<p>I've recently decided to go premed as a junior at UCSD and so I am supposed to take a year of general chem and lab. However, I took the AP chem test and received a 5, meaning that UCSD will not let me take the Chem6 series due to repeating credits. I talked to an advisor and he said that it wasn't recommended (med schools don't like this) but some students in a similar situation have gone to a community college to take the chemistry courses and then sent the transcript from the community college separately. I hear 6AH is excessively tough and considering its been nearly 4 years since I've looked at a chemistry equation, I don't think I would be able to do well in it. What would you guys suggest in my situation?</p>
<p>You might want to think about getting a new advisor, because you <em>can</em> take the classes at UCSD. Obviously they won’t give you credit, but med schools only care about the grades. Lots of people do this. One of my classmates in this situation talked to her TA/prof so that she’d only show up to exams and have those count for everything, thereby excusing her from homework/quiz nonsense.</p>
<p>^Homework/quiz nonsense huh?</p>
<p>^ seriously. my favorite format of genchem was crowell’s 6B: three midterms + one final, all multiple-choice, grades posted within hours of the exam. most efficient professor ever. </p>
<p>when we actually had homework due, everyone just teamed up with their suitemates to copy answers. about 10% of people actually did the questions themselves, but 90% got full credit.</p>
<p>Hm the advisors made it sound like the grade for repeated classes would not show up on your transcript. Well if other students have been doing this then I’ll probably do the same, it really seems like the best out of these choices. Thats what I was planning on doing actually but I was talked out of it by advisors who all said it was a bad idea. Your friend didn’t have any problems applying to med schools doing it this way?</p>
<p>@astrina</p>
<p>Ha ha. Well ok, I see where you’re coming from a student’s perspective and I would essentially agree (even though I did terrible in that class). From an educator’s prospective though, having homework and quizzes makes a lot of sense. Being efficient doesn’t necessarily correlate with being a superior teacher, but I do realize there are some limitations in large classes. As a prospective teacher things like that make me roll my eyes, but it’s ok, you didn’t know any better young child. ;)</p>
<p>@ Ramune - nope, she graduated last May and is a peds resident now. :)</p>
<p>@ Kings - actually, it’s coming from an educator’s prospective too. i’ve TAed lots and lots, and if you have 20 hours a week to devote to your students, the majority of those hours should be figuring out 1) how to present the material so that the highest number of students can absorb the highest amount of material and 2) how to help the stragglers. i’m not against giving homework and quizzes, but devoting time to grading those is not productive. you can give the keys to all of those and let the students check the answers themselves, then come to you with problems they have. quizzes don’t fix problems either; by the time you’ve established your students didn’t learn concepts XYZ well enough, it’s already too late to go back and do anything about it without sacrificing other material.</p>
<p>it’s ultimately up to the students; especially at the university level, teachers can only do so much. :)</p>
<p>^I don’t think 10 minutes a week is too much to devote to quizzes. And the whole point of the quizzes is to find out what isn’t making sense to the students anyway. I can understand not wanting to have graded homework though. That’s fine. And obviously students can’t expect to be force fed either. There are definitely plenty of opportunities to get help and learn here.</p>
<p>to answer OP, if you want to get into a medical school, take the chem6 series or chem6H series AT UCSD. I’m pretty sure they won’t accept you if you do transfer credit unless youre not at UCSD yet. Otherwise, everyone would shuffle to community colleges to get A’s in the premed Reqs.</p>
<p>Ah alright thanks for the answers. I’ll probably try to take Chem6a without credit then. I wonder why all the advisors seemed to think it was a bad idea. I’m guessing med schools wouldn’t really like it that I’m taking the courses for no credit, but it seems better than the alternatives at this point.</p>
<p>@astrina</p>
<p>Also I should say, I’m not trying to be like “Me super smart teacher. Me know all. astrina no is smart!” I definitely don’t want to come over as a pompous know-it-all. I realize that there are very many effective methods to teaching. I was just making sure you weren’t one of those people who thinks homework and quizzes are dumb because you’re lazy. I can definitely respect somebody’s experiences as a TA on which teaching methods worked for them.</p>
<p>^ I agree with both of you.</p>
<p>I believe homework should be essential for chemistry/physics courses where practice is the key to learning the concepts because it literally forces you to stay on top of the work instead of cramming it in. Most students at this school NEED that push. </p>
<p>I believe that all Bio courses should be no more than just the Midterm 40% and Final 60% grading format. I believe the professors that add in fluff to the bio course grades is ridiculous… crap like article reviews or reading outside papers… make students do BISP of some sort if you want them to do that.</p>