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What is a good UK Chemistry Olympiad score for UCAS?

I'm in year 12 taking Bio, Chem, Maths and Eng Lit and I'm potentially looking at Chemistry or Natsci at uni. I'm wondering what kind of UK Chem Olympiad score would be a help to my application, because I know they say that particularly for top unis it isn't worth putting some UKMT maths challenge scores on your application for maths courses because a lower score might take away from your overall application. Thanks for any help!
(edited 1 month ago)
Original post by Camer0nR
I'm in year 12 taking Bio, Chem, Maths and Eng Lit and I'm potentially looking at Chemistry or Natsci at uni. I'm wondering what kind of UK Chem Olympiad score would be a help to my application, because I know they say that particularly for top unis it isn't worth putting some UKMT maths challenge scores on your application for maths courses because a lower score might take away from your overall application. Thanks for any help!

I think it would very much depend on your school and its past success. I put on my application my UKMT and BMO1 results, which although wasn't exceptional by Cambridge standards, was the highest in my (sixth form) college.

Also, I think the relative importance of Olympiads is overstated. They can be great assets but you are in no way obliged to have them.
Reply 2
Thanks for the help!
Original post by Camer0nR
I'm in year 12 taking Bio, Chem, Maths and Eng Lit and I'm potentially looking at Chemistry or Natsci at uni. I'm wondering what kind of UK Chem Olympiad score would be a help to my application, because I know they say that particularly for top unis it isn't worth putting some UKMT maths challenge scores on your application for maths courses because a lower score might take away from your overall application. Thanks for any help!

I would say that honestly it really doesn’t matter how strong your sixth form / college’s performance in the olympiad has been previously as virtually no school keeps a record of it. Any award is good to be honest as it gives you something to write about. If it doesn’t go to plan, don’t write about it and instead focus on wider reading you have done.

One thing that melancollege and I do agree on, however, is that the Olympiad isn’t needed to actually land a place on a chemistry course. I study chemistry at Oxford and most of my coursemates didn’t even do the Olympiad. I did do it, however and got as far as round 2 in 2022 which proved to be excellent preparation for the degree. If you want help preparing for it, you need only ask and to upload past paper problems you’ve had difficulty with.
(edited 1 month ago)
Reply 4
Thanks for that. Have you got any advice/resources for helping with advanced organic synthesis? My OCRA textbook has some but it isn't really the same level as the olympiad especially if the olympiad question asks one to draw each product/intermediary from scratch with no formulae. Also, what level of kinetics did you go to? I'm just wondering if A level is enough. Thanks!
Original post by Camer0nR
Thanks for that. Have you got any advice/resources for helping with advanced organic synthesis? My OCRA textbook has some but it isn't really the same level as the olympiad especially if the olympiad question asks one to draw each product/intermediary from scratch with no formulae. Also, what level of kinetics did you go to? I'm just wondering if A level is enough. Thanks!

Organic synthesis is best learnt by attempting the past paper questions, marking them and then getting help here if you are still stuck. It doesn’t follow a dedicated syllabus, but you can always refer to Clayden’s Organic Chemistry if you are especially interested (stick to like the first 500 pages, though).

Kinetics in olympiad papers is usually limited to the second year of A level. They have thrown some undergrad level stuff on there before (I think Michaelis-Menten kinetics came up once before and they required you to deduce some equation for a graph, but I can’t quite remember), but it is still approachable with A level knowledge. Given the difficulty really comes from the algebra involved, you should be fine as you are likely used to manipulating more complex expressions from A level maths.
Reply 6
Thanks again!

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