• Question: what grades did you get to be a scientist?

    Asked by shannieeerayray to Laura, Nicola, Norman, Sandra, Thanasis on 14 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by flozz12.
    • Photo: Laura Soul

      Laura Soul answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      I got quite good grades when I was in school, and I had to get good ones to go to the university that I went to. However there are lots of jobs in science and they require lots of different skills, not just the ones that you get tested on in school, so you don’t necessarily need really good grades in science subjects at school to be a scientist, you just have to like science and work hard!

    • Photo: Sandra Phinbow

      Sandra Phinbow answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      I didn’t do very well at school, so I had to go back to college when I was 25. I did an Access course in Science and got 96% for maths and physics, 80% for chemistry and a bit lower for biology. And this got me into university.

      I did my degree part time and I work in the lab full time and did my training at the same time, I qualified as soon as I ifnished my degree.

    • Photo: Nicola Wardrop

      Nicola Wardrop answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      When I was younger (up to about 15), I wasn’t doing very well in school and my teachers and parents didn’t think I was very clever. Then for some reason my grades improved, and that was when I decided to go to University. I did quite well in my final two years – I got A’s for Biology, Maths, Chemistry, English and Geography and a B in Modern Studies…but before that I was not doing so well. I almost failed one of my classes all together! (this was in Scotland, so its not exactly the same as A-levels)

      But the grades you need depend on exactly what you want to do, and where you want to do it…if you want to go to University, then you need to work quite hard to do well at school, but you don’t need all A’s unless you want to go somewhere really good like Oxford or Cambridge.

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