/healthcare degree as well as doing a BPS accredited postgrad conversion in psychology. On the other hand, if you did an undergrad in psychology, you would have a very hard time getting into biomed without doing a second undergrad.

Reply 2

Lancaster Student Ambassador

Official Rep

Original post by User_F1

I am really split between pursuing either biomed or psychology for undergrad. I enjoyed psychology A-Level but want to keep options open... any advice or guidance? TIA

Hi! It really depends what you want to do in the future. Psychology as a degree has very wide career prospects as it teaches a lot of transferrable skills - it would allow you access to careers such as therapy, research, management, HR, clinical, occupational, advertising, education, and much more! Biomed, on the other hand is slightly more of a specific degree with a more specific aim of getting you into science. That being said, you could do biomed and still have the option of getting into psychology later with an MSc conversion course which would give you an advantage on any bio-psych related jobs or postgraduate courses you were interested in.

Good luck making the choice! I would recommend choosing the degree that you think you would enjoy the most and be the most interested in.

-Kat (2nd year psychology student at Lancaster University)