<p>What makes bio harder than chem for most people? Especially if the bio isn’t all that chem focused?</p>
<p>IsaacM,</p>
<p>Most freshmen have better preparation in chemistry than biology (more people take AP Chem than AP Bio). Also, at the end of high school more people tend to understand chemistry because it is quantitative while biology in high school is more memorization. Additionally, while 5.111 is similar to AP Chem most people seem to think 7.012 is dissimilar from AP Bio. Most people say that 7.012 is more about problem solving and is kind of like puzzle solving, while AP Bio was memorization. 7.012 tests are much harder than 5.111 tests, imo, because they are time crunch and require a more in depth understanding of the material.</p>
<p>Could you elaborate on Course9 (BCS). My sibling, a current student at MIT, jokingly calls it the “easy” major whereas courses like 3 and 10B are the hardest.</p>
<p>1) Is the above true? Is BCS an easier major compared to its counterparts?</p>
<p>2) How successful can a pre-med be at MIT (Is it hard maintaining a solid GPA, say idk 4.5+)</p>
<p>3) How many papers do you get from HASS? How much reading? </p>
<p>thank you again very much :)</p>
<p>I also took both 5.111 and 7.012 in the fall (but because I passed out of the calculus GIR requirements as opposed to physics). I really thought that 7.012 was far more aligned with the AP Bio curriculum than 5.111 was with AP Chem. It’s possible that I’m just quite bad at chemistry, but even after taking AP Chemistry I had to put a lot of effort into 5.111 and not nearly as much into 7.012 after taking two years of both in high school. Anyways, I thought fall biology was easier than fall chemistry, though most people I know would probably agree with Jalmoreno on the opposite - it’s very much dependent on your interests and background (I think the AP Bio curriculum varies non-trivially from school to school).</p>
<p>@Hockeydude664: I don’t know that much about BCS, but for a communication intensive (CI-H) HASS, you have to write 20 pages total over the semester. The reading (and whether or how much of it you’ll actually need to do) varies greatly from class to class. You’ll need to take either two CI-H classes or one CI-HW and one CI-H depending on your AP English/FEE results.</p>
<p>I would also like to throw a word of caution out there about freshman advisors. I came here thinking that I knew basically nothing about life & decisions here (which was mostly true). But, as a result, I very nearly took the only advice my freshman advisor gave me, which I later realized was actually pretty bad advice after losing a non-trivial amount of sleep over not taking said advice. Other people may know MIT better than you, but don’t forget that you know YOU better than other people. Be wary of advice that does not follow/include an actual conversation or discussion because generic recommendations are rarely of much use. Also, IMO upperclassmen are often the best sources of advice because they’ve just been through this stuff and remember/know how things actually are.</p>
<p>Everyone comes in with different backgrounds, so it’s usually a danger zone to generalize about if x or y class will be harder for an individual. I can say this much, 7.012 averages were in the high 60s/low 70s while 5.111 averages are in the low 80s, which I feel suggests how straight-forward the tests were.</p>
<p>@Hockeydude,
- I am not Course 9 and feel this question is up Mollie’s alley. I can say this much, I doubt 9 is an easy major. Some people like to tout engineering majors as more difficult than science majors but I usually doubt that. Engineering majors are more requirement-heavy and therefore less flexible, but I don’t think science majors are easy
- Being premed at MIT is not easy. As far as GPA and grades, YMWV, but it will probably be much harder to get a near-perfect GPA at MIT than, say, your local state university. One thing that I think makes premed hard is the way MIT handles intro classes versus other colleges. At most colleges introductory biology and introductory chemistry are year long classes that include lab. This means that in just general chemistry and general biology you satisfied the premed requirement of 1 year of general (inorganic) chemistry w/ lab and one year of introductory bio w/ lab. At MIT, however, because the intro classes are one semester long and include no lab, you would need 7.012, 7.02 (bio lab) and 7.xxx (usually 7.03 -genetics) to fulfill that same bio requirement, and 5.111, 5.310 (pre-med chem lab), and 5.xxx (usually 5.60 - Thermodynamics) to fulfill the chem requirement. Obviously, the set of classes required at MIT is more advanced than at most other colleges with year long intro sequences (with lab). Anyways, despite these challenges MIT does produce many successful premeds, and as a non-premed I am not an authority on the subject.
- HASS classes can vary widely, except for the standard that CI-H requires at least 20 pages of writing in a semester. From my experience, my HASS classes have required a varying amount of reading which can be 50 pgs per section meeting on a good week and 150 pgs on a bad week. I’m terrible with time management in regards to papers and usually write them the night before or the morning that they are due and have still somehow managed to get As on them.</p>
<p>Thank you guys for answering my second and third qs but Mollie if you could answer the first, I would greatly appreciate it as that would be my major choice if I’m accepted (i am a junior yes)</p>
<p>
People will say that, yes. Whether it’s true depends on you and the courses you choose to take – BCS is a very flexible major in terms of class choice, and you can choose to take courses that are more computational, more molecular, or more cognitive. </p>
<p>
It’s not trivial to maintain a high GPA at MIT, but it’s also not uncommon – the Careers Office used to publish the average GPA of MIT premeds applying to medical school, and it was always around a 4.6 (out of 5.0). </p>
<p>There are a few useful tricks you can use at MIT to protect your GPA, like taking your hardest GIRs first semester on pass/no record, using the junior/senior pass-fail class option, dropping a course in which you’re not doing well (drop date is very late; about 3 weeks before the end of classes), taking UROP for credit (in which you will almost always get an A), etc. About 90% of MIT students who apply to medical school get in each year.</p>
<p>1.Is biology memorization based at mit?
