IB BIO AND CHEM

[stressedanddepressed27]

Hey!! I'm starting IB in less than a month and I already chose my subjects because I wanted to major in Psychology. However, I am now leaning towards veterinary science. At first, I chose bio SL. To be a vet, I first need to have a bachelor degree in Biological Science. The uni I plan on going does not require chem. But, if I do major in biological science, there will be some chem classes. I am for sure taking Bio but I am not sure if I should move it to HL and add Chem SL.

My question here is how hard is BIO HL compared to BIO SL? (I'm interested in bio)

Will chem SL help me in uni (Biological Science major) even though my uni does not require it? should i take it? (I'm really bad at math and I do not really enjoy chem and I found the intro class hard but I did not really pay attention)

[kw0573]

Asking whether chem will help in bio science is asking if math will help in engineering. Yes it will help, a lot. The first year of chemistry is basically 80% of HL Chem compressed into one year. It's much better to take at least some form of chemistry in high school, instead of learning entirely new material in a fast pace. Biology HL, in my understanding, is just more work but the same difficulty in terms of understanding. If you have Biology HL and Chemistry SL they will be tremendously helpful.

[stressedanddepressed27]

17 hours ago, kw0573 said:

Asking whether chem will help in bio science is asking if math will help in engineering. Yes it will help, a lot. The first year of chemistry is basically 80% of HL Chem compressed into one year. It's much better to take at least some form of chemistry in high school, instead of learning entirely new material in a fast pace. Biology HL, in my understanding, is just more work but the same difficulty in terms of understanding. If you have Biology HL and Chemistry SL they will be tremendously helpful.

Thankyou! I am just really worried as I am not good at math at all and I personally do not really enjoy chem. Will I be able to 'survive' Chem SL? Is there a lot of math involved? 

[kw0573]

Basically if you cannot survive Chem SL, you are not going to survive the more difficult first and second year chemistry courses when you get to university (there will be 4-5 semester-long chemistry courses in bio sciences, and some of the more advanced bio classes have prerequistes of these chem classes). And retaking a university course is a lot more expensive. The SL course is not focused on math. The most advanced math is exponents and logarithms. 80% of the math in Chemistry SL involves only addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Most people find the math straightforward. The main difference between chemistry and biology is that there is a much higher risk in chemistry if you try to memorize everything rather than understand. In chemistry, examiners test retention of material not usually through recalling facts. So you need to study the two subjects in slightly different ways. 

[stressedanddepressed27]

1 hour ago, kw0573 said:

Basically if you cannot survive Chem SL, you are not going to survive the more difficult first and second year chemistry courses when you get to university (there will be 4-5 semester-long chemistry courses in bio sciences, and some of the more advanced bio classes have prerequistes of these chem classes). And retaking a university course is a lot more expensive. The SL course is not focused on math. The most advanced math is exponents and logarithms. 80% of the math in Chemistry SL involves only addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Most people find the math straightforward. The main difference between chemistry and biology is that there is a much higher risk in chemistry if you try to memorize everything rather than understand. In chemistry, examiners test retention of material not usually through recalling facts. So you need to study the two subjects in slightly different ways. 

Thankyou so much!