If Cambridge natural sciences doesn’t happen....

[nightmareneighbour]

Ds1 is well on with his application for natural sciences to Cambridge. But it is time to think about the other Unis.

His teachers pointed out that if he went to, say, Durham, it could be that the physics course would be more demanding and interesting than their natural sciences course. But ds’s personal statement is all about his broad interest in a range of sciences, so that could go against him if, say, he was applying for physics at Manchester.:(

Has anyone got any insight into this issue and how to address it?

Thank you in advance.

That's good advice from his teachers. Durham is easy on the personal statement front: www.dur.ac.uk/study/ug/apply/ucas/personalstatement/substitute/
I don't think Manchester gives the same option for a substitute personal statement but I'd tend to think that Manchester might well like the sort of approach that your DS is thinking of in relation to Cambridge.
Presumably if your DS is applying to Cambridge for NatSci he's very likely to get an offer from Durham or Manchester or both, so options four and five on the UCAS form aren't hugely important.

DS submitted a physics-specific personal statement to UCAS, then submitted a mini personal statement for natural sciences to Cambridge in their supplementary application questionnaire. There is a space for this, and applying to natural sciences at Cambridge and single science courses everywhere else is exactly what it's designed for.

For other universities, your DS should look at the course structure in detail for their natural sciences vs single science courses.

It's quite usual, I think, for students to apply for Cambridge Nat sci , but their other applications to be a single science. My DD did an analagous thing - Cambridge general engineering but her other 4 choices were all electrical&electronic engineering. So, her main PS focussed more on that, but then the supplementary Cambridge one expanded on why she'd like to
do a broader course initially and then specialise later.

Before I opened it, the title of this thread gave me a bit of a fright. For a moment I thought there was the possibility that the course this year was cancelled for some pandemic-related reason.

thank you , have passed these on to ds.

he has noticed that the entry requirements for nat sci at Durham are lower than those for physics at Durham so that kind of either rules out Durham or points us to physics there.

whereas at York the natsci requirements are higher than for single sciences.

Does anyone have insight into whether any other unis do a Cambridge-style nat sci course? We wonder about Imperial or UCL (though London right now......)

DS did similar to Ironoaks' DS, showing his passion for physics. This was reflected in his offer, he needed A* for Physics and A for chemistry.

His other 4 choices he had 2 for theoretical physics and 2 for straight physics. He didn't contemplate Natural Sciences anywhere but Cambridge. His insurance was at Durham for theoretical physics.

Lancaster (and until recently, at least,, a very 'build it yourself' degree, allowing emphasis on where particular interests lie - may of course be slightly different as a lot of universities seem to be 'streamlining' their offer)? Not RG, of course, if that makes a dofference and no idea what their typical offer is, because the young person we know who recently graduated from there may well have exceeded it anyway.

DS would like to keep open the option of becoming a physicist, and the only natural sciences course which enables this is the one at Cambridge. If he didn't receive an offer, his plan B was to study physics somewhere else and attempt to explore his interest in interdisciplinary sciences by independent reading.

my DD applied for Natsci at Cambridge, didn't get an offer so took up a place for Natsci at Durham. It is a very flexible course. When she came to choose her Natsci modules at the start of first year, she ended up just choosing physics and maths ones as she had gone right off chemistry. This put her on track for an MSC in maths and physics rather than Natsci. This year for second year she was almost going down just the physics route with her module choices, but has decided to keep maths in there but it could be perfectly possible that she ends up with an MSC in physics as she progresses through the course. It is this flexibility that she liked as she was more inclined towards physics but didn't want to close any doors to a broader science degree. There are of course other combinations. One of her friends is doing Comp sci and biology on the natsci course.

Interesting re Durham thanks

My son is doing 4 year Msc Nat Sci at Exeter. He was very keen on this course when considering the options, as he did all sciences at A level; and wanted to continue to study them all before narrowing down his area of interest. It is a research heavy course. The other one he considered was at York, which had a similar ethos of multidisciplinary research