Medicine without chemistry A Level

[AlphaApple]

DD is in her first year of A Levels, Biology, Psychology and PE plus an EPQ. Studying is going well with As and A stars anticipated. She's always been interested in health related careers but after 2 days work experience at our local hospital is suddenly thinking medicine (having previously ruled it out). I understand without chemistry A level, options for medicine are limited.

Does anyone have any experience or advice? E.g. a foundation year or a university that doesn't require chemistry?

She's not professing to know about pharmacology. Have you missed the key point that she is helping DC with med school applications?

Oh not at all. I get the whole point of this thread completely.

Nought so weird as folk 🤦‍♀️

The thread is about applying for medicine. Have good advice based on facts, then give it. Have an opinion, then don’t.

Blimey give it a rest @ChangeitUp2 you are coming across as slightly unhinged with your “answer my question I’m a very important random nobody who’s also going to throw in some implied insults” vibe. Given that you don’t even need to have A Level chemistry to do a degree in pharmacology let’s trust the universities to know what they’re doing here.

Biology and chemistry A Level curriculum is not directed at medicine. It’s much broader than that.

Forgive me because I am not a STEM person, but isn't Pharmacology itself a chemistry-based knowledge?

Answering as a pharmacologist who teaches medical students: no, not really.

Medicinal chemistry is, well, chemistry with a particular emphasis on drug discovery and development. Pharmaceutical science will also often have a fairly heavy emphasis on chemistry, focusing on analysis, formulation and manufacturing. Pharmacology is more about biological actions of drugs (pharmacodynamics) and absorption, distribution, metabolism & elimination of drugs within biological systems (pharmacokinetics). There's a fair amount of biochemistry in it, but the heavy chemistry of drug synthesis/development is medicinal chemistry rather than pharmacology. Pharmacology as a discipline in itself includes quite a lot of maths, but medical students generally don't have to go too deeply into that.

As others have said, very few pharmacology degrees require A-Level chemistry. Universities will expect to teach the necessary chemistry. The same is true of medicine, although there is very little chemistry content in most medicine degrees. Psychology is an essential part of undergraduate medicine but no medical school requires an A-Level in it.

If you want a long term medical career in the UK you're very well advised to go to a 'top' medical school if it's within reach. Otherwise there's a very real danger that you may end up as an LED for ever or have to go abroad to work in the areas (geographical or specialty) that the nationals in the relevant country don't want to fill. This talk of no-one cares is only correct up to a very limited point. If you want to progress then ability counts and as a general truth, the more able will go to the top/ better medical schools. Without Chemistry and at a not great medical school it's very questionable whether it's worth investing the time, effort or money in reading Medicine at all.

mumsneedwine there are certainly top medical schools and the students from those are not the ones who on the whole are finding themselves unemployed in the UK after F2. No doubt an anecdote about a graduate from a top medical school will follow - one can always come up with an anecdote - but the main body of graduates from the top medical schools are not the ones currently in trouble. That matters. It's not about the name of a uni. it's about the quality of student who tends to attend those unis as compared to the less good medical schools and their relative potential to progress.

I happen to think all this talk of 'only one offer needed' 'no-one cares which medical school' is especially misleading in the current climate. And you yourself have been the most angry about the lack of prospects for progress so it's really disheartening to see you revert to your mantra of any old medical school will do.

I think we can agree that the overall system is broken and it's very much affecting all health professionals. But if this is the right vocation for someone I suspect they would rather be a doctor who has to fight harder for their career than not a doctor. Working abroad is very much part of DD's ambitions (we are EU nationals) and can be interesting and rewarding, not a consolation prize as you seem to imply.

Of course working away from the UK can be extremely interesting and valuable. I'm referencing the fact that all the parents on the other recent threads said that taking a job in Australia was not their DC's preferred option - by some way. There is of course a difference between working in a different healthcare system out of choice and for experience as opposed to not getting the offer of a job after F2 and having to go to (say) Australia to fill one of the unpopular postings down there.

@AlphaAppleshe needs to ignore all the noise around how bad things are (& they are v v bad) and follow her dream. Things might get better in the UK and they might not. But the world will always need doctors. I say this as a mum of an F2 currently facing unemployment in this country as no jobs. V sad she’s heading down under but hoping she’ll be back once they sort out the job situation.

Go visit some Unis. All produce good doctors and no one cares where you go (but this new poster will disagree and probably start making personal comments about me - she really does not like me at all 😂).

