<p>I will be a Neuroscience major with a minor in Arabic and I'll also be on the premed track. Soo my question is how hard is Neuroscience of a major? Is it mostly memorization like Biology? or understanding concepts and then applying it like Chemistry? Thanks in advance :)</p>
<p>No, Emory is almost too pre-med friendly. You’ll have to work hard, but I must admit that a lot of professors classes are not as tough as they should be so as to avoid upsetting the pre-meds. As for NBB vs. Biology. NBB is not a tough major and has a nice mixture of memorization and problem-based/conceptual (and even liberal arts approached if you take electives in anthro. dept. or psyche. Some of the psyche classes are harder than NBB courses to be honest) coursework. Your idea of biology being mostly memorization at a top school isn’t really founded. This major is much like NBB and I think it has more professors that do an even better job than NBB on taking the emphasis off of regurgitating facts. Many more biology (upperlevel and lower) professors than NBB profs. have moved away from this model where they make you learn and then regurgitate facts. Biology courses now tend to have higher workloads than lecture-based courses in NBB (most are purely exams and the occasional extra credit project). Biology courses are increasingly adding discussion sections for example (which require you to read and write synopsis on lots of primary articles, lead one discussion, and actively engage in conversation) and the problem/case-based approach is slowly spreading (as in more professors endorse heavier integration of these techniques even if technically in a medium sized/large lecture setting). I can really only say this for the more quantitative classes in the NBB concentration (like physical biol, which hardly no pre-med takes, computational, which not many pre-meds take, and NBB stats. which a reasonable amount take). As for exams, it’s purely professor dependent, but better professors don’t design high school like exams. You need to understand and be able to apply it as opposed to regurgitate it (they know how to even design multiple choice exams that make you apply. Anyway, a decent prof. normally has like a portion of the test with straightforward questions/prompts that can be regurgitated and another portion that is quite challenging and requires a high understanding of the material. Normally, the better the professor, the more abundant and tougher the latter portion is. Some give exams that are only the latter and not the former) This seems to be more of the case in Biology than NBB for some reason (many profs. in NBB still do purely multiple choice even when the class is on the small side for a science course. Only intro. biology and Human Physiology are like this in biology and I would say this now only applies to 1/3 or 1/2 of intro. biology professors). The only thing I think is better about the NBB department is that classes there are curved quite generously and unnecessarily at times, so some of those courses can be GPA boosters even if you choose not to work that hard. Anyway, majors aside. Normally the issue pre-meds have is getting through courses like gen. chem, organic chemistry, and physics with their sanity. I was going to say biology, but they’ve been making this easier so I’m sure many more are doing well in biology than before. Physics and organic chemistry seem to be classes that yield low grades no matter how supposedly easy or hard a professor is.</p>