<p>This topic is based on a conversation I had with my girlfriend's uncle who is a professor of bioengineering at Yale. When asking me about my future plans I mentioned I was considering graduate school for chemistry or biochemistry and he suggested, though not completely sure since it is not his field, that I spend my next two years taking more advanced mathematics and physics courses as they will help me in graduate school. He stated that graduate schools can't really teach you two years of advanced math and physics but they can teach advanced cell biology in a year. Can anyone on this board attending graduate school in either biochemistry or organic chemistry state how true this is? My course schedule for next year as an entering junior is as follows:
Biochemistry I 3
Biochemistry Lab 3
Supervised Research 3
Advanced Organic Chemistry 3
Signals and Transducers 1
Advanced Cell Biology 3</p>
<p>Would I be better off dropping advanced cell biology and taking a course like partial differential equations, linear algebra for math majors, or advanced electricity and magnetism? Any input would be appreciated, thanks in advance.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for exactly your field, but in microbiology, advanced math and physics wouldn’t give you much of an edge in graduate school. Take a look at the research being done in your field, do you see lots of advanced mathematics? Do you see papers that could be enhanced by more sophisticated mathematical models? If so, maybe this would be advantageous.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in bioinformatics or systems biology, or may be interested in the future, then you should take more math and physics, but I don’t really see how knowing PDEs will help you while doing standard (bio)chemistry.</p>
<p>It depends on the area you want to go into. Science is definately moving in that direction so it will be helpful. If you are interested in biochemistry or neurobio I say definately, as some areas in those fields require an extensive background in that area. People in biochem at my school even have to take p chem during first year. You need advanced calc to survive this.</p>
<p>^ I believe the OP has done the full calc sequence, as courses like linear algebra and PDEs were mentioned, which usually require the calc sequence. I think math up through multivariable calculus is definitely good to have, but I don’t really know how useful further math will be unless the OP plans on doing modeling or simulations or something like that. I can’t really speak to the usefulness of more physics, though.</p>
<p>I think the main point is that it’s relatively hard to pick up a textbook about control theory and start teaching yourself Laplace transforms if you become interested in systems biology, for example. OTOH, it’s relatively easy to pick up a review article or intro textbook about biology and understand what’s going on. I think you should take the math classes if you’re interested in them (ie, you enjoy them more than bio). For the foreseeable future, you will not be forced to do hardcore math since in the fields you mention (chem, biochem), your classmates probably wouldn’t have extensive math background either. If you think there’s a chance you will want heavy modeling in your future research, then you can consider taking math classes now. The main caveat is that there is so much math you can learn and even if you do end up using math, you’ll use a small fraction of it. Of course, the same can be said for taking biology classes.</p>