<p>I was curious to know how competitive within the classrooms are the studetns taking Penn's classes (in Biology)? Usually how deep does the professor go in terms of course breadth in the sciences? </p>
<p>I am really interested in being a biology major, but I wasn't sure how hard it would be to maintain a high GPA (3.75+) at Penn?</p>
<p>Also, does anyone know of any grade inflation/deflation at Penn?</p>
<p>At a recent visit to Penn, my tour guide, who was a sophomore, stated, “your curriculum can be as challenging or as easy as you want it.” If you want to just glide by then you surely can, but the purpose of going to an Ivy League is taking advantage of all the resources that will be presented to you. The professors are very compassionate about the subject they teach. The Anthropology class I sat in had a professor who was executing research in Jordan (the country). I probably got a little off topic, but your curriculum will be challenging, but it’s a matter of how much you wish to challenge yourself.</p>
<p>Intro courses (especially pre-med ones) tend to be tougher in terms of the curve. I hear upper-level courses get better though.</p>
<p>Competition wise, I don’t feel that Penn is that bad. There isn’t really any cutthroat stuff, but the difficulty of the courses could really vary.</p>
<p>Professors vary GREATLY. You, however, can look up the ratings of the professors on Penn Course Review and those are generally pretty reliable. My Orgo I professor (Bode) was amazing and I think I actually came and paid attention to all the lectures. Orgo II (Jouilee) was a different story all together. The class has huge yet only about 25 people should up for each lecture.</p>
<p>As for the difficulty, it depends yet again on alot of factors including your preparation. The Fall 2009 Math 104 people kinda had it rough because the 104 head for that semester (Pemantle) went crazy and put ridiculously hard Supplementary problems on the exams. For the Math 114 in Spring 2010, however, there was a section where the exams were basically homework problems so I don’t think that section even ended up with a curve.</p>
<p>Curves do get better in the higher levels but thats because most people taking them are going to be majoring in that topic. If you are a Bio major and getting Cs in high level Bio classes, that ususally strong implies that you should be rethinking on whether you should be a Bio major.</p>