Study Natural Sciences BSc at the University of Leeds

So Natural Sciences is the opportunity to study more than one traditional scientific discipline to an advanced level. In Leeds the subjects you can study are biology, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, maths, food science and nutrition and environmental sciences. When I was younger or in school I always had an interest in science. Doing the Natural Sciences MSc course I think gave me a great foundation to build upon basically anything that I wanted to do in the future. I decided to pick Natural Sciences because it meant that I could do maths, physics and biology. Doing three different subjects really helped because I could see we were learning about the same thing but from different points of view. I've really liked the modules that we've done where we're using kind of equations and stuff to model real life situations. Because students study a combination of scientific disciplines there is a very wide variety of methods in which students are taught. So there's the very traditional lectures, workshops and tutorials but on the more practical side of things you may do field trips, experimental laboratories or computational laboratories to get more practical experience of your science. You go into a real research group doing active live research projects. You're kind of driving that research project forward as a master's student and then there's also the option of doing years in industry. We have a tutor who specifically specialises in the years in industry. They have companies that specifically recruit from the University of Leeds because they've had good experiences with students from here in the past. I went into the field that I was interested in so I went into a petrochemical company and I was actually able to see that that's the area I definitely want to go in. Students will have access to a wide range of facilities from excellent lecturing facilities that include lecture capture resources where lectures are recorded and available to students online, world-class teaching laboratories with research grade instruments and outstanding research grade labs when they go on to do their final year projects. An interdisciplinary degree is really important because when you're looking at problems in real life they don't fit into discrete categories and being able to come at them from like a wide range of viewpoints is really useful. And I think that side of it is where industry is now starting to realise that we've got these multiple skill sets that we can use. I would definitely say that over the five years I've been a Leeds student I've grown immensely in confidence. Leeds has a very flexible programme that allows students to become the scientists that they want to be. There's obviously very good academics and tutors around to teach you the content and you feel like you're always learning something new you feel like you're getting the most out of your degree and you're really expanding your knowledge base for whatever you want to do in the future. The research is like really cutting edge couldn't imagine going anywhere else now that I've been here.