3rd year Science choices

quebec

Hey,

so im not sure as to which subject to pick in 3rd year science.

Could anyone whose been through science tell me what they picked and liked and didnt like about it and what they're doing now.

Please, any comments will be appreciated

Thanks

HoboJesus

Since there's something-teen choices you might wanna list which options are available to you first, as that narrows it down hugely. Using myself as an example, only four were available to me (take that, biology).

piby

I'm in 4th year microbiology at the mo so I'll give you a breakdown of what I consider to be the pro's and cons compared roughly to what I know about the other biological options.

Pros:
Better job prospects
Bigger class and hence reasonable social scene/get to not people in your year you might not have spoken to before etc.
Very interesting (well most of it!)
No weekly lab reports as such (I always hated those)
The Moyne is right beside the Pav :D:D
A lot of practical work

Cons:
A lot of practical work
Long Hours
By far the hardest!!! It's got on average 20-30% failure rate at the end of third year

Like I said these are IMO and other people would give you yet more. A lot of departments will have information sessions/wine receptions coming up so try to get to them. Also remember your choice is down to your results so if you want one of the better ones you need to get the grades. Every year is different in terms of who wants to do what. I know for us physiology, molecular med and immunology were the really popular ones so you needed a high 2.1 or better to make them.

DaXiS

Halfway though 3rd year chemistry...Story so far.

Medium - Long hours, about 25-30 max, can depend on tutorials and just courses in general.
Material is pretty much what you can expect from doing it in second and third year, keeping in mind I'm only in third year, but everything seems to just continue on nicely from last year.
Overall, its a fairly heavy workload, lab reports every week can take up a lot of time but I like it and don't regret it at all. If you liked JF and SF chem, and don't mind a bit of work, go for it

quebec

Im doing Bio 1, Bio 2 and Chemistry at the mo so that restricts me from physics, geology, and some others

skregs

zoology is an interesting, entertaining one, but completely and utterly worthless when you graduate.
botany is boring, simple and slightly less useless
environmental science is good, but its almost completely focus on water, rivers, water treatment etc

quebec

has anyone here done physiology? I know its one of the most popular and hardest to get into.

Ive heard my year is pretty brainy compared to other years, which sucks cause it means harder to gt what you want

emollett

I am currently doing JS Biochemistry with Structural Biology.
There are 10 people in the structural class and about 45 in biochemistry overall including molecular medicine. We share most of our classes and also share a few with classes like microbiology, genetics and neuroscience. This term i have 10 hours of lectures a week including the two broad curriculum lectures. Some weeks i also have 9 hours of labs, but structural does much less lab work this term than the other classes.
In my year structural was the least popular of the biochemistry courses, i think i was the only person to have it as first choice. After molecular medicine immunology was the most popular. I really enjoy structural, i would rather be studying bioenergetics than immunology and pathogenicity (although i do have to do a course on introduction to immunology).
I'm not sure i can think of any cons at the moment, i really like my choice!

JC06

skregs wrote: »

zoology is an interesting, entertaining one, but completely and utterly worthless when you graduate.
botany is boring, simple and slightly less useless
environmental science is good, but its almost completely focus on water, rivers, water treatment etc

Is zoology really worthless? What do zoology graduates usually end up doing?

piby

quebec wrote: »

has anyone here done physiology? I know its one of the most popular and hardest to get into.

Ive heard my year is pretty brainy compared to other years, which sucks cause it means harder to gt what you want

I'm not in it myself but a good few of my mates are and I'll tell you what they've told me.

• It's seems to be a very interesting course but apparently the stuff in second year is the best (and everyone in Bio 2 can do that) or at least as good as what you do in the degree.
• They have few lectures but they have a lot of presentations/lab reports
• You have to go on and do some form of higher study because jobs in the field are almost non-existent or impossible to get.
• Their 4th year projects are really cool (speaking as a test subject!!!)

Physiology was actually my first choice as well but in the end I got my second and I really like it now so I'm not complaining! But you're right you do have to do quite well to get into it.

quebec

piby, so what are you doing now?

piby

quebec wrote: »

piby, so what are you doing now?

