<p>I remember that before my freshman year at NYU, I had a considerable amount of questions about the pre-med program at NYU and it was rather difficult to find answers regarding what was involved. I will attempt to address as many aspects of the program as I can in this post. Hopefully, the information here won't be a gigantic waste of space and will be of some use to the prospective pre-meds that will be arriving in a few months so that you guys will know what's in store for you.</p>
<p>(This post is extremely long and disorganized. I gave you fair warning)</p>
<p>First, the basics. The average student at NYU takes approximately 32 credits worth of classes in their freshman year. At 4 credits per class, this comes out to 8 classes per year, or 4 classes (16 credits) per semester. As a pre-med student, you are not average (as far as classes are concerned). You will most likely be taking 18 credits per semester, or 36 credits per year. This is due to the fact that Chemistry Lab is a separate course (we'll get to that later) and counts as 2 credits, so technically you will have 5 courses per semester. You could opt out of a class in one of the two semesters (18 credits in one semester and 14 credits in the other) but this is not recommended, considering that you will need to finish your MAP courses in a timely manner.</p>
<p>Speaking of MAP courses, this is a good place to talk about the actual courses that you will have to take in your first year. Virtually every pre-med takes General Chemistry I and II (with lab) in their first year, and the lab portion is mandatory for pre-meds. A large majority will also take Principles of Biology I and II, which was recommended to me by my advisor, and is especially important if you choose to be a bio major. Those courses are probably the only science courses that most pre-meds will take in their first year. You must also begin to take the MAP courses (Morse Academic Plan), which are liberal arts courses that are required in order to graduate. A course called "Writing the Essay" is virtually mandatory in freshman year. Most students also take a World Cultures course and/or a Conversations of the West course (both are social studies/history related courses) if their schedule permits it. Some also take a honors/collegiate seminar, single semester courses that are generally set in a small class environment that focus on a reasonably specific topic of interest.</p>
<p>Most of these classes consist of two 1 hour and 15 minute lectures per week, and with the exception of Bio, require a weekly recitation section (small class environment). General Chemistry also requires a weekly clinic section where you practice problems prepared by the TA. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but as a pre-med, you will spend a considerably longer amount of time in class compared to the average student, which can be mostly attributed to Chemistry and Bio labs. Chemistry Lab meets weekly for a lab lecture (although attendance is somewhat optional) as well as a weekly lab that lasts 4 and a half hours (if you're quick, you can usually finish with plenty of time to spare). This counts as a 2 credit course. Bio Lab meets weekly for about 2 and a half hours and does not count as a separate course (I'm not sure why, although it could be due to the fact that you need to pay additional tuition if you have over 18 credits, and NYU didn't want to **** off the pre-meds that much). Including the chem lab lecture, that is a total of approximately 8 hours more that you may have to spend in class compared to the average student (again, this can be greatly reduced if you work fast in the lab).</p>
<p>For both chem and bio, there are honors level courses that you could take, and both work very differently. For Principles of Biology Honors (I & II), you will have the same lectures with the same professors (although in a smaller class environment with about 70 people or so compared to 400+) and also the same exams as the regular class. The only difference is that you will have a recitation section that students in regular bio do not have that will determine 10% of your grade. You will need to take a placement test during orientation week or welcome week in order to determine if you're competent enough to be in the honors class. If I remember correctly, the placement test for 08 focused primarily on biology below the cellular level (for those who took AP biology and used the Campbell & Reece book, the test mostly covered chapters 7-21 or so) although there were some other types of questions, such as a pH calculation. The interesting thing is, whether it's regular or honors, the professors teach you from the beginning and assume you know nothing about bio in general. Chem honors is a completely different story. My roommate took the class and apparently the professors are different, as well as the course material. Chem honors assumes that you already have a significant amount of chemistry knowledge and the course proceeds at a much faster pace and covers many more aspects of chemistry not covered by the regular course. The exams are different, there is no clinic section, and the labs are different as well. In order to be in honors, you must also take a placement exam, which I heard was much more difficult compared to the bio one.</p>
