Med or TP?

sd123 · 05-05-2007 7:01pm #1

i'm in sixth year about to sit my LC in bout 4 weeks and i'm thorn between med. in trinity or Theor. Phy in trinity. any suggestions from anyone who is doing either of these courses pleassse?

05-05-2007 7:17pm

Do Med, and then if you don't like it you can switch to TP and still be out in less then five years, assming you switch at the end of JF.

Otherwise, you could end up doing a year of TP and then doing a full med degree after that.

notjim · 05-05-2007 8:14pm

well are you good at maths, do you enjoy maths, do you want to cure the sick or understand the universe? how much does money matter to you.

Nietzschean · 05-05-2007 8:45pm

original_psycho wrote:

Do Med, and then if you don't like it you can switch to TP and still be out in less then five years, assming you switch at the end of JF.

Otherwise, you could end up doing a year of TP and then doing a full med degree after that.

thats amazingly silly logic.

it really depends on what you like at the end of the day, if you look through the old posts here you'll find quite a few threads on what TP is like. Both courses are lots of work , but compartively are very different so i really don't think u'll get something from here to make up your mind per say. Its just down to what u want to do physics/maths and a job therein(or the computing/financial/etc..) or a job as a doctor long term. Which is more appealing? with such far apart fields it really more down to what you want to do long term rather than which course is harder/better or the normal discussions that go on here about them.

sd123 · 05-05-2007 8:46pm

well i'm doing chem, bio, tec drawing, maths, app maths, phy, and i'm kind of a maths junkie (seriously!). I would like to do something in maths and/or physics ( hence TP) but from what ive heard the money isn't great after college and i heard thats its a bit hard to get a job?. so should i do what i love and have loads of interest in or do i do something different which i have a moderate interest in just because i know that i'm probably guaranteed a job and good money after college?

sd123 · 05-05-2007 8:47pm

BTW whats JF? is that 1st year?

King.Penguin · 05-05-2007 8:54pm

There was a guy I knew (presume Ian knows him too) that did a degree in TP and is now doing Medicine in RCSI. Why do you want to do medicine? Because you're going to get 600 points? Don't do it just cause you can get the points.

What are you exactly looking for? Suggestions from people doing TP why you should do TP over Medicine? Or from people doing medicine why you should do medicine over tp?

the question you should be asking is should you do maths or tp

gilroyb · 05-05-2007 9:08pm

sd123 wrote:

well i'm doing chem, bio, tec drawing, maths, app maths, phy, and i'm kind of a maths junkie (seriously!). I would like to do something in maths and/or physics ( hence TP) but from what ive heard the money isn't great after college and i heard thats its a bit hard to get a job?. so should i do what i love and have loads of interest in or do i do something different which i have a moderate interest in just because i know that i'm probably guaranteed a job and good money after college?

To be honest it sounds like you're really only thinking medicine because it's hard to get into. Do you want to have a career that you love, or a career where even at the best of times you don't really enjoy it, and at the worst are being covered in other peoples vomit? Money can't buy happiness and all that, whereas a first or good 2.1 in your finals can let you do a course you enjoy while still having the chance at getting into a career you'll enjoy. Also, if you go down the financial side of jobs after you qualify with TP, you might make buckets of cash anyway.

Nietzschean · 05-05-2007 9:16pm

sd123 wrote:

I would like to do something in maths and/or physics ( hence TP) but from what ive heard the money isn't great after college and i heard thats its a bit hard to get a job?.

If your good at TP its pretty tough not to get a high paying job. Sure if you do a PhD you'll have a few years of poor pay but after a TP degree if you want to earn lots of dosh you can just take a job in finance(alot of TP/Maths people end up in finance) and and earn a mint. Academia can pay signifigantly less for a few years but even then if your successfull it does pay quite well after a few years.

Kev wrote:

There was a guy I knew (presume Ian knows him too) that did a degree in TP and is now doing Medicine in RCSI.

