Science: UCD vs. Trinity

thegreatescape

I'm a 6th year student torn between doing Science in UCD or Science in Trinity. Can anyone help by telling me your experiences with either of these courses or anything you know about them? Thanks

Mr.Fun

UCD science has great variety, but the building is a bit naff

kingcobra

Mr.Fun wrote: »

UCD science has great variety, but the building is a bit naff

Don't they have a new Science building under construction that will probably be ready for next September? If so it'd be great to be in a brand new state of the art building!

leaveiton

I'll share my experience so far as a first year in Trinity

First of all I find there's a lot of choice in the course. I'm personally doing biology, chemistry and maths which is probably the most common combination but I think it's great that there's the option of stuff like geography and maths methods if you're weaker at maths. Good choice IMO of degree paths after too, but I'm not worrying about that just yet :P

The course is huge. There are around 300 places in Science itself, but you'll be sharing lectures with other science courses, so in some lectures there can be over 400 people. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your own personality I think. I'd personally prefer a smaller course as I find it harder to concentrate when I'm in a large group and it can be a bit daunting making friends at first. Some people love it though so it's really down to how you feel about it yourself! UCD's would probably be a similar size anyway.

With my subject choices I've about 25 hours a week, including lectures, labs and tutorials. My days can be fairly long and it's not uncommon to have large gaps in the middle of the day - for example, last semester I was in on Tuesdays from 9am - 1pm, then had nothing else until a lecture at 4pm. It's a bit of a pain, but there's loads to do around college and the city centre in general.

I've enjoyed a lot of the lecture material so far, particularly in biology as I hope to go into a biology-based degree path. I'd been worried about maths but I haven't found it to be too much of a step up from LC HL. Chemistry is okay, they go back over a lot of LC material in the first few weeks, but to be honest I wasn't a big fan of anything we did last semester, and I got that general feeling from the class too.

Labs are 3 hours long, but you can leave if you're finished early. In general I find the biology labs more interesting than the chemistry labs. Labs also count towards continuous assessment so not all of your grade for the module will rest on the exam.

Running out of things to say, not sure what else there is! :P If you've any other questions ask away and I'll try to answer!

ella.cole

Hi i was wondering can you also do geography as a science in UCD or is it just trinity? Also whats the difference between doing geography through an arts degree and through a science degree thnx!

RML

leaveiton wrote: »

Running out of things to say, not sure what else there is! :P If you've any other questions ask away and I'll try to answer!

hello
I was wondering what career paths i would gain if i choose Science in TCD. In what year do we specialise? Is it first or fourth year?

ShatterResistant

Mr.Fun wrote: »

UCD science has great variety, but the building is a bit naff

I got a tour around the new UCD Science building (the half thats open anyway) and it's deadly, a serious facility!

leaveiton

RML wrote: »

hello
I was wondering what career paths i would gain if i choose Science in TCD. In what year do we specialise? Is it first or fourth year?

You specialise in 3rd year At the moment, there are 16 options that you can choose from:

Biochemistry
Chemistry
Environmental Sciences
Functional Biology
Genetics
Geography
Geology
Immunology
Microbiology
Molecular Medicine
Neuroscience
Physics
Physics with Astrophysics
Physiology
Plant Sciences
Zoology

If you want to find out more about any of them, or just the course in general then you should have a look here on TCD's website

bscm

ella.cole wrote: »

Hi i was wondering can you also do geography as a science in UCD or is it just trinity? Also whats the difference between doing geography through an arts degree and through a science degree thnx!

I'm currently in 2nd Year Science in TCD, but only did Geography for one module last year. Compared to an Arts degree, you wouldn't focus on Geography in a Science degree until about 3rd year. You would only do one 10 credit module each semester until 3rd year (so two modules in 1st year, and two again in 2nd year). But it does leave you the option to try out modules such as Geology (which many potential Geography students find appealing). I can personally recommend Geology as an interesting module/degree option if you find physical geography interesting.

