<p>If you are coming in as a Bio major with your heart set on medical school, definitely make sure that TCNJ has a good program in your second choice of major/career. </p>
<p>Not to scare you but the Bio program here is pretty difficult. It's definitely doable (I know 2 or 3 people with near 3.9's) but you have to put in a loooot of work. Freshman year, half my floor were Bio majors talking about how they were going to go to med school. </p>
<p>They ended up not being very good studiers or just didn't have the capacity for the work and now, I would say that 75% of those people are now scrambling to find a new major/career path as Sophomores.</p>
<p>The killer for a lot of people was Organic Chemistry but a lot also got stuck on Themes in Bio or Biology of the Eukaryotic Cell.</p>
<p>These are not classes that you can mess around in. If you are serious about premed, you have to be willing to do the work. That means seriously working on "Themes in Bio" labs and prereading for classes from the first week. </p>
<p>One good technique is to read the material that will be covered in the lecture before the lecture so that you understand everything and retain it better.</p>
<p>Of course, at nearly every reputable school, pre-medical courses are weed-out courses that are designed to be difficult.</p>
<p>However, if you have an acceptance to some expensive Ivy League school but are going to TCNJ for the price (since you figure that it's best to go somewhere cheap before taking on med school debt), make sure you know that you:
A) really want to go to medical school/dental school/etc
B) are academically gifted enough to do the work
C) are a hard enough worker that you will be able to withstand invitations from friends on the floor to come out to parties when you have a lot of work to do.</p>
<p>Make sure that there is a backup major at TCNJ to fall back on just in case you drop out of Bio.</p>
<p>Also, consider taking the premed courses along with a major like Psychology or Philosophy, etc. This looks better for Med/Dental schools than Bio and is definitely easier than Biology.</p>
<p>The upside of the Bio program's difficulty is that people get into top Biology Grad Schools and those that can complete the program have something like an 80% acceptance rate to medical school.</p>
<p>(BTW, 7-year kids should disregard all of this. If you got into the 7-year program, you are definitely capable of doing well. You will be among the smartest people on campus)</p>