<p>I should also note that it is virtually impossible to skip Principles of Biology or General Chemistry in your first year. AP credits are worthless when it comes to these courses. Originally, if you scored high enough on the bio placement test, you could skip Principles of Biology and go straight to Molecular and Cell Biology. Indeed, my advisor told me that I scored high enough on the test, but also said that they revised the rule recently since apparently many students have historically performed poorly in Molec & Cell after skipping Principles of Biology. I'm not as sure about skipping the first year of chemistry, but I do not know of any freshmen that were allowed to proceed straight to organic chemistry. As far as I know, the placement test for chemistry can only decide whether you get into honors or not.</p>
<p>As you can probably tell by now, pre-meds have to take a considerable amount of required courses and this translates into fewer electives later on. Luckily, we have some useful AP exemptions. Based on what I know, there are only two types of AP credits that are worth using as a pre-med. One is calculus. If you're not majoring in math and you scored sufficiently high on the AB or BC calc exam, you can bypass the Quantitative Reasoning requirement (there are other ways to bypass this course, such as 750+ on the SAT math section, placement test, etc.). In addition, if you took BC calc and your score is high enough, I believe that is enough to also satisfy the 1 year calculus requirement that some med schools require. The second is any language AP. The MAP requirements state that you must become proficient in a foreign language up to the intermediate level. If you scored 4+ on any language AP, you are exempt from this requirement. If not, this is ordinarily accomplished by taking a language course at the university for 2 years, or one year in an intensive course. For those who are not interested in taking language at the college, a language AP credit may allow them to fulfill their MAP requirements much more quickly. Any other AP is most likely not going to be of much use for getting out of certain pre-med or MAP courses. There is no way to get out of Writing the Essay, and none of the history/social studies APs will get you out of the corresponding MAP courses.</p>
<p>Now, the classes themselves. I took regular General Chemistry, so I can't really comment on the honors class. For General Chemistry I & II, you will have all have the same professor (Halpin). In my opinion, he is probably the most competent professor that I had this year and from what I've heard, one of the best professors in the pre-med track. Since the class consists of over 500 students, lectures are held in a large auditorium. His lecture notes (which you're required to buy) are extremely useful. In fact, reading the textbook was not even necessary for me (I didn't take AP chem in high school). Basically, all you need to do is go to his lectures, understand the concepts in the lecture notes and how to solve the problems, do the homework and the clinic packets, and you should be able to get a respectable grade. Getting an A in his class is not extremely difficult, but will require a decent amount of work if you're not gifted at chem. There is a quiz and homework due every week during recitation and the quality of the TAs vary but again, your performance in this class is strongly correlated with the amount of work you put in.</p>
<p>General Chemistry Lab, on the other hand, was less than stellar. The professor (Rugg) gives lab lectures on Friday mornings, and those are usually not worth going to since most of the time, he reiterates things that are already in his lab manual that you will buy. Before every lab, he shows up for about 5-10 minutes to explain certain precautions you should take, and subsequently leaves the room. The labs themselves are usually, for lack of a better phrase, organized chaos. Many of the TAs in my lab section were internationals who had just come from China and did not know what was going on at all (I'm Chinese, and on more than one occasion, I heard one of the TAs explaining to several other TAs what the lab was about....in Chinese....on the day of the lab). As a result, we were mostly left to our own devices, and getting educated help was usually rather difficult. To cap it all, we found out that Rugg had been reusing old final exams when one of the chem clinic TAs gave out copies of one of his previous exams for practice. The final exam for that semester was identical to the one for the previous year, even down to the letter choices. The TA was subsequently fired. To do well in this class, your best bet would be to familiarize yourself with every part of the experiment beforehand (including the procedure) and complete everything that you can at home before actually doing the lab in order to save time.</p>