In an Arts course, unless you're doing something like a TSM or a joint degree, 90%+ of your modules will be Geography modules. Which can be great if you want to focus purely on Geography and not have your experience "diluted", but it can be bad if you want more variety in your course or you're torn between options (Science courses do tend to offer more flexibility in module choices than most courses).

Also doing a Science degree, if you are somewhat good/interested in Maths/Biology/Chemistry/Physics, then you can take one or two of those up to the end of 2nd year to break up the essay/book heavy aspect of Geography.

Smiley Laura

Is it possible to apply for a postgrad in maths in TCD or UCD after doing general science? Like, is there enough maths in either general science course to do a postgrad in maths?
Sorry, this is probably a silly question, but I'm in sixth year and I'm a tad worried I may not get the huge amount of points necessary for maths in Trinity.

bscm

Smiley Laura wrote: »

Is it possible to apply for a postgrad in maths in TCD or UCD after doing general science? Like, is there enough maths in either general science course to do a postgrad in maths?
Sorry, this is probably a silly question, but I'm in sixth year and I'm a tad worried I may not get the huge amount of points necessary for maths in Trinity.

I have no idea, I know a lot of Theoretical Physics students eventually transfer into pure Maths but I'm unsure about Science. In UCD you can do Mathematical Science as a degree through the general Science entry. In TCD you can't do Maths as a degree through Science, only as modules.

ride-the-spiral

Smiley Laura wrote: »

Is it possible to apply for a postgrad in maths in TCD or UCD after doing general science? Like, is there enough maths in either general science course to do a postgrad in maths?
Sorry, this is probably a silly question, but I'm in sixth year and I'm a tad worried I may not get the huge amount of points necessary for maths in Trinity.

I can't conclusively say if you wouldn't be accepted for a postgrad, but you'd be very much out of your depth if you were to do TCD science. I'm in theoretical physics in trinity, and know a good bit about the content of the maths degree and the physics degree. By the time you'd be in 3rd year of TCD science, (whatever you're specialising in) only a third of the material you've done would be maths, and after that you have no more modules from the school of maths, so any more maths you do would be pretty specific your specialisation (Most important in physics and chemistry.) The maths is mainly done from a practical point of view, to enable you to use it, as opposed to the more abstract and theoretical approach which would be done in a maths degree.


However I can only speak for TCD, but there are courses in UCD like mathematical sciences which would most likely set you up much better to do a postgrad in it.

Smiley Laura

ride-the-spiral wrote: »

I can't conclusively say if you wouldn't be accepted for a postgrad, but you'd be very much out of your depth if you were to do TCD science. I'm in theoretical physics in trinity, and know a good bit about the content of the maths degree and the physics degree. By the time you'd be in 3rd year of TCD science, (whatever you're specialising in) only a third of the material you've done would be maths, and after that you have no more modules from the school of maths, so any more maths you do would be pretty specific your specialisation (Most important in physics and chemistry.) The maths is mainly done from a practical point of view, to enable you to use it, as opposed to the more abstract and theoretical approach which would be done in a maths degree.


However I can only speak for TCD, but there are courses in UCD like mathematical sciences which would most likely set you up much better to do a postgrad in it.

Ok, thanks very much- that's pretty much what I figured. I have single maths degree as number one on the CAO, just trying to scope out the other options in case I don't get the points

Vito Corleone

I'm finding it really difficult to decide which one to put down first. Anyone have any idea which one would be better or considered better by employers?

bscm

Vito Corleone wrote: »

I'm finding it really difficult to decide which one to put down first. Anyone have any idea which one would be better or considered better by employers?

Both have nearly the same reputation with employers. Only difference would be specific content in the courses/modules and whether covering a certain thing would be more beneficial to a job you might be applying for (and this "specific content" might only occur in 4th Year, and maybe apply to a single field of research).

You could judge it on rankings if you were really stuck (e.g. TCD Biology is X in the world, UCD Physics is Y, TCD Chemistry is Z...), or commuting time to each college. Or even campus atmosphere, some people like one college but dislike the other.