<p>I love biology,and I enjoy studing it in high school,but people keep telling that its really hard and stuff. I mean how hard can it be?
Can I get all A's like perfect gpa as a biology major? And is it
more difficult if I am a premed?
And most of the premed major in biology does the admission officers get bored when they see a biology major? Should I major in something else? What could be some interesting major? I like all science subjects,but I love math,chemistry and biology and I have an interest in psycology.</p>
<p>87 view and no answer? Please answer someone</p>
<p>I would love to know the answers to your questions too!! :)</p>
<p>It depends what school you go to, but the vast majority of people do not get perfect GPA’s, ESPECIALLY in a competitive major such as biology, where a 95% can still be a B.</p>
<p>Again, it depends what school you go to.</p>
<p>High school biology is nothing like college biology. My cousin slept in all his biology classes in high school. He’s now studying more than ever in college.</p>
<p>A long-time CCer BDM (who has a sticky premed thread with the name “ten step guide …”) once posted that the reason why a premed class is hard is not because its contents are very advanced. It is hard because of the students in it.</p>
<p>The gist of this game is that when there are 100 students who are super eager to get an A but the professor is only willing to give out 20 As, it becomes difficult for many students to get an A in this class. If the professor does not do this screening job effective enough, MCAT will help finish the rest of the screening job so that med schools will have an easier job to decide which student should be invited for an interview (not for admission yet which is the phase 2 of the game.) </p>
<p>BTW, while you are doing this, do not forget that med schools may value a student who takes a full load of course work (I have had AP credits from high school. Can I take fewer classes? No! Med school may ask: What the heck is AP? The AP credits are not highly regarded by med schools and you may as well forget you have ever taken these AP courses) and spend a lot of your time/energy on premed ECs and other ECs. In other word, the student is expected to joggle many jobs, like a “low income” wage earners who needs to take 3 jobs at the same time. BDM once used the word “high-moto” to describe those successful premeds who are full of energy in and out of the class room.</p>
<p>Forget HS. D’s first college class went thru AP Bio material (D. had “A”, “5” on exam) in first 2 weeks and then they moved on to new stuff. Good number of her classmates fell out of pre-med track right after this class in their first semester of freshman year. I believe that D. took Orgo in her sophomore year. She said it was so hard that she had to go over material in her head while walking from class to class.
As for academic references, D. graduated #1 in her class from private prep. HS and attended state public college. Not an average kid, not an Elite UG.<br>
However, D. survived because she was used to work very hard in HS and manage her time very well as she was in numerous very time consuming EC’s. D. graduated last May with straight A’s in Zoology major (Music Minor) and currently is finishing her first year in Med. School, where she was told that she is doing well.
If you are a hard worker, you will do just fine also. All A’s are very possible, just do not forget to enjoy you life at college, participate, have fun, travel, spend time with friends. D. really liked to be in sorority which she did not plan originally. Still in close contact with her sorority sisters. So, stay flexible, be open to various opportunities.
Well D’s interviews at Med. School were not boring at all. However, to her dismay they did not discuss to much her Research internship and other Medical stuff, they had mostly talked about her music and her unusual for pre-med volunteering (3 years commitment)</p>
<p>Well it depends on your college. As Miami has indicated, “bio” at her D’s college really wasn’t the rough equivalent of AP Bio. Some colleges require that first year premeds take zoology instead (such as Miami). Much different.</p>
<p>The other thing depends on your own faculties. Do you prefer to memorize stuff, which bio mostly is. Or do you prefer the quant side of things, in which case Chem/Physics maybe more to your liking. (Visualizing organic molecules require spatial-temporal skills, i.e., HS Geom was a breeze.)</p>
<p>^Yes, D. mentioned that her private art classes has helped with Orgo, geom. as any math was always a breeze…but Orgo was not walk in a park by any measure, while Gen Chem. was her easiest college class and she was hired as SI by prof. So, the only easy class was actually Gen. Chem. But again, as bluebayou pointed out, it is personal preference. Nothing else was easy at all and still much harder in Med. School. Lots of very hard work…</p>
<p>Many, but not all, pre meds do major in biology. Med school adcomms do not get “bored” with seeing bio major applicants. They understand that people who are attracted to medicine are also attracted to biology. Mostly adcomms want to see that you’re genuinely interested in what you’ve studied whether it’s cell structure and function or contemporary French literature.</p>
<p>Always major in something you enjoy. First, you are more likely to do well in subjects that interest you. Second, if you don’t get into medical school you will at least have a career you enjoy. My son is a bio pre-med. He loves Biology and if he doesn’t end up in medical school he plans to pursue a PhD and look for a career in research. He never thought twice about what he wanted to major in (only contemplated a double major) or worried that it was boring for an Adcom.</p>
<p>Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. ;)</p>
<p>mcat2, why must there be a screen based on an arbitrary percentile within the class? The class has already gone through one screen, they had to get admitted to the college. Shouldn’t the screen be whether or not you know the material? Why does it matter how much everyone else knows? </p>
<p>This thread just supports my belief that grading on a curve is stupid. As people correctly pointed out, yes, there is a step up in the pace and amount of material between high school and college but really where things get difficult is if you’re in a class with a capped # of As. </p>
<p>I guess it’s a question of whether you think an A should mean you really know your stuff, or an A should mean you know more than the people who happened to take the course at the same time you did.</p>
<p>"that grading on a curve is stupid. " - even in cases when prof cannot explain material or test on material completely outside of what is covered in class? There are some profs like that, they have to cover their own ____'s or otherwise show “C” as a highest grade in class with 50% failed. They will be out of job rather quickly. On a flip side, having A’s for majority of students in a class is not such a good idea either.</p>
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<p>Because that’s the way it has always been. It is in the DNA of the STEM profs to award less A’s than profs who teach lit/hume courses. Dems da’ rules. That how it was in the dark ages when they went to college, and it worked out ok for them, so gosh darn that is the way it will be for you too.</p>
<p>fwiw: I once asked a Chem prof ‘why’ at a dinner party, and he had no response except to snort that the lit/hume courses should be less generous with A’s. :)</p>
<p>btw: the % is not “arbitrary”. A prof can easily make a test harder or easier by the questions s/he asks. So if the goal is to get the class mean to 60, 70, or 80, that is not too difficult for any experienced prof. And in the same vein, colleges that claim not to have a curve, e.g., all 90’s = A, really do (have a curve). The prof just makes the test rigor such that only xx % of the class will achieve a a 90.</p>
<p>If the pre-med prerequisites are too easy, you hard science students will have a harder time to get into a medical school. 