Better go teach year 13 some chemistry. That has no relevance to human bodies at all 😜

mumsneedwine I have never posted a single personal attack, not one. So maybe you could correct that (or substantiate it!).

OP's DD is thinking about Medicine as a very recent thing. OP is gathering info. Part of that needs to be info about prospects for a career. Without being at a decent uni, her DD's opportunities will be slim - the subjects she's chosen for A Level don't augur brilliantly. I've known three students go back and take the usual suite of A Levels when they decided to opt for Medicine in Y12. That's a sounder approach especially if this is an A* student (which OP said she was).

So is Newcastle Medical School rubbish then? They don't ask for any science A-Levels. For the record, they are one of the toughest ones to get into in terms of their UCAT cut off.

Those A level choices are " soft" compared to most medicine applications which would include chemistry, maths or physics usually.. Did she get 7s or more in gcse msths and science?

It would be worth finding out how many get accepted onto the course without any sciences at Newcastle. I note for dentistry you still need biology and chemistry.

Quite. The fact that they don't require sciences doesn't mean much in itself. The 2024 statistics for Oxford where Biology isn't mandatory show that 98% of applicants who took up places nevertheless studied Biology at A Level.

Some unis simply prefer a more flexible approach with admissions. Others have decided that Chemistry is too critical for their courses for it not to be a requirement.

She’s got the summer holidays this year. Could she drop a subject and mug up on chemistry before U6/year 13. Do you have the resources to pay for the occasional tutor?

There are no top Unis for medicine, no one cares where you go and all courses lead to you being a doctor

mumsneedwine you maybe a lone voice here:

BEST IN THE WORLD FOR MEDICINE
Oxford Medical Sciences have been ranked number one for the last ten years in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for clinical, pre-clinical and health sciences.

Unfortunately some unis are far more likely to lead to unemployment or to Australia or possibly - moving forward - to life as a long term LED (which seems to be where policy is heading: a large bank of LEDs would suit the government very well). Others are far more likely to lead to a medical career with decent progression. So depending on preference it pays to be savvy early on.

lol. Don’t worry about my “intellectual capacity” @ChangeitUp2I’ve just been awarded a distinction in my postgraduate qualification from a “top ranked” university.

Because of my job, I know a lot more about student admissions, attrition, attainment etc., plus the future of skills and the workforce than most people.

I am also an expert on my own DD. I am realistic about her abilities, aptitude and commitment. She will choose her own path and I will give her my honest opinion about her chances of success.

What I don’t know about is medical school admissions, which is why this thread has been so helpful.

@Auchencar I'd be interested to know why some Universities are far more likely to lead to unemployment or to Australia please, and which Universities you feel this way about?

Do you mean unemployment post foundation years as some don't prepare students or give them opportunities to collaborate on research for example?

Appreciated ChangeitUp2.

The medical school application threads are miserably narrow. All about a spreadsheet and only one offer matters/ all unis are equal/ a doctor is a doctor.

One problem is that some of those who give advice seem to have become dependent on these threads themselves somehow, maybe out of boredom or for validation or for any other number of perfectly valid reasons that I can't think of. And yet some of those same posters have also been raging - really getting very upset - about the lack of training places for the cohorts now emerging from foundation training. This isn't joined up thinking at all.

It makes some sense for those who are prepared to take the risk of being left on mediocre pay as a locally employed doctor with limited job security in order to help get waiting lists down. But a lot of wool is being pulled over people's eyes, both on MN and beyond.

As a medic and a mother of four, two of which have medical careers. I would say you have to really really want to do medicine. And that includes those rigorous A levels. While their content may not be needed directly in every lecture they do play a huge part in the overall education of a doctor. I get some med schools don’t want it any more, but the majority of their intake still do have those subjects. I’m involved in the F3 area of a doctors training, and trust me… it’s not for the faint hearted, it’s hard. And yes, at F3 level we do look at the whole cv ……

@littlemissprosseco when you say the whole CV, is this where it can actually make a difference if they can say they were, for example, in the top decile at their University?

Would the University they attended have any influence when you review a CV?

Thank you - just trying to get an understanding of what can be beneficial, or not!

@littlemissprossecocan I ask what CV as from what DD’s friends tells me they apply for jobs on line and no CV is sent. They never get a reply from anywhere though. The NHS page doesn’t ask for Uni details ?