<p>How hard is it to succeed as a freshman with a biology major? I will be attending Villanova university, and I really want to have a high gpa at the end of freshman year. I'm taking AP biology this year in high school, and I do well (mostly A's). I read somewhere that the typical first semester freshman at Villanova takes both General Bio and General Chem!!! How much of a workload/how hard do you think this would be? If I get or 4 or 5 on the Bio exam, do I still have to take Gen Bio, or will they put me in a different bio class! I really just want a relatively easy transition into college and a high gpa to qualify for scholarships and the honors program, etc.</p>
<p>My D is a sophmore chemistry major and took General Bio and a Chem major chem. (not Gen. Chem) and found the work load tough but manageable. The thing she complained the most about were the labs. While most of her non-science friends were out of class, she had labs all afternoon. She also found out that many students who wanted to go to med. or dental school were not Bio majors but were Chem or Bio-chem majors.</p>
<p>As I understood at the pre-med meeting at accepted candidates day, pre-med students can take AP credit for bio/chem/phys but they are encouraged to audit the class just so they a) know it for the MCATs and b)don't get over their head in higher-level coursework. Auditing is pretty much just sitting in on the class with no mandatory assessments, and your transcript will show Au for audit.</p>