Professors in some departments may follow certain tradition. You need to be careful about getting into a department with harsh grading tradition. In general, your GPA would probability be fine if you do not enroll in honors science classes and you are not over-reaching in your UG selection.</p>
<p>" GPA would probability be fine if you do not enroll in honors science classes-Honors are easier not harder because prof. is more available with much fewer kids in class. I strongly advise taking Honors whenever possible</p>
<p>Miami,</p>
<p>I must be misreading your previous post because you can’t possibly think that allowing bad professors to keep their jobs is a good reason to curve a course. I understand that curving is much easier than anything else, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. On the flip side, I see no reason why an entire class can’t get As if the entire class learns the material. I’m not saying that a class has to have a large proportion of As, but the potential should always exist. The only good reason to limit the number of As is because you believe an A means that you outperformed your peers that semester, not just that (or at worst regardless of whether) you have actually mastered the material for the course.</p>
<p>This leads into my response to BlueBayou,</p>
<p>I think you misunderstood “percentile.” I have no qualms with a professor saying “I’m writing this test such that if you get 85% or higher of the questions right you get an A” or that a different professor writes their tests so that you need a 90, or maybe just a 70. My point is that, in the system you and I describe, you are not graded against the performance of the people you happened to take the course with. There’s nothing stopping the entire class from scoring above the cutoff, and similarly, there’s nothing stopping the entire class from failing. You should be graded based on well you know the material.</p>
<p>My point was not that I don’t understand why professors curve courses, it’s that I think those reasons are flawed. Just because that’s how it’s been done doesn’t mean that’s how it should be. There are plenty of examples of long standing traditions or beliefs that have not stood the test of time because people realized they were wrong.</p>
<p>Many medical schools now do P/F grading and don’t rank students during the first two years because they realized it’s not a good system (and that’s just number grades, let alone curving a class). I recognize that grading in 3rd and 4th year at basically all medical schools is probably even more flawed than grading on a curve, an yes, as you said blue bayou, I will suck it up and deal with it until I am possibly one day in a position to do something about it.</p>
<p>I think most of us have been through the education system and have taken the tests many times and are familiar with several types of “killer” questions:</p>
<p>1) Volume of knowledge expected to be learned per day: The professor races through 6 chapters in the last class which is like 1 or 2 days before the test. (This is actually a good training for med school preclinical years.)</p>
<p>2) Test items are not really remotely covered but they are in the test anyway, on the ground that the professor insists that the students should be able to “derive it” if they have mastered what have been taught. (This is a particularly good training for future researchers, except the time limit in the test room may be unreasonable.)</p>
<p>Heck, some algebra problem can be too tricky to be answered by almost all college students, even though the professor may claim that the answer to the test problem can be derived from high school algebra.</p>
<p>3) The number of problems is more than what most students can solve within the exam time limit. To be sure, this problem is more common in an engineering test (lots of computation, like a EM wave problem which needs 6 pages in the textbook to describe it and the professor gives it in the test anyway), and to a less extent, “let’s write a lot of tricky pseudo code” in a computer science class exam.</p>
<p>Sometimes, I think the professor should ask all of his trusted TAs to take the same test (But is he paid enough to be willing to do this?) If he can not get any grade close to an A according to his standard, the professor may have set an unreasonable standard given the way he teaches and gives the test. (I suspect that many TAs at many colleges may not be able to get into med schools – they may be lopsided toward academic only and lack outstanding EC achievement other than research.)</p>
<p>Talking about TAs, some irresponsible professor even asks TA to write the test in addition to grade the test. The problem is many TAs in the science department are internationals and sometimes the students complain that the most challenging part of taking a test is to understand the written English on the test. What a joke in higher education! (you can never run into such a problem in middle/high school education!)</p>