Hl math and good universities

[Fluidink]

I'm looking at studying biochemistry/chemistry in Cambridge/UCL and I'm not sure whether to take Sl or hl maths because Sl math would be a (relatively) easy 7 for me and I'm not too sure about Hl maths. people keep on telling me that the good universities in uk really want Hl math but the website says that Sl math is acceptable but like 99% of NatSci's in Cambridge take Hl math.

 

Tl;dr is math hl necessary to get an offer from Cambridge/UCL for Chemistry/Biochem/medicine??

[Elc]

Didn't apply for Cambridge (applied for Oxford and got rejected after that one interview), but to speak from my experience, you wouldn't need HL math for UCL. I got an offer from UCL biomed and Imperial biomed/biochem with SL maths. Plenty of my friends got an offer from UCL without HL maths. It will still be better to have HL, with a better chance and all, but if you think you are going to get a 4 or 5 in HL and 7 in SL, I recommend you to stick to SL and devote your time on other subjects. Sure, it is good and impressive, but not when you are getting under 38 with HL maths when you could get 43+. 

[thecsstudent]

If you're aiming at Cambridge natsci I think HL maths is almost necessary considering you'll be against people doing hl maths and a level further maths. You can start with Maths HL and drop it if you see that you're struggling. But for UCL you wouldn't need HL maths. If I were you I wouldn't choose hl maths only for cambridge and then struggle unreasonably with it because it is pretty unpredictable whether you get accepted or not and you wouldn't want to spend so much time on maths only to not need it in the end if you don't get in.