<p>I'm premed, so I'm looking to fulfill the last semester of the chemistry requirement with either MCB 102 or MCB C100A. I also want to use it for an IB elective.
Does anyone know which is an easier/better choice?
Chem 3A/3B were really not my thing, but Physics 8A and Bio 1A/1B were more manageable for me.</p>
<p>From what I have been told, C100A has harder material, but easier grading and 102 has easier material, but much harder grading.</p>
<p>MCB C100A is biophysical chemistry, 102 is just biochemistry, they’re pretty different.
I’m in C100A right now - the first part of the class was cool, just a lot about DNA and protein structure, but the rest of it is all this thermodynamics, binding equilibrium stuff which is basically a lot of deriving equations and problem solving. You might like it if you prefer physics over chem because there’s like no chemistry at all. Doesn’t feel like there’s much bio either lol.</p>
<p>Hmm, ok. I’ve heard that the midterms for C100A are somewhat impossible in the time given. How is that going for you?</p>
<p>first midterm was just like 3 pages of straightforward short answers, pretty easy i thought but average was low 70s.</p>
<p>second midterm was pretty terrible, some specific multiple choice and then some hard problems. yeah there was definitely not enough time to figure those out… average was 55 which is exactly what i got. </p>
<p>third midterm’s next friday and probably going to be similar to the second (there’s 2 professors, one teaches the first third, the other teaches the rest). we do get to drop one of the 3 though :).</p>
<p>Thanks for the input. Would you recommend that I take C100A then?</p>
<p>Does anyone else out there have any advice or anything? I can’t find much information about the courses.</p>
<p>If you like physics and calculus it shouldn’t be too bad, but I don’t know how useful it would be. MCB 102 is like a more general overview of both 100A and 100B and you don’t plan on taking 100B right? If you care about learning a lot of useful biochemistry in one semester, you should probably stick with 102. But if you don’t really care about that and think you’d like the physics/calc derivation stuff, you’ll do fine in the class.</p>
<p>do you get to drop one of the midterms in the fall with kuriyan as well?</p>