Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry with Work Placement [MSci] personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

When I opened an old tub of aspirin in my gran's bathroom cabinet, it smelled faintly of vinegar. I found out that the smell was ethanoic acid, released as aspirin hydrolyses in damp air, and that a tablet is not just an active molecule but a small chemical system that must stay stable for years. How a medicine is designed to work in the body and also survive on a shelf is the question that draws me to chemistry with a medicinal focus. I enjoy organic chemistry most when structure explains behaviour: why an ester is vulnerable to water, or why adding a polar group changes how a molecule dissolves. Reading Napoleon's Buttons showed me how individual molecules and their functional groups have shaped history, and it led me to Lipinski's rule of five, which uses limits on molecular mass, lipophilicity and numbers of hydrogen bond donors and acceptors to judge whether a compound is likely to be absorbed when taken orally. I liked that these are properties I can already begin to reason about. I want a course with a placement year because I would like to see how reactions I run in grams are controlled, analysed and recorded at larger scale, and to find out whether industrial research suits me.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I am taking Advanced Higher Chemistry, Biology and Maths in S6, after five Highers in S5 including Chemistry, Physics and English. My Advanced Higher Chemistry project grew from that aspirin tub. I stored crushed and whole tablets in three conditions: a sealed jar with dry rice, an open dish in a school cupboard, and an open dish above a beaker of warm water in a closed box. Every few days I dissolved samples and added iron(III) chloride, which forms a violet complex with the salicylic acid produced by hydrolysis but not with intact aspirin. Using the department colorimeter and a calibration line from salicylic acid standards I made up, I estimated how much had broken down. The humid samples changed fastest, and crushed tablets faster than whole ones, which fitted the idea of more surface exposed to moisture. Reliable readings took patience; I standardised the time between mixing and measuring so the colour had settled before each reading. In Biology, enzyme active sites help me picture how a drug might bind to a target, and in Maths, logarithms and differentiation made rate equations and the Beer-Lambert law feel like ideas I understand rather than formulas to memorise.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

I work two evenings and Saturday lunchtimes in a fish and chip shop, where I have learned to work quickly while keeping to fryer temperature checks and allergen rules. The manager now asks me to show new starters the till and the allergen folder, which I take seriously because a mistake there could make someone ill. Most weekdays I collect my younger brother from primary school and make his tea until my mum finishes her shift, so my studying has to fit into fixed hours and I have become organised about planning revision and lab write-ups. At home I made a red cabbage indicator from a single cabbage and tested what was in our cupboards, from bicarbonate of soda to different cleaning sprays, keeping a colour record in a notebook. It is basic chemistry, but I enjoyed working out why some results were ambiguous, such as coloured liquids masking the indicator, and it made me better at noticing small changes. I also watch free online lectures on organic reaction mechanisms and try drawing the curly arrows myself before the answer appears. Outside chemistry, I play five-a-side football on Sunday mornings with friends from school, which is the one fixed part of my week that has nothing to do with work or study.