<p>I placed out of regular bio, but since the honors course is very similar, I can still address the primary aspects of the class. Like chemistry, the lectures are twice a week for an hour and 15 minutes, with honors having a mandatory recitation in which students discuss noteworthy research papers with each other and a TA. For my school year, we had 11 professors that taught over the course of 2 semesters. Each one focused on a specific section of the Campbell & Reece Biology book, and each differed from the others in terms of teaching style and competency. The exams and homework questions were written by each of the professors as their topic came up, and as such differed significantly in style and content. Virtually every exam had problematic questions that were unclear, ambiguous, or in certain cases, not even covered during lecture. There was one particular test in which half of it was written by a professor whose usage of the english language was particularly questionable. As a result of all of this, the class is heavily curved. A raw score in the mid 80s will almost guarantee an A. The downside for the students in the regular class is that the curve applies for everyone taking Principles of Biology. That is, both the honors and regular classes utilize the same curve, and regular must compete with honors for the limited number of As available. The professors have stated that the curve functions in such a way that half of the class will get grades in the A and B range. In order to do well in this class, you must study and understand the powerpoint presentations that the professors give, using the textbook as a guide. Thoroughly reading the book is also a good idea, but keep in mind that the professors do not generally cover their entire sections.</p>
<p>Unlike Chem lab, bio lab is not its own separate course and is factored into the main Principles of Biology course. Both honors and regular students attend the same labs, which students must attend on a weekly basis. The labs are shorter and more relaxed in general. Homework is turned in at the beginning of every lab, and there is a quiz on the materials covered in the previous lab as well as in the next lab. Based on my experiences, the TAs are generally more competent than the Chem lab TAs and explain the lab before the actual experiment.</p>
<p>The only MAP course that all freshmen (non-internationals) must take is Writing the Essay, which for me was the bane of my existence in my first semester. I probably spent more than 1/2 of my working time on that one single class. I'm not exaggerating when I say that more than 90% of the pre-meds I know despised it. The grading was arbitrary at best, and it was difficult, if not sometimes impossible to know what the professor wanted from you. I have heard that there is a small handful of good professors who will actually make a concerted effort to help you improve your writing skills instead of just telling you that your ideas fail like my professor did. However, your chances of getting one of them is rather slim. There are variations of the class besides the regular version, such as science and film. One word of advice, just because you're pre-med, don't automatically assume the science version is the best like I did (it has almost nothing to do with science). You will almost certainly regret it later. To this day, I'm still surprised by the fact that I was able to escape with an A-.</p>
<p>Most freshmen also take either a World Cultures or a Conversations of the West course, or possibly both if they have room in their schedule. World Cultures focuses on the history of a specific cultural group during a specific time period. I personally have not taken ConWest so I cannot comment on it yet. Both classes come in many different varieties depending on your interests and the difficulty of the classes vary widely depending on the subject and the professor. However, my advisor told me that ConWest classes generally require more work compared to World Cultures, and she recommends that freshmen take World Cultures with Writing the Essay if possible so that ConWest can be taken with an easier class. The World Cultures that I took was Ancient Israel (the professor has changed since last year). It consisted of 2 lectures per week as well as a recitation. Overall, the class itself was relatively easy compared to the science courses. Again, the difficulty level varies between courses, so it would be wise to check the ratings of the professor as well as the course if possible before you enroll in it. NYU has a website where you can find these ratings: NYU</a> College of Arts and Science Course Evaluation Guide</p>
<p>Any remaining slots in a pre-med's schedule will consist of classes such as honors/collegiate seminars, MAP courses that the student could not place out of (eg. quantitative reasoning, language, etc), or major-specific courses not related to pre-med (eg. Intro to economics for econ majors). Since these vary considerably between each individual, it is not possible for me to address all of them. Most of the classes I covered are classes which the majority of pre-meds will take in their freshman year.</p>
<p>I hope that this information will be of use to someone. I left out some important details since this post has already reached epic proportions. If you've actually read up to this point, I offer my congratulations. Clearly, you can see that I've learned nothing from Writing the Essay. If anyone has any additional questions, I will do my best to answer them.</p>