See Post 3 in this thread

quebec

whoops my bad

g'em

skregs wrote: »

zoology is an interesting, entertaining one, but completely and utterly worthless when you graduate.

That's a fairly sweeping and highly innacurate statement to make...

In the working world a Science Degree is a Science Degree, they pay no attention to what discipline you studied in. If you want to go on to do further research Zoology opens up a huge range of study options - I stayed in the field of medical zoology for my Postgrad studies but of my class one of my friends is now in year two of her PostDoc, another has just handed in his PhD in genetics, one girl is working in a Uni in Canada in field ecology, another girl is working in elephant ecology in Uganda and a third is doing research in Australia - not one of my class that I know of have found their Zoology Degree useless and we all adored the course itself. Likewise I know people who did the traditionally "job-worthy" electives and struggled to get any graduate positions simply becuase their fields were over-subscribed.

Don't stress over what your degree will get you job wise, instead focus on the subjects you think you'll enjoy most as those are the ones you'll perform best in. There's a huge amount of carry over between Biology-related disciplines at Postgrad level.

And as a point of note the three most popular choices for Junior Soph 0809 were as follows:

Physiology - 44 first choices, 16 places offered
Neuroscience - 42 first choices, 20 places offered
Zoology - 34 first choices, 27 places offered

Pet

Ooooh, where did you get those figures, g'em? I expected that Mol Med would be the big one for 08/09.

CJTobin

Nice post, g'em, that'll sure come in handy! Don't suppose you'd have access to the lowest mark people obtained and still got their first choice, would you?

I'll be talking to a girl I know in 3rd year genetics soon enough, I'll be sure to pass on whatever she has to say.

In the meantime, anybody wanna chime in on molecular medicine? Is it a good course? It's really popular, I know a good few people thinking of putting it first.

Pet

It's basically a mishmash of all the other courses [moreso even than neuroscience]. You'd have maybe one or two modules that were Molecular Medicine only; the rest are shared with the biochemistry variations, genetics, microbiology, the neuroscience nerds, physiology [pack of bitches], and the second year meds/allied health sciences.

As for course satisfaction: it's still quite new. And I don't know anyone in the class, so I'm afraid I can't be of much use. The "medicine" in the course title seems to attract wannabe-future-med students, but if that's what you're looking for, neuroscience is apparently better [plus we're geekier, in the best way].

And finally, about marks: I think the lowest for neuroscience this year was 57 or something like that. I was freaking out that I needed a high first [like in the 80s] to get in, but that totally wasn't the case. It's still worth doing the best you can, though, because if you don't get the marks, you can't repeat the year. And if you pick one of the high demand courses and later decide you don't like it, you're pretty much guaranteed a swap into any other course [within the first few weeks, obviously].

emollett

CJTobin wrote: »

In the meantime, anybody wanna chime in on molecular medicine? Is it a good course? It's really popular, I know a good few people thinking of putting it first.

I'll give you my class list for the year (biochem with structural biology), the ones with stars next to them the molecular medicine class do as well:

Functional group chemistry *
Core concepts in immunology *
Data handling/computing *
Eukaryotic gene structure and expression *
Medicinal chemistry intro *
Membrane biology *
Proteins and enzymes *
Signal transduction *
Transcription, translation and replication *
Bioenergetics
Structural computer modelling
Genomics and systems biology
Medicinal chemistry: antiviral and anticancer drugs
Photosynthesis

I found a list of modules for molecular medicine so they may in adition to the starred subjects take the following:

Antimicrobial agents
Cellular biochemistry
Drug kinetics and metabolism
Endocrine regulation
Gene regulation
Metabolism and drug development
Microbial pathogenicity –principles
Neurochemistry
Stem cell development and cancer

I suspect they don't take all of those though as i found a similar list for my class and it listed a few subjects we don't do.

g'em

CJTobin wrote: »

Nice post, g'em, that'll sure come in handy! Don't suppose you'd have access to the lowest mark people obtained and still got their first choice, would you?

