Is this schedule too easy?

<p>Hello,
I was going through the course selection on the UCI website and drew up a preliminary courseplan, but it seems kinda light - could anyone throw any suggestions?</p>

<p>Honors General Chemistry (Includes Lecture + Discussion) 4 Credits
Honors General Chemistry Lab 2 Credits
Bio 93A Lecture + Discussion 4 Credits
Humanities 1A Lecture 4 Credits
Humanities 1A Discussion 4 Credits</p>

<p>18 Credits seems to be fine for a freshman 1st quarter, but it's only 3 classes. am i taking it too easy?</p>

<p>you're taking hum core. It won't be easy ;)</p>

<p>what is hum core? i keep hearing that, is it humanities? i probably sound dumb asking this, but i just want to clear it up.</p>

<p>Humanities Core is the 8 unit class that fulfills 7 different categories if you take the 3 class series. It' a bargain for what it does for your breadths but it's a ton of reading and more work than a usual class (hence the 8 units instead of 4).</p>

<p>The usual student takes 16 units. Bio majors probably take more but you're fine buddy.</p>

<p>"hum core" = humanities core</p>

<p>That will be a challenging schedule. Won't be easy, but it's a do-able workload.</p>

<p>Do you know who the prof is for Chem H2A? Is it Shaka? He's tough.</p>

<p>yeah well i've worked it out so that i have absolutely no classes whatsoever on tuesdays and thursdays, so i figure if i cna't do well first quarter, then im just a dumbass. thanks for the input guys. oh, and why is humcore so tough? is the grading hard, or is it just a ****load of reading?</p>

<p>oh and about the honors chem prof, the one i looked at at hte course sleector thing on the website, i got Tobias. I went to <a href="http://www.ratemyprofessor.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.ratemyprofessor.com&lt;/a>, and i found that apparenlty most of hte class doens't do well on the test, but he curves and you get extra credit (but don't take my word for it haha).</p>

<p>That's exactly like my schedule freshman year except I took regular chem instead of honors.</p>

<p>I heard honors chem is soo hard that by the end of the year, more than half people dropped the class. Since you got Tobias, here's his website from fall 05: <a href="http://eee.uci.edu/05f/40110/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://eee.uci.edu/05f/40110/&lt;/a>
so you can see the kind of homework and worksheet that he gives</p>

<p>as for humcore, it's more like hit or miss depending on your discussion leader. My first quarter, I keep getting Bs and B-, so I switched teacher the next quarter and got A.</p>

<p>my friend told me that even really smart students dont take honors classes, bc it will sure to bring down ur GPA and when u graduate it doesn't really matter, as long as u have a good gpa employers will like that, and trust me for a quarter system, 4 classes is enough, pluss i heard humanities is hard.</p>

<p>hey thanks a lot for your help guys. see im kinda in a dilemma here, because i have two goals that im working towards, and one is transferring (maaybe) and second to get into a top med school, like washu, hopkins, or harvard. so i realize that for that i need ot keep my gpa as close to a 4.0 as possible, but would taking honors classes hinder my chances at either of those goals? </p>

<p>and xranger, just curious, what is it about humcore that makes getting an A kinda tough? my tentatvie lecture teachers are Hart, Van Sant, and Clark, and my discussion teacher is Hart. is it just the ridiculous amount of reading or are the tests/quizzes really tough? thanks a LOT guys!</p>

<p>my friend would've had 4.0 if it wasn't for honors chem. he dropped honors chem because it brought his gpa down even tho he got 5 on the AP chem.</p>

<p>my advice for humcore is go to office hours and once you find a discussion leader that you like, stick with him/her unless you're taking honors humcore then you don't really have a choice. Because your discussion leader is the one who writes the midterm/final, not the lecturer, so you can get easy test or hard test depending on your disc. leader, some even give the questions in advance.</p>

<p>But Hart is really good and she gives extra credit. She's kinda crazy but she explains the material really well</p>

<p>awesome. i'll defintely look into it. is humcore hard because of the reading or the tests/quizzes? oh and which is more important for transfer/med school admissions, a high gpa or the risk of a lower one w/ honors classes?</p>

<p>The way I look at it is this: there are much harder classes that you're going to take besides honors chem. Honors chem won't be the ONE class that brings your GPA down, and if it is, then that would mean that your GPA is high enough that it doesn't matter if you have one grade that wasn't an A. If you're going to be good enough to get into one of those top med school, then you should be good enough to do well in honors chem.</p>

<p>Would you want a doctor that took the easy way out? I sure wouldn't. Man up and take honors chem. The prof is aware that it's a class of really smart kids and the curve is pretty good where a lot of people get A's.</p>