Medicinal Chemistry

A-levels: Chemistry (A), Biology (A), Maths (A*)

AS-levels: Physics (A)

GCSEs: 8 A*s, 4 As

I wanted to learn about how medicines and vaccines are designed and developed and how they interact in the body.

For the first year of university, I had one day a week in labs, about 18 hours of lectures a week and at least one worksheet or tutorial per week. It got more specialised as I went through the course. My second year was similar to my first year, but the third year was a lot more dissertation/project-directed, and depended whether you were on the Bachelor’s or the combined Master’s.

I enjoyed the labs the most as I learnt a variety of techniques; not just lab techniques, but how to use Excel, process data and write a scientific report – all useful skills for careers outside the lab.

For me, it was time management. My course had a lot of contact time but also required us to do a lot of work at home. The key was to get organised but also to know when to switch off and have a break.

I am now on my PGCE course to become a chemistry teacher.

If you want to study a specific area of chemistry, look up the course on the university website. See how much of the module content is stuff you are interested in and how many modules are compulsory vs optional. This will vary massively between universities. It can be good to pick a course which is broad at first and specialises later on with flexible options; this will make it easier for you to switch specialities if you want to (there are lots of specialities covered at university which you might not have ever come across at school).