I don't have it to hand, but to be honest it's not worth obtaining as it changes every year - it really is like the Leaving Cert all over again and demand dictates the marks required.

Like Pet said though, a high II.2 should leave you in relatively good standing for any of your choices. Bear in mind also that most, if not all, Postgrad courses will require a full academic transcript for entry and that will contain listing of all your end-of-year grades, so it's worth aiming for as high a grade as you're capable of so it'll stand to you on your record.

Prof.Badass

what's the deal with summer repeats and course options?

I you fail in may (possibly on purpose) do you instantly get put to the bottom of the list or do they just take your score from the repeats.

are there even repeats?

emollett

vinylmesh wrote: »

what's the deal with summer repeats and course options?

I you fail in may (possibly on purpose) do you instantly get put to the bottom of the list or do they just take your score from the repeats.

are there even repeats?

After the summer exams everyone who did pass gets their place. The remaining places are then what the people repeating are competing for. So if all the places in genetics are taken up by people who passed the first time around, even if you get a first in the repeats you wont get in, unless someone drops out and you are next on the list.
Why would you fail on purpose in May?

Prof.Badass

emollett wrote: »

Why would you fail on purpose in May?

if you knew you wouldn't get into the course you wanted. I thought people fail and repeat the year on purpose all the time?

ApeXaviour

vinylmesh wrote:

I thought people fail and repeat the year on purpose all the time?

...!

You mean people who have 7 grand just lying around to spare...
For the love of god don't just fail and repeat the year because you don't think you'll get your first choice.

Firstly there's LOADS of time left to get your head together and do great in the summer exams. Jesus 3 months of a fair amount of work is way better than €7,000 (or whatever it is now) and a year of your life wasted. If you can't get your head down now, what makes you think you'll necessarily be able to do it next year?

If you've extraneous circumstances and you genuinely think you're going to do bad in your exams, talk to your tutor. He may advise that you don't sit the exams. This might qualify you to sit off books next year.

Assuming you haven't got significant events occurring now that warrant counseling, then this would be my advice: get your head down. Plan to spend an hour or two (or more) per day in the library and answer all the past questions for the last 6-7 years. 3 months is plenty of time to do that. If you can do that you should be sorted for what ever your first choice is.

emollett

vinylmesh wrote: »

if you knew you wouldn't get into the course you wanted. I thought people fail and repeat the year on purpose all the time?

I've heard of people throwing their repeats as they knew all the places in the courses they wanted were already gone, but not the May exams.
As ApeXaviour said, you have plenty of time till May, most people in your class probably haven't yet started studying at all.
3 months before the exam how can you possibly be sure that you wont get the course? And that you would manage to get it next time around.

hoareni

i finished science in tcd in 2004. In third year i ended up taking geography as i had failed chemistry for the previous two years. I had a great time doing it for 2 years and loved very minute. Big enough class so great fun and all the field trips inlcuding caving in the burren. However, when i left i couldnt even get a job interview for 2 yrs so ended up doing soul destroying work in the bank. Eventually decided to go back to college and do an MSc in environmental science and had 8 job offers when i left. Although this was in 2007 and am now facing redundancy:(

Pet

vinylmesh wrote: »

if you knew you wouldn't get into the course you wanted. I thought people fail and repeat the year on purpose all the time?

I second what Apex said. There's loads of time -- vast acres in which to plant crops -- between now and exams. If you were posting this in the second week of May, then yeah, perhaps you'd have a good reason. But there's ****loads of time.

HOWEVER.

I did exactly as you described - deliberately failed my summer and supplemental exams - so that I could repeat SF science. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't cheap. However, it was a good decision on MY behalf, for various reasons.

Even if you want to do physiology/neuroscience/zoology, you still have loads of time. Including the entire Easter break. Get thee to the library!

maherro

Hey Im a 4th year micro but in reponse to those who want to repeat in order to get their first choice I initially wanted to go into genetics but now that im in micro I wouldnt swap into any other class! Seriously its not worth 7k to go and try and get into a course that you miunght not even like!