Neuroscience or medicine or law!

[Dunnowhat]

Hello

Any advice welcomed. My DD has just done GCSEs (8 grade 9 and 3 grade 7 in Spanish and English lit and Lang). A levels are biology maths and chemistry.

She’s never really known what she wants to do. Doesn’t want to work in a lab (like her dad) or an office, well wfh at moment, like me.

Had an interest in neuroscience but was advised by school to think of medicine as could then specialise in neuroscience later. Medicine was first career that she didn’t immediately dismiss. So she has helped out at swimming lessons for disabled children, done a bit of work shadowing at a hospital. (Very brief and not particularly helpful), and gone through the online virtual medical mentoring schemes.

She’s now decided she doesn’t really want of do medicine. I’m glad as I never really thought it was what she really wanted and it’s so competitive. She has now wondered about law but she thinks essay writing is a weakness. She’s still sort of keen on neuroscience but doesn’t know what she would do with it

Any advice?

Anything we haven’t thought of that might be a suitable career? Would it be best to do a neuroscience type degree and then convert to law after. I guess she couldn’t do law and then neuroscience.

She likes debating. Very into drama. I would say though the sciences are her strong point academically.

Thanks in advance.

There is absolutely no need to think about careers, if she is going to do a degree. She should choose a degree that interests and excites her.

We have found going to the university open days very useful. Ds (yr 12) also undecided on degree but has seen some degrees advertised at the open days that weren't on the radar at all so it's worth attending a few (almost all have virtual days too). It's useful to talk to the students on the stalls about admission standards, course content and job/higher ed prospects.

The Guardian and Sunday Times have just released their University guides too.

thanks both for your input.
I think she doesn’t want to close off options. Neuroscience and law are quite far apart and while if she did neuroscience she could then go on to do a one year law conversion course , it would probably be financially impossible to do a law degree and then decide to do neuroscience as I guess she would have to pay herself for a second degree.

we have looked at several universities prospectuses on line and gone through all their undergraduate courses to see if there is one that sparks an interest. Back in my day I just did a boring maths degree but now there are numerous different combinations

How about psychology with neuropsychology or with neuroscience. That would leave lots of options e.g. a conversion to law, doctorate in clinical psychology later specialising in neuropsychology (if she wants to work with patients), or neuroscience research in a university.

With psychology degrees and or with xxx degrees it is important to make sure they are accredited to the British Psychological society otherwise the option of becoming a psychologist is closed.

Some universities have much more flexibility in what you can study within your degree with options from different departments than others. That may well be something she should think about.

Equally I am a big fan of the placement years in industry that Bath, Aston and some other universities are particularly good at.

If I had my time again I would do biomaterial science at Birmingham, just because it sounds so interesting.

Sounds like neuroscience poss with psychology worth serious consideration. Agree make sure psychology degrees are accredited. Patent attorney might be of interest - they like science grads, or science writing. But she can start honing down specific career ideas further down the line.

I really find it odd, not being British. Why do they need to choose what they want to study after GCSE? In other countries, they normally decide after graduating high school to pick their major in UNI, when they are 18.
My dc has just started GCSE, and I find it so disturbing he is not doing vast subject like other countries, he's only 14, and dropping subject he should be learning.
My parents had no say in what choose to study. I 'd love to be the same for my dc. But do I need to be more involved in British system?

Several universities offer very flexible biological sciences degrees which follow a set first year but allow you to specialise in specific areas of interest in years 2 and 3. Warwick, for example, offers a Biological Sciences and Biomedical Sciences degree. Both of which can include neuroscience. You could then also transfer to the medicine stream after graduation if she decides that’s a route to go down.

The Natural Sciences degrees at Durham and Cambridge might also be of interest as they allow later specialism.

A law conversion course can be completed post graduation is she decides the science route isn’t for her. It’s much more difficult to go back into forward facing sciences after doing a law degree.

Thanks some excellent ideas there. I did a placement year and I think it was so useful. My DD also thinks it’s a good idea

I think the patent attorney is the sort of suggestion I was looking for. I had thought of coroner as that’s sort of medical and legal but I get the impression that’s the sort of job you get after being a lawyer for some time.

she did think of doing psychology for a 4th a level but when she chose her options she was still thinking of medicine and they said it’s better to get three great grades than 4 ok ones.

I did see a very interesting course on experimental psychology at Oxford which she agreed sounded very interesting but dismissed as it was Oxbridge. Think the long distance down south was off putting.!

Memory tells me that Edinburgh's psychology degree is similar to Oxfords.

