<p>I've noticed that some courses, such as calc and chem, can be taken at the honors level. Does this do anything at all besides increasing work difficulty? I'm an incoming freshman interested in premed and I was going to take calc and chem but if taking honors will really just make it tougher and demolish my GPA with no benefits, I'd like to know.</p>
<p>yeah, I'm interested in this too. I think our peer advisors will probably know, though.</p>
<p>Honors courses are good if you are thinking about majoring in the subject. They are also good if you want an extra challenge.</p>
<p>You learn the material a lot better but beware that it is very intense and it basically acts as a weed out. From what I've heard, the science honors courses are much tougher than the math honors courses. I know a lot of people that couldn't cut it in the science honors. </p>
<p>I recommend enrolling in the honors versions and see how you do in the first few weeks. You can always drop the course and transfer into the non-honors course. Professors are sympathetic to that and students do it all the time.</p>
<p>Do you know anything in particular about MATH 122? (2nd Semester Calc., Honors Level)</p>
<p>My girlfriend took that course so I was always looking at her syllabus and seeing what she was doing. The math honors sequence didn't seem that hard but you get a lot of homework. It didn't seem too difficult, but then again I have a strong math background and I had already taken calc when I was looking through her stuff.</p>
<p>Anything about Chemistry 215? Also, are Honors classes typically smaller than regular classes?</p>
<p>Yeah I guess they'd be smaller. So from what I understand honors courses would help for scientific grad school more than med school?</p>
<p>Yeah they're smaller. A lot smaller. I only know one or two people that took honors Chem and they said it was extremely difficult with a lot of lab time. Both of those people ended up majoring in Govt or Polish or something so your mileage may vary. It's hard to say how it is because like I stated earlier, it depends on your natural aptitude in that particular subject.</p>
<p>i took the phys/chem/math honors series. </p>
<p>phys honors courses (mechanics, e&m, waves) were populated almost exclusively by physics and AEP majors. </p>
<p>chem honors (inorganic, organic, physical) was a mixture of chem majors and premeds. </p>
<p>math (linear algebra, vector calculus, differential equations, complex analysis) had math and science majors mostly. no premeds for some reason. </p>
<p>this was over 10 years ago though, so caveat emptor.</p>
<p>second semester of inorganic (216) i had this crazy professor (Wolczanski?) who just <em>plowed</em> through the material. there was a rumor that he did his PhD at MIT in 3 years? it was a lot of work, all the premeds were freaking out because of the low prelim scores. i think the mean on one of his prelims was a 26/100. he thought it was great. (mainly because he liked watching the premeds freak out, i suspect.) After the semester, I look on my grade report and i see i've gotten 5 credits for Chem215. it turns out that he had been basically throwing graduate level stuff at us to see what would happen. (wha?, group theory in freshman chem?) We were all freshmen; we didn't know any better; we thought this was normal. He had lobbied the college to give everyone who took chem 216 that semester an extra credit. I think the mean was was equal to a pretty high letter grade, too.</p>
<p>He did his PhD at Caltech in 5 years, which is standard. If I ever become a professor, I would do what it takes to freak out pre-meds too (which is not much).</p>
<p>edit: looking at the faculty webpage, I think Cornell hired about 4 new faculty recently</p>
<p>Shizz: I love the internet for that reason. Being able to verify information so quickly. It's incredibly easy to find a reliable source. And when you can't you can cross reference dozens of less reliable sources (like when I wanted to know if blackbelts REALLY had to register their hands and feet :)). And it's so fast. And you just post a link and poof, instant proof. Just felt like throwing that out there...</p>
<p>So any more word on MATH 112 VS. 122 anybody? (thats "2nd semester" calc. vs. "2nd semester" honors calc.)</p>