Difficulty of this courseload?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Miami - Florida
1

Hi Guys, as a pre-med my GPA is very important to me and so I’m wondering how difficult this courseload would be for my freshman year in College to say maintain a 3.8+ GPA with these professors.

Gen Biology w Lab- Malancha Sarkar
Principles of Microeconomics - Augustine Nelson
Introduction to Psychology - Ray Winters
Introduction to Public Health - Olivia Ceavers
Art History I - Joel Hollander

2

The Biology course will be difficult as it will be filled with pre-med and STEM majors. The rest of the courseload will not be nearly as taxing.

3

@londondad thank you for your reply! I am curious about Public Health since I’m not so sure what this course entails. Would you happen to know the type of work/rigor involved in an introductry class in this field? Is it mostly memorization, essays, math or understanding concepts? Or a bit of everything?

4

^ Is this the course?

BPH 206. Introduction to Public Health. 3 Credit Hours.
Introduction to all aspects of public health, including health services administration, and policy.

I will ask DS if he knows anyone who has taken this course. One general point about UM though is that at least for the intro courses, the number of credit hours for a course is a good rule of thumb on how much work is involved. For example a number of intro STEM courses are 4 or 5 credits. My son took a number of 3 credit Intro courses (eg, Intro Psych) and most of them involve two midterm exams, a comprehensive final exam, sometimes a paper/homework assignments, plus you are graded on class participation (so don’t skip class!).

5

@londondad yes! Thats the course – it would be great if you could ask him about Olivia Ceavers and BPH 206 in general. And yeah hahahaha I’m not planning on skipping class

6

Okay. Also, do you need to take 17 credits first semester? Do you have AP/IB credits that you can use to graduate early or take some easier courseloads?

7

@londondad, I don’t have to – but without the fifth class I won’t be able to have 15 credits. Biology w Lab takes up 5 credits. I do have credit for Biology and History from IB exams but I’m not taking a history course and the biology credit will only be for the really early introductory classes.

8

@collegerigor123 - I think you might be in two classes with my son (Microeconomics and Psych). :slight_smile: At the very least, you have the same professors as he. Enjoy your semester.