<p>Hi all, I am a bio and math major now and I am in need of some guidence. I have been doing very well in my math classes but in my biology classes.......i guess I leave alot to be desired. Im only in the first level now but I made C's the frist time around and I am now retaking the classes. This time I think I will get a B. I really want to go to med school. I have started shadowing and I volunteer at a hospital. I even have a part time job at a recovery hospital. But I am so worried about my grades. Should I just stick with Math and go to med school or should I continue to tuff out bio. I do very well with anatomy and I have CPR training. I even get complements from the doctors I shadow but they do not sit on a med school board. Any advise is great.</p>
<p>If you do well in anatomy, then Bio is definitely for you. Just spend more time, work harder. But generally speaking Bio is much harder than math (at least for my D., but she loves Bio much more, she does not like math too much)</p>
<p>If you’re struggling with your lower level bio courses, why in the world would you want to take even more bio classes? Drop the bio major; just major in math and take the necessary pre-regs for medical school (and do well in them!) </p>
<p>Math majors tend to have among the highest MCAT score of all majors. </p>
<p>CPR training has little to do with anything you’ll learn in bio courses and so it isn’t really an indicator of your ability in bio. And I’m not sure what you mean by doing well in anatomy. (A&P is an upper level college bio elective. Did you have an A&P class at your high school? I know some high schools do offer one.) </p>
<p>What part of freshman bio gave you problems? Memorization? Terminology? Conceptualization? Understanding the biochemical function of cells? Or did you just have bumpy landing with the discipline of college?</p>
<p>As for bio or math being harder–it’s a matter of where one’s talent lies. </p>
<p>Both my Ds are math plus X double majors. Both have said that their senior/grad level math classes are much, much, much harder than anything they ever had to do in bio.</p>
<p>First, please let me thank you soo much for your post. I am open to all words of wisdom right now. I can honestly say I am taking everything in. As for some of the questions that you asked, at my school you dont have to take basic bio to take A&P so I took it early because I thought I would be good at it because of where I work and that I had it high school. Of course it was harder than high school but I mad an A. (this is not a boast just an explanation)
That part that is giving be the worst problem is memorization. I am not going to be a cry baby but to give an example what I mean, for my last test my professor asked that we know all ten steps of glycolosis, the steps of the Kreb cycle, the electron transport chain and photosynthesis and the plants and bacteria that perform C4 and C3. we also had to know all the organelles in the cell. Now, I know that this is what we all need to understand bio but I had problems getting all the enzyme names and explaining what would happen if an ATP or NADH was not available at a certin step, (the function would terminate was not the ahswer he was looking for). I can set and understand everything and even give the big picture with out specific names to my professor when I sit in his class but there is something about those names and knowing what the byproducts would be if a step was not available that threw me off.
I realize my time is spread short with work, school and extras but I know I study at least 10hrs for bio alone and I dont get grades that reflect that. I am going to try even harder for what is left for this semester and for bio II. I just felt maybe there might be some good advise out there and I thank you both for giving it freely. Thank you!!</p>
<p>What you’re being asked to know sound fairly typical of what both Ds had in their intro bio course so it’s not that the work is all that exceptionally difficult or is different from what other schools do in their intro bio classes.</p>
<p>It sounds like you’re trying to memorize facts in isolation without really understanding the processes involved. That really doesn’t work. You need to understand <em>why</em> a chemical reaction happens the way it does and not just memorize the reaction products and byproducts. You need to understand the chemical processes and the underlying physics of the reactions. Chemical reactions occur for reason. Reaction pathways must follow certain physical laws. Learn those instead trying to memorize each and every possibility. The same deep kind of understanding of underlying principals will be needed in molecular genetics, population genetics, ecology, neurochem, orgo, biochem…</p>
<p>A&P, at least according to D1, is more rote memory than conceptualization.</p>