The Student Room Group

Mpharm and Maths worries

I’m currently a Year 12 student doing Biology, Chemistry and English Lit, and I wanna go into pharmacy after sixth form. However, I’m kinda worried about the amount of maths in pharmacy.

For context, I did get a 7 in GCSE maths. But, I still struggle quite a bit with the more simple stuff. I find it hard to mentally process numbers and envision that kind of stuff so I usually make a lot of silly mistakes. I can’t do mental maths for the life of me, I need paper or a calculator to calculate or else I get too overwhelmed imagining all the numbers floating around in my head. I literally have to try and imagine it written down so I can do it. Which also makes it take longer too.

Longer equations with a relatively repetitive process are usually fine for me. Like a lot of the mole questions, titrations and enthalpy stuff in Chemistry is fine for me maths-wise, I don’t feel like I’m struggling all that much with it. I quite like it actually. That kind of maths makes sense to me, and I can do it fine so long as I have something to do my working out on. So idk if I’m just overthinking it all. But it really is the simple stuff that gets me, literally like times tables and simple subtraction and addition, I cannot do on the spot without taking ages or straight up getting it wrong. And I know for some of the pharmacy interviews they’ll ask you ‘simple’ maths questions which…probably won’t be great for me esp if I have to do it on the spot with no paper/calculator.

Ik the career in general needs a lot of maths too, so idk if I should be realistic and try and pick something else. But even writing that bums me out. It does really interest me, and I love biology and chemistry but I also wanna be realistic. I also do low-key enjoy maths, it’s just my fear that I won’t be able to be good enough at it thats kinda holding me back.

Is there anything I can do or should I try and think of another career?

Reply 1

Original post
by Umayzing
I’m currently a Year 12 student doing Biology, Chemistry and English Lit, and I wanna go into pharmacy after sixth form. However, I’m kinda worried about the amount of maths in pharmacy.
For context, I did get a 7 in GCSE maths. But, I still struggle quite a bit with the more simple stuff. I find it hard to mentally process numbers and envision that kind of stuff so I usually make a lot of silly mistakes. I can’t do mental maths for the life of me, I need paper or a calculator to calculate or else I get too overwhelmed imagining all the numbers floating around in my head. I literally have to try and imagine it written down so I can do it. Which also makes it take longer too.
Longer equations with a relatively repetitive process are usually fine for me. Like a lot of the mole questions, titrations and enthalpy stuff in Chemistry is fine for me maths-wise, I don’t feel like I’m struggling all that much with it. I quite like it actually. That kind of maths makes sense to me, and I can do it fine so long as I have something to do my working out on. So idk if I’m just overthinking it all. But it really is the simple stuff that gets me, literally like times tables and simple subtraction and addition, I cannot do on the spot without taking ages or straight up getting it wrong. And I know for some of the pharmacy interviews they’ll ask you ‘simple’ maths questions which…probably won’t be great for me esp if I have to do it on the spot with no paper/calculator.
Ik the career in general needs a lot of maths too, so idk if I should be realistic and try and pick something else. But even writing that bums me out. It does really interest me, and I love biology and chemistry but I also wanna be realistic. I also do low-key enjoy maths, it’s just my fear that I won’t be able to be good enough at it thats kinda holding me back.
Is there anything I can do or should I try and think of another career?


Hi,

I’m a third year pharmacy student and maths isn’t my favourite subject, but I’d say pharmaceutical calculations aren’t too difficult and there is plenty of support available. It’s more focused on things like concentrations, dilutions, working out dosages, infusion rates, and the quantity of medicine to supply. However, during assessments, you are expected to be reasonably quick with working out, at about 2.5 minutes per question.

They are usually structured and step by step, and you are given a calculator, so it’s not heavily based on mental maths, although this can be an advantage. With practice, you become more familiar with the types of questions, which makes them much more manageable.

During university interviews, you may be asked some basic pharmaceutical calculations, but these are generally simple. If you’re passionate about pharmacy, it would be worth working on improving your numeracy skills over time.

It’s also important to remember your individual strengths, as for patient safety calculations are essential throughout the career. They are needed to pass university assessments, the GPhC registration exam, and are used regularly in practice.

Hope this helps, please do let me know if you have any other questions about the course.

Tayba
Student Rep

Quick Reply

How The Student Room is moderated

To keep The Student Room safe for everyone, we moderate posts that are added to the site.