<p>Perhaps the community college instructors will refrain from interjecting such pensive arboricultural mythos into their math lectures.</p>
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<p>:(. I actually thought the teaching quality was pretty good considering that the material we’re learning can be… not very intellectually stimulating itself sometimes. Am I the only person who finds life sci enjoyable? I love the material, and the workload isnt’ bad at all…</p>
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<p>:O Have you considered showing up for another section in addition to this one to see if you can find a better TF? I mean, crab apple trees definitely sound awesome, but I would prefer to know how to do the problems in less than 9 hours and pass the class in a sane manner instead…</p>
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<p>I am enjoying the class although I am slightly annoyed at the moment given that I stupidly blundered on the n-hexane/beta sheet question on yesterday’s midterm. I wrote a ludicrously nonsensical answer for the sake of hopefully bamboozling my way to partial credit and only achieved veritable insight once time expired.</p>
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Then that’s different – MD programs prioritize GPA to a much greater extent than PhD programs do. For a PhD program, it’s unquestionably better to get a lower GPA with higher-level courses, but MD/PhD admissions are more like MD admissions than PhD admissions.</p>
<p>Still, don’t assume that graduate-level courses are going to be more difficult than undergrad-only courses, or that it will be more difficult to get high grades in them. They’re usually quite a bit less work-intensive than undergraduate courses, and the grades are generally high – it’s just that they involve more interesting discussions of the material than undergraduate courses do, and will prepare you much better for a PhD program.</p>
<p>I don’t know how typical it is at Harvard for undergrads to take grad-level courses. I went to MIT as an undergrad, and I started taking grad-level classes my sophomore year, which was really helpful to me when I started grad school.</p>
<p>^I agree with Mollie as always</p>
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<p>As a freshman I’m not too sure either, but on the course catalogue, a lot of courses are listed as for “both undergraduates and graduates”.</p>
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<p>Life Science actually has the lightest workload of all of my classes, save for Expos, which I consider more as a requirement than as a class anyway.</p>
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<p>One of the professors is excellent. The other is decent. And the last is mediocre.</p>
<p>I think you can figure out who those particular individuals are. The last talked me into a stupor!</p>
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<p>Where did you get the mistaken impression that I am passing the course?</p>
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<p>That’s interesting - I found that question to be one of the easier ones. I had a terrible brain fart during the exam and forgot the proper Ka ratio. :(</p>
<p>But I guessed right. :p</p>
<p>As everyone can see, the notion that Harvard students can sometimes be pretentious and play mind games trying to one-up each other is completely without any basis in reality!</p>
<p>^There are only so many opportunities to be a d-bag in real life; individuals must take advantage of opportunities to do so at any instance.</p>
<p>Oops I was supposed to post mine like a week ago.</p>
<p>Life Sciences 2: Evolutionary Physiology & Anatomy</p>
<p>I may be one of like six non-pre meds in this class of like 120, but I took it because the subject material was interesting to me and I wanted to break up the monotony of reading and writing papers. </p>
<p>The class is odd in that the lab and lecture components do not overlap. You are not tested on lab material on midterms and some (but not all) of the labs do not require you to know most of the lecture material. This is because labs are highly anatomy focused while lectures only cover anatomy insofar as it helps you understand physiology.</p>
<p>The class is 98% memorization. I just took the first midterm and there was really only one question that wasn’t merely recalling details from lecture and barely so at that. I didn’t do as well as I had hoped on the first midterm because I didn’t have a ton of time to study that week, although I was above the average so it’s not the end of the world. Similarly, your lab grade is significantly influenced by practicals, which basically require you to memorize 40-50 anatomical parts of whatever you happened to be tested on that week. Muscles of the cat, stages of embryological development, etc. </p>
<p>I’d recommend that pre-meds take it but it’s really a poor choice for a “ooh this looks interesting” urge as was my case. It’s a bit too much work for that.</p>
<p>History 1927: Islam & Modernity in Central Asia</p>
<p>Covers Central Asia (the five ‘Stans’ plus Xinjiang and Afghanistan) mainly in the 19th-21st centuries but with some attention paid to the Mongol and Timurid Empires. A very interesting class if you have any interest in the region (or any region related to 19th century European colonization; you can draw many parallels between all of them). </p>
<p>Workload is on the easy side of moderate for a history lecture class. 3 four-page papers, an 8 page midterm-essay and a final exam. Lectures are interesting and Professor Tasar is very approachable and enthusiastic about the subject. My only gripe is that the first few primary sources were given almost no background in lecture, which makes it hard to work with them. This has improved lately. </p>
<p>History 1891: Understanding the Middle East since 1945: the basic socioeconomic and political structures</p>
<p>This is a bad course for a general overview of Middle Eastern History. For that, I would recommend Leonard Wood’s Arabic 162 (fall) or Arabic 170 (spring). This class almost assumes a knowledge of major Middle Eastern events from Nasser’s Revolution onward, unless you want to do a ton of outside reading. (Hint: you don’t.)</p>
<p>I already took Arabic 162/170 so I’m fine with it. I like the class and I love the TF and Sections. The class is taught by E. Roger Owen who is a huge name in Middle Eastern history, especially economic history. His ideas are very interesting although I find lectures awfully dry. Professor Owen is very intelligent and very humorous but, to be realistic, he is in his 70s and it is quite easy for someone with a short attention span like me to doze off. (Hint: I do.) I love Middle Eastern history so I wish I could pay attention better, but I just find his lectures painfully dry. Fortunately you can get most of his ideas from the textbook he wrote, which is the primary book for the class. I feel guilty writing this paragraph.</p>
<p>Arabic A: Introductory Arabic</p>