We specialise two years earlier than most other countries - kids need to have an awareness of what A levels they need to do for their chosen degree.

But why they need to specialise so early? I didn't choose what I wanted to study for degree until 17/18. 3/4 years early, to drop something like geography will affect the children's education for sure? Awareness of the world?

Because in England most uni-bound kids will study A levels, and you generally can only choose three subjects, hence the need to think about degrees when they're picking which 3 to do. Science degrees for example often want two sciences, so if you've picked Chemistry, Art and French you've already limited yourself.

(IB is sometimes available which enables a broader range of subjects at sixth form.)

I'm not saying it's good to specialise early (though for many it is), just explaining the English (Welsh, NI) context. (Scotland is different.)

Speech and language therapy. Lots of neuroscience in the degree, a procession at the end. Very academic, work with people, all kinds of career paths.

Profession not procession. But that too! 😁

neuroscience is a massive field (I work in it). It ranges from looking at individual molecules in the brain (like genetics) to looking at brain cells in a petri dish to looking at human brains & behaviour (like psychology). At all levels, there can be a LOT of maths and using computers to build models of what is going on in the brain.

If your DD is more interested in the wet-lab work (molecules and cells), then a degree in biology / biochemistry / biosciences is probably good. If she is more interested in the human level, then psychology + neuroscience is probably good, and keep up as much maths as possible. Maths is essential for the statistics and the computational modelling side of things.

Neuroscience is a growing field with lots of opportunities for research and for translational work, so it is a great area to go into. There are lots of popular science books about how the brain works which can also be a good intro to the ideas. e.g. Blakemore's book on the teenage brain.

if she wants work experience, look up some neuroscience professors at the nearest university, read their website to find out what research topic they do and start emailing them (email several, we are not always good at replying).

I can't comment on neuroscience, but would just say that law is just as competitive (if not more) than medicine. The difference is that uni places are limited for medicine, and thats where the competition lies, but ultimately, you will end up with a job (the number of uni places are capped so as to ensure sufficient foundation places / career progression for doctors). Law is the opposite, there is no limit on uni places, with the result that there are far, far more law gradulates than the number of training contracts available - quick google found data for 2020, 17,000 people graduated in law that year, 5,600 trainees were registered. There are masses of very well qualified graduates working as paralegals or office juniors trying to get a foot in the door. Its something to factor in.

Good luck to your DD whatever she decides.

I agree with this.

I was very impressed by the talk at Manchester, when we were looking round, about how so many of their students decide, at the end of their first year to specialise in areas that weren't the area they thought they might go in to when doing A-levels / in 6th form.
So much of what you study at University is very different from A Level even, and a world away from the GCSEs they have just done, so it can be difficult to specialise / restrict yourself too early.
I'd highly recommend going to their open day.

Thank you @parietal for the book recommendation. That’s now ordered for her kindle.

Really interesting point about law places vs medicine which is much more controlled @Africa2go not something I had thought about. I vaguely knew it’s training places , not articles any more!

Will definitely encourage her to look at places like Manchester which offer a broad introduction. As many people have commented, it’s hard to to actually know what you will like at uni if it’s a brand new subject.

Lots to think about.

I’m a lawyer.

As you suggest, my main piece of advice is that if someone is considering a career in law, there’s no need to study it as a first degree. Conversion courses are readily available, so far better to go and study something you are legitimately interested in and then switch over.

It is not detrimental in the least. In fact, for certain firms, it is considered an advantage.

To become a solicitor now there isn't a conversion course as such. Whether or not one has a law degree one has to pass SQE1 and 2. Which one could pay to go on a course for or self study for.

Lancaster offers very flexible Natural Sciences degrees (as BSc or MSci). Friend's DC also did a year abroad in their third year.

www.lancaster.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/natural-sciences-bsc-hons-gfc0/

I suspect most won’t self study for SQE1. The best route is to get a position that sponsors the course. I would also suggests she looks at being a barrister. If she can convert to law, this career might be of interest. However, it is fiercely competitive and she would need to research very carefully what to do and how to specialise in an area of law.

Law as a first degree can be quite dry (sorry lawyers) so I would only recommend an undergraduate BA / LLB to someone who was really passionate about the academic study of law. I know it was a bit of a sore point to lawyer friends at my university that so many prestigious training contracts were picked up by friends who were reading history / PPE / MFL / chemistry and had never expressed any previous interest in the law. A good friend of mine is an IP barrister and did undergraduate science and a science PhD before the GDL and BVC (as it then was).