Question: how would you become a professional scientist?

Paul Roche answered on 16 Jun 2010:

Well, it’s quite a long process unfortunately, and a lot of the decisions you make early on will affect your future career – so basically, study science for GCSE (single sciences if you can – 2 years), then A levels (2 years – and probably in maths as well, as maths is pretty vital to most areas of science).

After that, take a first degree (BSc) in your chosen subject (another 3 or 4 years), and then you could either get a job in a sience company, or else go on to do a PhD (another 3-4 years). But there are other ways to get into science later on, for example I have taught a guy who did 12 years in the Marines before he realised that he wanted to do a science degree and then a PhD, and I’ve had “mature students” who were retired, who decided they wanted to learn more about science now that they had finished work!

Professional scientists come in all shapes and sizes, and the public perception that we are mostly male, wear white lab coats and are all nerds is really far from the truth (although in physics, the bit about being mostly male is pretty true unfortunately…and there are quite a lot of nerds….OK, so I’m proably not helping my subject area here much am I?!).

Even if science is not your strongest subject, but you love doing it, there are all sorts of support jobs that require a science background – I’d always say try and do a job you enjoy, not one that you do just because you want money…