<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>If you're looking for a high GPA at all costs, you should probably also be looking for easy tricks like taking courses you're already technically qualified for through APs (aka, why would you place out of Gen Bio, take the easy A)</p>
<p>be careful with that though. at some schools the intro courses are easy As, but at others, they are the most difficult in the major (that's the case at my school)</p>
<p>I completely agree with the above post. I too had AP credit when I went into freshmen year. I rejected it and decided to take the actual general biology course. Biology 111 (first semester) was a challenge but definately doable. Biology 112 was blunt memorization of species we would never need to know about. My prof was obsessed with Ecology, Botany, and Zoology. I decided to accept my AP Biology credit for this class.</p>
<p>In my experience: the curve becomes tighter as the class size increases. Remember that.</p>