• Question: what is MChem?

    Asked by Rebecca to Frank on 25 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Frank Longford

      Frank Longford answered on 25 Mar 2015:


      An MChem stands for a combined Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Chemistry.

      When you go to university in the UK, for the first three years you will be studying a subject for a Bachelor’s degree. If you pass then you will graduate with a Bachelor’s degree, either BA (Bachelor of Arts), BSc (Bachelor of Science) or BEng (Bachelor of Engineering) usually, depending on your broad subject area.
      You can then study another qualification for one year in your subject area called a Master’s degree, which is a post-graduate qualification. If you complete this, you will be awarded with either a either MA (Master of Arts), MSc (Master of Science) or MEng (Master of Engineering) usually.

      However, some universities offer a relatively new set of qualifications that have been developed mainly for science subjects. They last 4 years, at the end of which you graduate with possibly a MChem, MBiol or MPhys. Essentially you do the same amount of work as a student who graduated with a Bachelors and then enrolled on a Master’s degree but it works out differently with the technical details of the course – for instance you pay the same tuition fees each year for the combined courses but tuition fees vary for separate bachelors and Master’s degrees.

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