High school Senior interested in Biochemistry

[coreync]

Hello!

 

I am a high school senior and at this point I am planning on majoring in Biochemistry and minoring in 'Health, Medicine, and Human Ethics' with a goal to pursue pharmacy school.

 

I know that biochemistry is one of the hardest science majors (or so I've heard) and I a curious to hear other peoples experiences in choosing biochemistry.

 

I am particularly worried about some of the math involve though I know I can do it. I am not skilled at math but with a lot of effort I make good grades. I've taken Bio I and II, and Chem I through my local community college and received A's in them but I do plan to retake them at my university since the CC classes were hardly equivocal to college classes.

 

I am really excited about college but I do want to do it right from the beginning. Any advice to make good grades from the beginning? I've promised myself that I will keep my gpa above a 3.5 with ideally a 3.8 goal. Of course I know that may change once I hit Ochem, lol.

 

I just would love to hear peoples experiences majoring in the sciences.

[ennui]

(As a disclaimer: I took my degree in the UK. There is less of an emphasis on a liberal arts education.)

 

I majored in BSc Molecular Medicine, but this contained roughly 90% of the same content as the BSc Biochemistry programme. And most of my friends are biochemists.

 

As for Biochemistry being the hardest major - it really depends on what you find difficult. Horses for courses! My partner majored in English Literature and I found his stuff incomprehensible.

 

It's quite a feat to escape maths in any of the sciences. Even Biology students eventually face those Hardy Weinberg equations. But Biochemistry shouldn't present too much of a challenge. I'm terrible with mathematics and I managed to pull through.

 

Besides the obvious "don't leave studying to the last minute etc."... Here's some advice for good grades:

 

- Make Powerpoints to summarise things you've learned. They're really useful for keeping track of concepts, key papers, diagrams, etc.

 

- Form study groups. It really helps to talk things through with people.

 

- Don't pay attention to the nerdy kids who seem to spend all day in books. They can intimidate you into thinking that you haven't worked hard. In my experience, their grades don't reflect their effort. They usually freak out come exam time because they're burned out.

 

- Use Nature Reviews for studying a new area. They're great.

 

I hope you enjoy majoring in Biochemistry. It really is a cool area. With a Biochemistry degree, there are many career doors opened. You can go into pharmaceuticals, academic research, government research, medicine, consultancy, science journalism, hospital diagnostics and teaching.

[farmboy]

I can only really echo what the poster above has said. In biochemistry there shouldn't be too much maths at all, nothing too complex anyway, though my degree is only in normal chemistry, so it could just be that I didn't come across it. Either way though, I would say don't let the possibility of facing maths put you off doing the subject if it's what you want to do, even if you suck at it you can go on to work in areas where it isn't important.

 

On the other hand, I would also say definitely don't pick the subject based only on what job you want to do afterwards, make sure to pick soemthing that you actually enjoy as that makes sure you remain interested and makes it more likely that you'll be successful. Originally I was going to do biochemistry, but decided on regular at the last moment, and I'm very glad I did. Bio seemed interesting from the outside, but when I actually started to learn about it I found it boring compared to physical and inorganic chem.

 

And yeah the best advice I could give you is make sure to learn as you go along don't leave it to the last moment thinking you can cram it all in (something I always did) and something I never did would also be a good idea, that is reading up on topics in advance of lectures and also reading a little more just outside the scope of the lecture to give you a more comprehensive knowledge.