<p>Full-year course, so if you take it in the Fall you have to take it in the Spring. I don’t know what happens if you don’t; I assume the department gets mad at you and you get 0 credit for the Fall. Workload is high; I rarely spend less than 2 hours a night on the homework. My roommate who took Japanese says the Arabic program is way harder. The payoff is that you learn a lot, quickly. I’m five weeks into the class and I can have a semi-intelligent conversation with the Lamont security guard who speaks Arabic. </p>
<p>If anyone who reads this ever wants to take Arabic, PM me and I’ll have more to say about it.</p>
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<p>It’s probably not terribly common beyond the few 100-level requirements (those designated as “for undergraduates and graduates” in the course manual) that are required of some concentrations. Furthermore, I would think it would be quite atypical for premedical students who have a broader array of essentials to fulfill. And almost always, less than half of the courses one takes as a Harvard undergraduate are within the major. Usually five of these are standard undergraduate courses with an additional five in related fields. The remaining three to six are reserved for 100-level courses, tutorials, or research-oriented ventures intended for senior thesis stipulations (for honors candidates). It could also very well depend on how one chooses to utilize the elective allotment. However, selecting a very homogeneous course-load honestly isn’t a very strategic maneuver and is shrewdly discouraged by advisors. I am not well acquainted with many upperclassmen, but my Peer Advising Fellow (PAF), an MCB major with aspirations of enrolling in a graduate program, has invested more heavily into exploring the undergraduate curriculum.</p>
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<p>Let me guess: Rob, Dan, and Erin, respectively. (Although I feel the last two could swap positions. But that order is in accordance with my personal opinion.) </p>
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<p>That is particularly why I am so miffed by my stupidity. I am fairly certain I received a 93 – I had two additional one-point missteps but everything else correct. Given the relative ease of that test, I cannot imagine the average being too far lower. The most common blunder, though, seemed to be that many gave negative distinctions to the ∆G and ∆S values based on the common understanding that enzymes typically denature at high rather than moderate temperatures. In that instance, it was relatively simple to not engage one’s critical reasoning faculties when a more commonsensical, albeit erroneous, solution was readily available.</p>
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<p>Mmm, I would order it slightly differently. Agree that Professor Lue was awesome last week though! (And I hope they don’t read college confidential to know that we’re talking about them.) :p</p>
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<p>Oh stop. What I did on that test topples yours easily on the scale of stupidity that I don’t even want to think about it anymore.</p>
<p>v yeah, when “silly errors” only occur occasionally. :(</p>
<p><a href=“And%20I%20hope%20they%20don’t%20read%20college%20confidential%20to%20know%20that%20we’re%20talking%20about%20them.”>quote</a>
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<p>It doesn’t matter.</p>
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<p>I am the type of individual who still dwells on missed test questions from elementary school. I have always found silly errors to be a large motivating force, though.</p>
<p>I’m not a Harvard attendee, but I hope it’s still okay to post on this thread.</p>
<p>“I am the type of individual who still dwells on missed test questions from elementary school. I have always found silly errors to be a large motivating force, though.”
- LOL aw mifune. If I may ask… What was the lowest grade you’ve ever received on any sort of assessment? You’re quite a perfectionist. Very admirable.</p>
<p>Haha, I think I may be a little out of the norm at Harvard NOT being a perfectionist. </p>
<p>Though I do remember what the lowest grade I received on an assignment was… 16%</p>
<p>Good for you!
My lowest grade was a 19 on my spanish final in 8th grade that counted for diddly squat. They weren’t going to put it on the report card, anyway.
I don’t want to sound like someone that only cares about grades, but this spanish teacher…she didn’t even teach. Awful awful teacher, I’m telling you.</p>
<p>YAY UNDERACHIEVERS</p>
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<p>A zero. Albeit, that was a score on a rather minor evaluation – a ten-point pop assessment on material that I had never studied. Displeasing, of course, but it was quite insignificant relative to subsequent scorings and the cumulative point total for the semester. However, if it pertains to a more significant exam (>3%-4% of a semester grade, for instance), then perhaps a high B. I have received lower scores, to be sure, but it’s fairly easy to obtain better markings if one is adept at disputing any indicated inaccuracies or the validity of certain questions (as permitted by the instructor’s open-mindedness, I might add).</p>
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I would just encourage you to speak with other pre-med upperclassmen as you develop your plans over the next months and years, and not rely on a small sample size to decide what’s advantageous for your eventual applications. My lab may be a special case, but one of our undergrads (junior, SCRB concentrator, pre-med) is taking a graduate course over at the medical school this semester, and my labmates who are MD/PhD students (both HMS MD/PhD students, one was a Yale undergrad and the other MIT) took substantial numbers of high-level courses in their majors, including graduate-level courses, when they were undergrads. </p>
<p>If you want to be a PhD student in the future, you should at least be interested in taking graduate-level courses as an undergrad, even if ultimately they don’t work in your schedule. If not, then why pursue a PhD in the first place?</p>
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<p>…you’re an odd one. First of all, I am “fairly certain” that my grade is a 93 in reverse. And though the test wasn’t murderous, I don’t think you ought to so easily assume that the average won’t be much lower - there are folks like me in the class, after all.</p>
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<p>Harvard’s course evaluation site is an invaluable tool in that respect, both to derive an impression of the course expectations and to view the demographics of the field of respondents (relative proportion of those who are taking the class as a pre-medicine essential, department requirement, elective, and so on). I mainly look toward the difficulty assessment and recommendation distinctions given that those are the variables destined to be most reflective of grading procedures, as GPA necessarily needs to be my primary concern. I have scoped out classes across the spectrum of departmental options, including graduate courses, but not extensively, since I cannot assimilate them into my schedule due to my choice of saturating more slots with standard introductory courses.</p>