URGENT.Need Advice! Biology Vs Chemistry for LC. Must have subjects picked by Feb 2nd

I'm doing all 3 sciences and applied maths. A word of warning, applied maths is VERY hard. It's much harder than honours maths. I generally get over 95% in maths tests, but in applied maths I'm lost half of the time. The thinking is completely different. I'm not trying to scare you, but I absolutely love maths and yet I find applied maths really difficult. It's also probably the most unpredictable subject, in that it's very hard to know where you stand with it. I'm definitely not counting on it for points, I'm just sort of hoping for the best haha. You should definitely try it for a while and give it a fair chance though, it might turn out that you love it. :P I'm glad I did it, actually, because it has made honours maths and physics a lot easier for me. It really really helps with algebra and trigonometry, as well as understanding concepts in physics. The equations in applied maths are so crazy that it makes maths and physics seem easy.

As for your biology/chemistry conundrum, if you think you might do medicine, I mean if it's even the slightest thought at the back of your mind, you should probably do chemistry. I HATED chemistry in third year, and had only ended up keeping it on due to limited subject choices, but now I am applying for medicine - I never thought I would in fourth or fifth year or even up to about 2 months ago, I wanted to do computer science or electronic engineering. Now as it turns out I'm pretty set on medicine... I was really lucky.

As for the subjects themselves, I find chemistry much harder than biology. Essentially, chemistry involves a lot of calculations and understanding concepts, and biology involves a lot of learning. I'm a bit biased here because I love biology and don't particularly like chemistry. People in general find chemistry more difficult. Over half of my chemistry class have been getting grinds since fifth year.

Hmm, I can't really tell you which to choose, because everyone is different and you could easily be the exact opposite of me. If you are really struggling, you should probably go on the basis of interest. Are you more interested in how our bodies and the living things around us function, or in things like how substances react with one another to form new compounds and why they react in the way they do?
hmm. examples of topics in biology: the digestive system, the brain, the heart/blood, plant reproduction, genetics, respiration
examples in chemistry: the periodic table, the structure of the atom, how petrol is made and improved, radioactivity, reactions between acids and bases, pH...

Anyway, your choice of career is likely to change several times over the next few years (I wish I could stop changing my mind) and at the end of the day you should probably make your decision based on your interests. Hope I could be of some help, subject choices are hard.

edit: btw, most science courses in Ireland have a year of general science for the first year, which starts pretty much from scratch. If you have one science subject you are covered for almost anything, medicine is the only exception I can think of (and even so you can still do medicine without chemistry as long as you have one science, it just takes a year longer - you can do it in UCD or galway I think). I'm fairly certain you only need one science to do a science degree in Trinity, UCD or UCC, and for engineering you only need a C3 in honours maths - you don't actually need any science subjects.

as for combining physics and biology, what about biomedical engineering?

EmmetOT wrote: »

As someone who does both biology and chemistry, I heartily recommend the former. Biology is a lot more interesting and engaging than chemistry.

This is completely subjective. Some people find Bio more interesting then Chem while others think the opposite.
If I were you, I'd pick Chemistry. As someone previously mentioned Chemistry is much more about gaining an understanding of concepts whereas Bio is mainly focused on learning things off by heart. Chemistry is the core Science, so having a foundation chemistry is much more valuble if you plan on going down the Science route and chemistry is also one of the subjects Engineers study which Biology isn't. I can also tell you from personal experience that Chemistry is a much more rewarding and valuble subject than Biology. If you do Chemistry you actually feel like your learning complicated yet really logical concepts that not many people understand and I can imagine Physics is the same. Biology on the otherhand is one of the most popular LC subjects and its more generic, tbh a lot of it is general knowledge.
Basically if you want to learn about science and you want to gain knowledge about things that most don't have a clue about, then Chemistry is the better choice. & it makes perfect sense to take chemistry with physics as they go hand in hand, they're both physical sciences.