The ap bio curriculum at our school is heavy, heavy memorization. The chapters are usually 20 pages with every sentence needing to be memorized because each random fact and stipulation is fair game for tests. Is it like that?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If it is, would you recommend taking it 1st semester if your not planning on majoring in biology-related field because of the pass/no record?</p></li>
<li><p>How much of your class do you get to befriend/be acquainted with/ be familar with? </p></li>
</ol>
<p>4.If i remember corrrectly, mit admitted about 1700 students. Out of 1700 how many would you know?</p>
<ol>
<li>Is there any way to know more students by graduation?</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>Personally, I didn’t think it was so much memorization based. Often the question would give you the asinine details and merely ask you to apply it. I felt like a lot of it was quite like a logic puzzle. Of course, you do have to memorize some things, but it’s not like AP Biology in that they don’t take test questions from picture captions in the textbook.</p></li>
<li><p>I would recommend taking it fall semester at some point during your undergraduate career simply because Professors Lander and Weinberg are pretty dang amazing. I know plenty of people in non-related majors don’t take it freshman year at all though and take advantage of the curve later taking it with a bunch of freshman on P/NR.</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t know if I can give you a number. I’m well acquainted with the freshman in my dorm and then just with other students who are involved in the same things that I am.</p></li>
<li><p>Each class has about 1100 students. Again, can’t give you a number. But, if you leave your room a fair amount freshman year you should be able to meet enough people that you always see at least a few people you know walking around campus/down the infinite.</p></li>
<li><p>Do things 
Clubs, research, just hang out in your dorm/in your friends’ dorms.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>thanks! Im glad mit isnt memorization focused. Hopefully ill be able to meet a lot my class!</p>
<p>
Biology at MIT is so far from being memorization-based that most upper-level biology classes are open-book or allow note sheets. 
</p>
<p>
There are always a couple of hyper-social, hyper-connected students in each class who really seem to know everybody. The two I know from my class both ended up at Harvard Business School a few years after graduation, and are now entrepreneurs, where their social skills are being put to rather profitable use.</p>
<p>@rr5001,</p>
<ol>
<li>Nope, 7.012 felt more like problems were puzzles to figure out. There was a little memorization involved, but nothing to the extent of having to know exactly every line of the textbook. A good example would be that on questions relating to oncogenes/tumor suppressor genes they liked to give tables where they give you a gene, a description of what it does and you would have to fill in which kind of gene it was. 4 out of 5 times the description would tell you which kind and then there were a few of the more famous examples you were expected to know and didn’t have descriptions. (like p53 and ras)</li>
<li>Like I said before, I expected biology to be more difficult for me than chemistry, so I took 7.012 in the fall on P/NR. I ended up actually enjoying it and although I still think it was the hardest GIR, I got a good grade by studying a lot.
The only reason I can see besides difficulty for taking one over the other is getting on the chemistry track faster. For some majors, like Course 5, 10, and the life sciences (7, 20, etc.), and for premeds it is beneficial to get chemistry started faster. Then you can take 5.12 in the spring, 5.13 and/or 5.07 in sophomore fall, and then 5.08 sophomore spring (7.05 if you didn’t take 5.07). Taking chemistry in the spring means you can take 5.12 sophomore fall, 7.05 sophomore spring, and 5.13 junior fall, meaning that 5.13 got pushed back an entire year.
Note, biology is the GIR that is most likely to get punted to a later year. However, I would personally say that you shouldn’t take it later than sophomore fall because you may actually end up enjoying it and discover you like biology a lot. You want to make that discovery earlier rather than later so you can include that in planning for classes to take and maybe even major choice.</li>
<li>I don’t have an exact figure, but you definitely are not going to know everyone. You will primarily know the people you live with, and then people in outside activities you do. You may also know a bunch of people you don’t live with because of mutual friends (and in a lot of those cases, you end up living with them the next semester/year).</li>
<li>No exact figure, but if MIT admits around 1700 students the classes usually end up being around 1100.</li>
<li>Outside activities. Note, however, that you won’t have as much time so you probably will not be able to do too many of them.</li>
</ol>
<p>How do I make the most of my CPW? How durable is it to double major in EECS and management (Course 6 and 14) and do extracurrculars/sororities and an intramural team all at the same time? Do many freshman do UROP’s? Also, when you do UROP’s, do you feel your classes have prepared you well or do you need to learn and do many things outside of class to be prepared?</p>
<p>Any comments are appreciated Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Is it necessary for someone majoring in Course 6 to already have extensive experience in programming, or is it possible for people with basic programming skills to catch up when they get there?</p>
<p>@WaitingGirl,
Don’t pay for food, maybe sacrifice sleep, try to meet a group of friends so you can go to places with people. Maybe plan on a few key events to go to, but definitely leave enough time to get swept into something you weren’t planning on doing.
Management is Course 15, 14 is Economics. Not sure but I don’t think it’s too bad because 15 is supposed to be easy major. You may be aiming for too much to do, but you’ll learn what you can/can’t do when you’re here.
Many freshman do UROPs.
Haven’t done a UROP myself, so I can’t say from experience.</p>
<p>@canbambiswim
It is not necessary to know programming before becoming Course 6. There are IAP classes that teach programming and there are introductory programming classes like 6.00 (in Python) and 1.00 (in Java). You can definitely catch up. One of the most successful Course 6 majors I know started 6.01 his freshman spring, found it too hard because he didn’t have enough programming background, then dropped down to 6.00. I think he lined up a job for this summer that pays $24/hr, and he’s a current junior.</p>