Is Biochemistry a "Lesser" Degree, or "Not Real Chemistry"?
- Bryan Le
- May 19
- 3 min read
Subreddit: r/AskChemistry
User: u/SearchLost3984
Original Post:
Hey everyone! Feel free to TLDR and just answer the title, but I'll include my reason for asking for anyone who wants it:
I'm halfway through my undergrad; it has a "common" first year for all BSc students and you narrow your focus over the years, and I have to choose a school for next year. So far I've been taking the maximum courseload so I can keep streams in chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology open. I love the lab side of chemistry but I think if I did chem classes exclusively it would pull me into a dark pit of despair. But, so far biochem classes have been nothing to the standard of OrgChem.
My original idea was that if I could get a chemistry degree then I would able to do a PhD on the biochem/biology side, whereas I didn't think I'd have a chance of getting chosen for a chemistry PhD with a biology degree, so chemistry was keeping all options open. But at this point I don't think I could finish a chemistry degree.
I'm going to request a chat with the taught masters coordinator, but I wanted to also get a general consensus. Do you think biochem is a "lesser" degree? And if I chose MolBio am I cutting off a path to chemistry altogether?
I'd really like to study abroad for postgrad so it would be good to know how it would be valued and where you're answering from.
Thanks everyone!
My Response:
I did a double major in biology and chemistry. I flunked molecular biology. I like chemicals. Chemistry major for me. It's really hard to say that a molecular biology degree is a "lesser" degree - perhaps it's more restrictive? But if you're a chemist, it's going to be tough to get into a genetics laboratory for your PhD, while it makes more sense with a molecular biology degree. I'd say it depends more on what you conduct your research in in your undergraduate and what kind of transferable skills you have. That said, if you study computational chemistry, you're probably going to have an easier time programming gene sequence analyses in Python - those skills are a lot more transferable across fields.
Organic synthesis and polymer chemistry...is not as transferable, which I did as an undergraduate (at least in my opinion, as I went on to do cell culture studies on the biological effect of flavor molecules in mice tissue for my PhD). At best, I could design the molecules, but biology research is a whole different ballgame. Enzymes, immunoblots, and assays are a biatch to work with and super expensive - I wish I had a better command of that going in. But man, I can build synthetic allylic amino acids like nobody's business...which represented like 5% of my actual dissertation.
I guess the real question is, what is it that you mean by you can't finish a chemistry degree?
My experience was that upper division chemistry was easier than lower division because you have all of the background knowledge. But then again, physical chemistry and thermodynamics was one of my favorite subjects, and I had a great professor. And I know a lot of people hated quantum mechanics.
Answering from the United States. Did my undergraduate and masters in chemistry at UC Irvine, and my PhD in Food Science with a PhD minor in chemistry at UW Madison (I still don't know wtf a PhD minor is, but luckily had enough credits to just receive it). Brief research position at Caltech, and a little time spent at Stanford.
Dr. Bryan Quoc Le is the Founder and Principal Food Consultant of Mendocino Food Consulting. He earned his Ph.D. in Food Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine. He currently lives in Mendocino, California with his wife and two dogs.
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