That i do, quite enjoying med too last time i talked to him.

and yep JF is first year

Fallen Seraph · 05-05-2007 11:11pm

sd123 wrote:

so should i do what i love and have loads of interest in or do i do something different which i have a moderate interest in just because i know that i'm probably guaranteed a job and good money after college?

I would be of the opinion that it's just daft to not study something you love because of the dangling carrot of too much money in a few years time.

ApeXaviour · 06-05-2007 1:06am

Sounds like you should do TP tbh

enda1 · 06-05-2007 1:22am

gilroyb wrote:

To be honest it sounds like you're really only thinking medicine because it's hard to get into....

Sounds a lot more like he was thinking of medicine because of the cash. As idealistic and all as people seem to want to be these days, sometimes the practical choice is better. Money means a lot in this world.

By the way I'd do medicine in UCD if you're looking between the two colleges or else RCSI. Trinity's degree ain't up to much these days. Ive heard bad things about it.

I study in Trinity and love my course here so I'm not being biased towards those colleges other than reporting what i've heard about them.

I was thinking of doing TP myself in trinity. Glad I didn't now though as I love my engineering course. I hear its good though but one guy i was talking to said he wished he just did pure maths instead as he was doing a lot more work for the same degree. Though not sure what he meant. Think that could have been outside the pav on Friday...

Anyway good luck with the choice.

Dubliniensis · 06-05-2007 4:59am

enda1 wrote:

By the way I'd do medicine in UCD if you're looking between the two colleges or else RCSI. Trinity's degree ain't up to much these days. Ive heard bad things about it.

There's not much difference between the medical degrees in any of the medical schools...standards are comparable.

Nothing is guaranteed anymore...not even a job as a doctor. This year UCD had more Irish graduates than intern jobs in Vincents and the Mater... With more medical places coming on stream...the jobs market for doctors in Ireland will become saturated in much the same way physiotherapy has become. I noticed that first preference choices for physio in the CAO were way down this year...

sd123 · 06-05-2007 11:55am

TBH the money is a bit important but not too much. The thing is that i dont want to have a degree in TP and then end up working in a shop or something just because no-one else wants to employ me. like when i asked my career guidance counsellor what jobs are available to a TP graduate she kindof just avoided the question. like in reality, whos going to employ someone as a theoretical physicist?

If I knew/ thought there would be a good chance of a job after college then i would definitely go for TP.

Dubliniensis · 06-05-2007 2:04pm

sd123 wrote:

If I knew/ thought there would be a good chance of a job after college then i would definitely go for TP.

I can only give one example...but a school friend of mine studied TP, finishing in 2001. He then went to DCU to do an MSc in Financial Mathematics. He has been working for the last 3 years as an options trader in Chicago.

Plenty of TP graduates (and science graduates in general) go on to further study...seems like everyone has an MSc or a PhD these days!

Here's a list of destinations of TP graduates from the Careers Service website: http://www.tcd.ie/Careers/students/year.php?courseID=965&nodeID=1690

I wouldn't worry too much about getting a job... Pick a subject you're interested in and will enjoy studying for the next 4 years and everything else will fall into place.

ApeXaviour · 06-05-2007 2:17pm

enda1 wrote:

I hear its good though but one guy i was talking to said he wished he just did pure maths instead as he was doing a lot more work for the same degree.

I believe you can transfer into pure maths from TP up until JS (3rd year). Though Nietz can clarify me on this. You can transfer into normal physics up until then I know.

sd123 wrote:

If I knew/ thought there would be a good chance of a job after college then i would definitely go for TP.

Okay I don't mean to be bad to any arts students, but something like TP is not an arts degree. Granted there is no TP "industry" per se. But you will very much be employable afterwards. With a good degree by itself you'll have little problem getting say working for a consultancy firm or in investment banking, and raking it in. Your choices are certainly not limited however. You could even shift with postgraduate study into the experimental end, engineering end, finance end, sociophysics etc. etc.

