chemistry 1a/al or biology 1b?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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So, seeing how GPA is such an important factor for med school, should I opt out of Chemistry 1A in the fall semester with the Head-Gordons and take it in spring with Marsden? And instead of Chem 1A in the fall, I would take Biology 1B with Baldwin. Thoughts would be much appreciated!

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Commenting to follow.

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Hey, third year MCB major here :slight_smile: I had Marsden for organic chemistry ( 3A/3B) and also for Chem 1AL lab. Lol, I had him for an entire year and I can say he is one of the best ones out there. I mean he gives out a lot of notes, but he does it with the students on a chalk board and his exams do follow the practice problems, though a little challenging. However, I had organic chem with him which is hard in general. He’s great in terms of getting help as he is cooperative and he curves the class fairly along with giving tons of practice homework problems that are helpful. So, maybe take Chem 1A in spring? But, also check rate my professor because I don’t want you to mess up. Bio 1B is nice, although I took that in the spring and it is heavy in terms of memorizing plants, all their structures and identifying all of them in lab in terms of plant structures, but just read the book and don’t fall behind. Evolution and ecology are ok, but evolution was my best section. However, studying matters and the way you study matters a lot :slight_smile:

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i just realized that marsden taught chem 1a in spring 2016, but im going to be taking it in spring 2017 and theres no guarantee that he’ll be teaching it then… in terms of only difficulty, regardless of who’s teaching, which is the harder class? biology 1b or chem 1a/al?

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Either way, the science classes are difficult at Berkeley and mainly the curves are around a B- (personal experience here). Chem 1A is a bigger weeder class because generally all freshman take it at their first semester at Berkeley and they are just being introduced to the sciences. Chem 1A exams are hard, but now when I look back I think they were better than I thought of them at that time. Chem 1A is hard and, persoanlly, it was harder for me compared to Bio 1B.