I’ve heard mixed things about the broadie/zwiebel bio course. From anyone who’s taken it, how is it? Also, has anyone been successful with the bio and chem combination freshman year?
For bio i’ve found that there doesn’t seem to really be much of a difference between the professors. One class might be harder, but the curve makes it the same at the end since the same numbers of students get certain grades (5% A, 10% A-, etc). Gen chem and bio are fine for freshman year. Just make sure to not take anything else that is hard with those classes. Many people take gen chem/bio/calc freshman year, which is a horrible choice.
@hsstudent2015 : Seems like most of them get mixed reviews. Since fd goes here, I trust him with the grading scheme, but it seems there is a difference in what some emphasize. They are all decently challenging, but for example, Singleton emphasizes more problem solving on his exams (I’ve seen his and the others) and most of the others emphasize details and just knowing the content. That section you chose is 1/2 and 1/2. Think about what type of learner you are or want to be. If you are more comfortable with learning lots of content quickly at a more surface level (and then more or less spitting it back out) and want to stay in this comfort zone, then any section other than Singleton will do. Sometimes one instructor style is heaven for one student and a disaster for another who wasn’t ready to take it on.
Biology is generally constant between the professors and since all but one set switch off half way through the semester, giving you 2 professors for the course, it isn’t even easy to pick based on teaching style as even if you love how one professor operates, they leave half way through. I think for Biology picking a time that works best for you and you will always go to class is the best thing you can do to have a positive outcome.
Well darn that sucks that it operates like that. I thought at least Singleton taught the whole semester by himself. Though, again, I think the differences between all the others are negligible from the materials I saw. He seemed to be the standout.
I believe Singleton actually does teach the entire semester now. He used to swap with Stubbs, but Stubbs retired last year. I personally wasn’t a huge fan of Singleton’s half of the semester. I found his lectures kind of unclear. I do think he’s the type of professor that someone who is passionate about biology would love though.
Well, for his type of exams, “unclear” lectures seem common from my experience. Many biol professors (and even chem. instructors) who wrote exams that were more problem solving oriented tended to not have lectures that were ultra organized but mainly focused presenting concepts or ways of thinking about things that weren’t always conventional and definitely deviated from the book. Many students who like the organization and presentation of content seemed to be quite uncomfortable and pretty much struggled. However, I think that if they did present it “clearer”, then less people would succeed on the exams because they had a heavy problem-solving or “think out of the box” component not as conducive to linear thinking. With a “perfect” presentation, students will naturally be upset when none of the content they taught is directly relevant to many of the problems given. Much like how such instructors tried to portray in their lectures, there is randomness, ambiguity, and uncertainty involved. I of course don’t know how Singleton taught but his exam style looks all too familiar to me and the type of instructors who give them tend to have similar styles of teaching. It could be intentional or it could just be them projecting how they think
That sounds right. I think much of the difficulty of that section came from the fact that the first half was taught by Stubbs who cared very much for fact based exams while the second half was taught by Singleton who cared very much for the problem solving types of exams. It may be less of an issue now since Singleton teaches the whole thing.
I see…yeah, it sounds like my biochem class (I had the misfortune of taking it when it was combined) where I did relatively well in the first part because it was more critical thinking and then the second instructor came in and hit us with a litany of content that we had to know all of in great detail with some mild problem solving so I struggled on the 2nd half because I was stubborn and did not want to adapt. On the final, it was very obvious who wrote what questions and unfortunately for me the second teacher wrote more of them. Luckily there were some bonus problems written by the first instructor and I got most of those…but I see how switching habits mid-semester is lame for sure.