<p>I'm currently looking into what it is I want to do after undergrad. I'm looking into going into genetics. I've been looking around and the competitive mol. biol/ genetics programs have physical chemistry as a requirement, or they at least recommend it. At first this didn't bother me because so far I've enjoyed all my chemistry, but after looking at the prerequisites for the course I wasn't so confident. It said that calculus 3 was a prerequisite for the course as well as a scientist and engineering physics sequence (a harder sequence than my biology program requires). It also strongly recommended that I take linear algebra and differential equations before physical chemistry. This seems like a lot and its nothing I need to get my undergrad degree. Not to mention the fact that I've been away from calculus for a year and jumping into calc 3 might be difficult. How important is it that I complete a pchem sequence as an undergrad and if I don't will the program just force me to take it my first year of grad school?</p>
<p>Hi, I think programs will force you to take it. I would also take some computational biology and programming classes.</p>
<p>I have noticed that some graduate schools want you to have pchem. I think this depends on the area you want to go into. I am going into Microbiology so this requirement doesn't exist for me. Check out if it's required for genetics Phd programs. On a side note, the most valuable math class I took in college was a stats class, if you can avoid taking all the higher level math, consider replacing one of those credits with stats. It has made a tremendous difference in my ability to analyze data and extract meaning from experiments.</p>
<p>you don't need to take pchem for any program, as far as I can tell. They won't make you take it in grad school.</p>
<p>Those requirements are more than a little extreme for pchem. At my school the only requirements are one year of physics, one year of gen. chem., and one year of organic (all part of the biology degree anyway). Pretty much the only thing you'd learn in linear algebra is all the nuances of series and matrices (if memory serves me right; it's been two years since I took it and I might only remember the disagreeable parts), and I'm not sure what you'd need that for in pchem.</p>
<p>Are there two courses at your school for different tracks of students, and you looked at the one geared towards future engineers? Or maybe the professor who wrote the description was hard-core on paper to scare away us pitiful bio majors. I've taken more than one course that declared "One year of /upper-level/ lectures required" or "Intermediate Inorganic strongly recommended" in the school bulletin, only to receive a syllabus at the start of term with half of those requirements inexplicably missing.</p>