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.

@ThanksItHasPockets

My DD did MFL but knew she wanted to be a barrister. Law degrees are brilliant for the right person at the right university. Top brains go to the top universities to study Law.

The other way is to study something else and then convert. I know several high flyers who didn’t study law at undergrad but between qualifying as a barrister (post conversion and barristers training course) and taking up pupillage, they did the Cambridge MLaw in commercial law. These are now very highly paid young people - both barristers and solicitors take this course . It’s therefore worth exploring all routes into law. However it’s vital to understand which area is best for your talents.

I'm not casting any aspersions on your DD! In my experience no-one goes for the Bar without a genuine vocation - the process is too brutal. I'm simply recalling that the top brains in my top uni were a bit pissed off at the number of people who suddenly discovered a hitherto undisclosed passion for the law when Allen & Overy came a-calling with their lucrative training contracts.

Has she thought about any allied healthcare professions? If she likes the idea of medicine, but doesn't really want to be a doctor, would something like being a Speach and Language Therapist appeal- there are also potential links with neuroscience too? Something in the pharmacy field might also appeal if she likes biology and chemistry?

She also doesn't need to decide on a career at this stage- if she did a degree in neuroscience, that doesn't mean other options are closed to her- and if she's definitely gone off medicine, she doesn't need to make that decision until next summer.

@ThanksItHasPockets
I didn’t take anything you posted personally. DD was interested in law but preferred MFL at 18. 4 years doing that gave time to plot her barrister strategy! Going to the big law firms requires the same but there is a leming tendency! Less on the barrister route. I agree. Definitely brutal as only a few hundred get pupilage each year. Thousands are applying.