Am I Screwed for Physical Chemistry?

College Majors Science Majors
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<p>Get ready for a long story…</p>

<p>I am currently a second semester freshman at a community college in Pennsylvania, where I live and have a dorm room. My major is currently Biology; however, when I transfer, I plan to change that major to Biochemistry. I can make some money off a Biochemistry degree if I do not get admitted into medical school. For the past few days, I have been doing some research into the course requirements for a Biochem degree at my top transfer university, Penn State. Here is where the first problem begins. From my research, I have found out that all biochemistry majors at Penn State must take the dreaded Physical Chemistry. In order to get into Physical Chemistry, I will need two semesters of Calculus-based Physics. I have also concluded that I will need to take up to differential equations in order to solve some of the equations that come up in p-chem. </p>

<p>I am not fully intimidated by p-chem. I will never truly know how difficult it is until I give it a try; nevertheless, my second problem scares me much more than p-chem ever will: I was misadvised. When I took the SAT back in high school, my highest score in math was a 440. As a result, I was required to take an ACCUPLACER test. After taking the test, I found out that it placed me into calculus! I wasn't really shocked as I had taken Pre-Calc back in high school. I was shocked, however, when my advisor told me that I should take College Algebra. At the time of registration, I was still a high school student. Since I was awarded a SMaRT Scholarship, I was eligible to apply months before everyone else. So in May of 2013, at the request of my advisor, I took College Algebra. I ended up with an A-. When I had the chance to take Pre-Calc this semester, my advisor told me to take Trigonometry, again citing my SAT scores. </p>

<p>As a result of this misadvising, I will now have to delay taking Calculus I and Calculus II until the Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 semesters, respectively. This means that I will have to take Calculus III and Differential Equations elsewhere as I will be a graduate by that time. This also means that I will have to delay taking Calculus-based Physics until I can fulfill the Calculus II prerequisite. I will take both semesters of Calculus-based Physics at my home community college during the Summer of 2015. I will still, however, be deficient in Calculus III and Differential Equations since my home community college does not offer either course during the summer. </p>

<p>So, considering all this background information, am I screwed for Physical Chemistry? What should I do in order to make up the math courses without falling behind? Thanks in advance for the answers!</p>

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<p>I think you would need to get private tutoring to catch up in Math, or relook at that Biochem major and its requirements. That being said, I haven’t heard that P-Chem is a requirement for Biochem major.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://bmb.psu.edu/undergraduate/bmb-majors/pdf-forms/rap-bioch-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://bmb.psu.edu/undergraduate/bmb-majors/pdf-forms/rap-bioch-2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This is what I was referring to. This is the typical course schedule for a Biochem major at Penn State.</p>

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<p>Does physical chemistry at your school require differential equations as a prerequisite for the course? If they don’t list it as a prereq, then you most likely don’t need it for the class (they may not expect you to be able to solve problems using differential equations, or will solve them for you) or they may teach you the math you need to know in the course.</p>