My flatmate is a business student. He tells me that he's always told by his lecturers "oh and don't even bother going for these (high-level/paid mathsy) jobs, they're all taken by theoretical physicists".

sd123 wrote:

like in reality, whos going to employ someone as a theoretical physicist?

To stay in your field you'd need to do a phd. Universities / research institutions are the only places really that will hire you AS a theoreticial physicist. Though a phd in TP will also stand to you with other jobs.

In short; I wouldn't worry about employment (if you have a good mark) with a TP degree

Nietzschean · 06-05-2007 3:12pm

ApeXaviour wrote:

I believe you can transfer into pure maths from TP up until JS (3rd year). Though Nietz can clarify me on this. You can transfer into normal physics up until then I know.

You are quite correct of course dec.

sd123 wrote:

like when i asked my career guidance counsellor what jobs are available to a TP graduate she kindof just avoided the question. like in reality, whos going to employ someone as a theoretical physicist?

Ye see there's your problem right there, in my experence lc type guidance counsellors are beyond pointless. I got some similar tripe when i was in school, they really don't have a notion what they are on about, you realistically will get a better answer from a 5 year old who's impressed by its big name

To list the fields last years grads are now in that i can think of off hand:
Masters in Cambridge(a few of them, some of which have been offered phd's over there now i believe), High performance computing masters, financial masters in london school of economics, astrophysics phd student(heading to nasa in 2 weeks for a bit),doing medicine in RCSI, research masters on sound decomposition for analysis of neuro interactions in tcd, phd in lattice theory.

Bascially TP/Maths from tcd(tp is different in the ucd) get a very high preference for computing jobs, jobs in finance, business, and bunch of other fields.

Anyone with a 2.1 or above's only reason for being unemployed at any time is cause they want to be pretty much.Even people with 2.2's in TP get a very high preference for stuff in physics fields(mainly cause they probably know how damn hard tp is).

SligoBrewer · 06-05-2007 8:15pm

im in 4th year at the moment and while id love to do theoretical physics in trinity, im wondering is the right course for me.

id love to do research eventually in the physics area or maybe even astrophysics..would it be the right choice?

06-05-2007 8:25pm

Nietzschean wrote:

phd in lattice theory

If this is the same manx man I'm thinking it is, he is now doing math modelling for a med school in Edinburgh.

Nietzschean · 06-05-2007 8:26pm

original_psycho wrote:

If this is the same manx man I'm thinking it is, he is now doing math modelling for a med school in Edinburgh.

nope, but they have a few phd students floating about

ApeXaviour · 06-05-2007 11:41pm

SligoBrewer wrote:

id love to do research eventually in the physics area or maybe even astrophysics..would it be the right choice?

I'm in final year physics done through TR071 Natural science (ie did phys, chem, maths in 1st and 2nd year, then pure physics in 3rd and 4th). The line between physics and chemistry blurs quite a bit at college level, especially since trinity's physics course (both for TP, Phy and astro) leans towards the physics of materials end. So chemistry in the freshman years definitely does stand to you.

Aaaanyway, my class is divided into about half and half physics and astrophysics. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same degree bar the odd course difference. Approximately 2/3rds of the class are going on to do further research, phd's/masters in all areas of physics including astrophysics.

I'm not saying you should not do TP, it's a great course, but you should definitely consider the natural science route. The reason science has lower points is its high number of places (~300), there are some amount incredibly brainy people doing this course though. And it's not easy. Nosiree, especially in the sophister years many are weeded out merely by its difficulty. The level of maths will not be as advanced as for TP, but the course is similarly as intense and a little broader.

EDIT: have a look here http://www.tcd.ie/Physics/undergraduate/

notjim · 07-05-2007 3:54pm

and, of course, as far as i know, if your interest really is theoretical as in theoretical physics, as in string theory or high energy particle theory or whatever, you would be fine doing a maths degree and choosing the maths physics options, that way you miss labs and the applied physics stuff and get the opportunity to study some more statistics.

Med or TP?

Comments