<p>How many students are usually admitted to FSH? Is admission very competitive? </p>
<p>For those of you currently attending, do you know anyone in FSH? What are their stats like? Have they have a good experience with FSH overall? </p>
<p>Any help would be great. Thanks!</p>
<p>If you go by the Fall 2008 course schedule, there were 73 in CHEM 105a, 59 in BISC 121, and 72 in PHYS 162 and alot of those people are in 2 of them so I’d estimate 100 or so. I thought you were asked to join similar to TO and you could apply if you wanted to.</p>
<p>I heard the classes are much harder since its the best students.</p>
<p>During orientation, the adviser basically pounded into our heads the fact that it was going to be very competitive and not everybody was going to come out with an A. I’m slightly worried.</p>
<p>Well considering ~20% of the people in the regular class come out with an A/A-, I wouldn’t expect the FSH number to vary much.</p>
<p>I cannot recommend the 160 series physics classes enough. I enrolled in 162 after hearing good things about Professor Bickers and not liking my 151 prof at all. Bickers is absolutely awesome. I got a B in 162 and an A- in 163. Bickers is a great professor and he takes a genuine interest in his students and is overall just a great guy. If you enjoy physics at all or do well in it, take his class.</p>
<p>note that honor sciences courses aren’t all FSH kids. the physics series (which as said above, is amazing) is predominantly engineers.</p>
<p>105a is FSH? I certainly didn’t know this, but that might explain why the curve sucked so much in that class.</p>
<p>My bad, I meant 115a, </p>
<p>105a/b is the normal class.</p>
<p>Thanks guys!</p>
<p>if you do FSH do you have to take physics second semester?</p>
<p>All the people I know who did FSH took CHEM 115a/BISC 121 fall and then CHEM 115b/BISC 221 spring.</p>
<p>Is anyone here an incoming FSH student like me? I was wondering-are we required to take the ALEKS online thing for the Chemistry class for Dr. Mak? Somebody I know said she received an email that told her that it wasn’t necessary to go into the “learning mode” after the Pre-Assessment, but I got nothing of the sort. :(</p>
<p>@NonSenescent, do you mind me asking what your stats are like that helped get you into FSH?</p>
<p>Not at all! Actually, I believe I’ve posted my stats in my profile somewhere. I’m actually a Presidential Scholar (I interviewed for Trustee but :x I guess it didn’t go as well as I thought). I believe that the only people invited for FSH are the scholarship interviewees-somebody correct me if I’m wrong on this. And to be in consideration for the merit scholarships, you basically need to be well-rounded: SAT/ACT/SATII/AP scores, extracurriculars, community service, GPA, etc. I believe that if those who were not invited via the scholarship were allowed to apply at a later deadline and were waitlisted-I have a friend who made it in off the waitlist.</p>
<p>To see my stats, click on my username, go to my username->College Visit Report->Stats Profile. I only put my quantitative scores; as for extracurriculars, you might be able to go pretty far back in my post history to find extracurriculars&work experience…probably in the USC Decisions Thread.</p>
<p>I posted this in an earlier thread, but here you go:</p>
<p>I did FSH this year.</p>
<p>It killed my GPA. While I was able to get an A and A- in honors biology (after studying wayyy more than my roommate, who was in regular bio), honors chemistry for me was horrible. First semester, I had Dr. Mak and got a B with much effort. Second semester, Dr. Krylov was horrible and completely unhelpful, and I got a solid C in the class even though it was supposed to be curved etc. She was not helpful in answering questions about my grade breakdown, and the final exam did not even have a key!! I got an 86/200 on the final exam because there was NO PARTIAL CREDIT GIVEN. I got 0/25 on problems that I easily did at least 75%+ right. It was absolutely ridiculous and I couldn’t even do much about my grade because we found out our scores the day I was flying back home to the midwest, and she refused to answer any of my questions via email. Even emailing the department head didn’t work.</p>
<p>A ton of kids dropped this year and Judy Haw did not plan a SINGLE program for us like she had planned / it is advertised. TO seems like such a better planned program than FSH. At least they get special dinners with faculty and field trips, etc. We got nothing.</p>
<p>infiniteabyss: Sorry your year didn’t go smoothly! :(</p>
<p>NonSenescent: Thanks!</p>
<p>My daughter was in FSH. She was a top-notch high school science student, but did not have an AP background. She had Honors sciences and college-level courses under her belt.
Ultimately, my daughter had to drop FSH chemistry and work extra hard in FSH biology to pass. Her GPA was greatly affected. Her professor (I can’t remember which one) told her that she should NOT have been admitted w/o an AP background. I only wish the FSH program coordinator(s) had denied her entry instead of setting her up for lower than expected grades. Three semesters later, she’s still trying to improve her GPA.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with infiteabyss. </p>
<p>I also participated in FSH in the 2008-2009 year, and I had a great experience.
Granted, I did bomb the chemistry final second semester, but that was my fault because I spent 3+ days studying for an IR final, and I only had around 6 hours left to study for chem with a very, very tired and overworked brain. It was no wonder that I did fail the test. </p>
<p>While Krylov was difficult to understand, I found her very nice and eager to help the students. On the discussion board, she always answers the questions quite promptly. I don’t know the details about the final though, if it was as you described. If so, I would be upset. </p>
<p>As for Judy, she did host a bunch of events. People just didn’t show up for them. For first semester, she hosted a free Body World event, less than 20 people came. There was also a mandatory tidal pool field trip, which was totally awesome. We had intimate experience with tidal pool creatures. (I saw and touched a sea hare, baby octopus, crab, sea anemone, sea urchin, sea star, etc… in their natural habitat). During the winter, she offered the FSH class free books and a speaker event along with it. Less than half of the people participated. Second semester, she hosted a one day field trip to Anacapa Island, only 6 people, including myself, went. The opportunities were there, people just didn’t seem to want to take them.</p>
<p>and btw, I think Krylov said that about half of the class got A/A- from her second semester class as their final grade.</p>