What should I study before starting a Life Sciences degree?
Before starting a Life Sciences degree, you could review high-school biology, together with chemistry—such as properties of substances and basic organic chemistry—and mathematics, including functions, exponents and logarithms, probability, and statistics. Laboratory safety, reading data in tables and graphs, and basic scientific English terminology can also be helpful. If you are deciding whether to study advanced material in advance, consider first checking your understanding of the fundamentals.
Key points
- Review core high-school biology, including cells, genetics, metabolism, and ecology.
- Refresh chemistry and mathematics to prepare for quantitative thinking about biological phenomena.
- Become familiar with laboratory safety, organising and interpreting data, and scientific English.
Things to check
- The subjects emphasised and the expected preparation vary by university, faculty, programme, and academic year, so check the official curriculum and admissions information.