<p>I just came out of a biostats midterm and felt it was really hard (the exam was not really what i expected and the class has been quite difficult for me, since its less math based and more explanatory based on everything)</p>
<p>I have a 3.9~ ish gpa and wondering if i should drop the class </p>
<p>How do med schools look at having only 3 classes (my other three are vertbrat physio + lab, biochem, and GE course)</p>
<p>I feel for you, because I’m in exactly the same situation. I did badly on a mathematical stat midterm. If I drop it, I’ll be down to 3 courses this semester. I don’t want that, and I don’t even get a refund for the course tuition. But I’m not sure if I’ll be able to ace it at the end.</p>
<p>Can you still drop without a W? I don’t think it will look bad as long as you get good grades and do all your pre reqs.</p>
<p>yea i can, deadline is during second week of march for without W</p>
<p>and yea i am done with all pre-reqs; im not sure if some med schools have req. of biostas</p>
<p>its one midterm, I am sure you can make up for it as the year goes on. Ask the professor how you can better approach the class.</p>
<p>so i finally got the midterm back and got A with curve somehow… but I definitely need to find a better way to approach this class.
thanks for the comments guys.</p>
<p>^typical CC student :rolleyes:</p>
<p>lol @ entomom!!!</p>
<p>
My thoughts exactly!</p>
<p>my first thought was biostat is usually an A for premeds…</p>
<p>
that was my original assumption coming into the class, but it really depends on profs as i realized
calc to me was way easier than this class.</p>
<p>sorry if i sound like the typical cc student… my previous posts make me seem so neurotic</p>
<p>Just giving you a hard time mb, I figured you’ve been around here long enough to take it. Glad everything turned out OK, keep up the good work!</p>
<p>haha i know, thanks entomom</p>
<p>
Did the exam include any topic like ANOVA, FDR? Although some of the biostatistics topics are algebra-based, it appears to me that some concepts are quite elusive to many persons who learn them for the first time. As you said, the difficulty depends on profs. A professor who specializes in the evolution and ecology parts of biology may pull in a lot of topics from that subject area.</p>
<p>Oh joy, just what we need in our future doctors…those taking classes that look good, selectively dropping them if they can’t ace them (regardless of how valuable the content or not), and basically just going to college for the med school application.</p>
<p>^ Some high school students at my child’s competitive public high school did something similar: There were two tracks at my child’s high school: the gifted/talented track and the honor track. Students know that one teacher may give out the highest grade (say, 100) but the other teacher will give a grade no higher than 98. If that teacher who gives the lower grades happens to teach a class on the gifted/talented track, many students will transfer to the honor track – in order to protect their rank. In the next year, if another teacher who gives a lower grade teaches a class on the honor track, these students will reapply to get into the gifted/talented track. Some students will also jump back and forth between the IB track and the AP track.</p>
<p>This is because the class rank is what college adcoms care the most if you come from a large public school. Should we blame the system or the students (often times their parents)?!</p>
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<p>^ wow MCAT2, you pretty much nailed the point!! We havent done ANOVA yet (even though we do use it my other upperdiv bio classes) or FDR, but that is one of the next things we are doing. There was actually little to no math in the exam, since the math part of stats is really easy. It’s the whole explaining concepts and why and what such and such means. I mean i did take AP stats back in HS and that exam was pretty much 80% deciding what test to use and just reporting the stastic and making conclusion. It wasn’t really about explaining and understanding the concepts behind it, which is much focused in college.</p>
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well, im not going to deny the “selectively dropping part,” and i wouldnt say im taking this class to look good (more like its required for some med schools). Further, my other intention of taking the class is that it would be important for my molec bio research (the prof specializes in statistical analysis of microarrays). </p>
<p>I originally thought i did really poorly on the exam like (C or worse). If you are going to blame the students, you also have to blame the system for requiring students to get really good grades.</p>