<p>Can any current student with experience tell me a little bit more about the two majors, and their similarities/differences?</p>
<p>If you are strictly into hard/natural sciences, go biology. If you think you are interested in dabbling in things like anthropology (great dept. here), psyche(great dept. here), and some bio classes on top of your core requirements go NBB. People say that NBB is tougher when in reality it’s just one core class (and perhaps some of the psyche electives that one can take) that is extremely tough. Biology has many more classes within the dept. that are somewhat tough. The difference is that many curve to a B as oppose to a B- like in NBB 301 (the tough one), however, some biology upperlevel biology classes are only exams and quizzes and let the average sit on a C/C+ and not curve. Both of them have some talented faculty, but it seems as if you are more likely to run into a bad/low-tier mediocre prof. in NBB for your core courses from what I hear. Seems biology has better lecturers. However, the psyche and anthro. have excellent lecturers to compensate for w/e bad experience you get in your core courses. Admittedly, I think you will be exposed to more interesting upperlevels and special topics throughout NBB then you will in biology (which has some really good ones too). </p>
<p>Also: One thing that makes NBB hard is merely scheduling courses. They are more likely to offer a few pivotal core courses exclusively in Spring or Fall. Thus many will end up doubling with NBB 301 and say NBB302 or NBB 301/NBB 201 combination. 302 and 201 are not that difficult, but 301 will reduce the time one can dedicate to those and perhaps make them more difficult to manage. Biology seems to offer more classes in both spring and fall. Another thing about NBB 301 is that it gets tougher when the professor is mediocre. If it isn’t Frenzel or Calabrese, they will annoy (not particularly bad, but the lectures may be more difficult to keep up with. However, if it is Yager, he may often invite Dr. Stephen Potter from Georgia Tech who is supposedly an excellent lecturer). Luckily NBB 301 has SI sessions led by TAs (as opposed to undergrads. At least this is how I think it is). My experience in physical biology and human genetics tells me this is the best case scenario for SI sessions at Emory. Though some courses do have excellent undergraduate leaders, having a grad. TA can be more useful as they are likely to know more random things about how the prof. might be testing, or what he really wants to the class to know.</p>
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<p>That was exactly what I wanted, informative, and objective. Thanks for spending your time to give some insight into the two department, means a lot. </p>
<p>Thank you very much so :)</p>
<p>Hey, sorry to hijack the thread, but I have a quick question. Apart from Biology and NBB, are there any good majors that pre med students have the option of taking? I know you can major in anything, but NBB and biology seem to be the best science related choices.</p>
<p>I know alot of girls on my floor taking anthro/human bio as their major. Sounds interesting.</p>
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<p>Among pre-meds here the most popular major here is biology, as expected because of its high course overlap w/ pre-med required and recommended courses and its relative easiness. The next two big ones would be NBB and chemistry, again because of their apparent focus on the sciences and association with the medical and research fields. Economics is also becoming a popular one among Emory pre-meds despite the mediocre quality of the department (in general) in order for easy GPA inflation (many of the econ courses are graded very generously and don’t require significant effort) and to diversify their applications a bit, or just as a backup if they don’t get into med school. There’s also the option for econ majors to concentrate in Health Economics with by virtue of its name would appeal to many pre-meds. Some of the less common pre-med majors here would be physics, psychology, and as you mentioned anthropoly/human biology, with the latter two combining both humanities and sciences.</p>
<p>While it sounds cliche, as a pre-med you should major it what interests you the most because ungrad is really your chance to do that. Once you’re in med school everyone’s gonna be taking the same science classes.</p>
<p>what about majoring in nursing??</p>
<p>I actually think a large amount of pre-meds are psyche majors. Probably just as many as anthro. And admittedly, psychology isn’t a complete joke at Emory. Many/Most will have to put in a decent amount of work in a lot of those courses, especially 110/111. These sections have average GPAs comparable to gen. chem., bio (it’s easier now, so I’m betting the average is like 2.7-2.85), or physics(probably 3.?). I can see psychology being very useful. I still hate the idea of pre-meds inflating their grades instead of prepping for med-school. One would think that a pre-med that isn’t willing to work/learn for their grades (at least their science grades, admittedly most non-science classes will inflate the gpa, but to specifically choose those that don’t interest you simply b/c it’s an easy A is crap. But some cherry pick science courses according to that logic) would not want to be a doctor at all. Doctors have to work a lot, and have to be able to think on their feet and deal with challenges. Just seems like a huge waste of time if you don’t try to get yourself ready earlier. Oh well, med. school admissions committees are definitely to blame for a lot of it. So goes the domino effect.</p>
<p>Note of honesty to OP: About your approach to education and the academic culture at Emory:
I think you should just major in whatever you want because you might actually like it so much that you decide that pre-med is not the only option. I have had many friends with excellent science grades (and grades overall) and in senior or junior make this realization and instead decided to do things in the health care sector that are more public service oriented. My problem with science students here is that they act as if pre-med is the only option. And many still deem people who aspire to be nurses or go into public health as pre-med cop-outs, when they know nothing about the people pursuing these fields or their grades/background. People at this school are still shocked when they meet me and I say I’m a bio and chem. major, but not pre-med. This is indicative of the lack of academic diversity on many campuses of top colleges today (as I am stating, Emory is no different). The pre-professional obsession does make it more difficult for Emory to create a more healthy intellectual culture. Many current students also think that Emory is devoid of any high-caliber activities meant to foster this as opposed to many of our peers (these things include various speakers and forums), but in reality they simply do not seek it. There are plenty of such events as I have attended many. And they actually all over Emory’s Youtube now-a-days.</p>
<p>can someone explain the major in nursing in emory and how that works please?</p>
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<p>You have to apply to transfer to the Nursing School after you’ve completed certain prerequisite courses at Emory CAS, and once you’re in you take courses in the nursing school and graduate within 4 years with a BSN (works similar to the b-school…). Most pre-nursing students will apply and transfer during their sophomore year, and as long as ur GPA is decent ur essentially expected to get in. Note that you cannot apply directly to the nursing or b-school when u apply to Emory from ur hs; everyone initially enters either Emory CAS or Oxford.</p>
<p>@ bernie12, yes I totally, agree with everything you have said. I think the the obsession starts in high school, and students don’t consider re-planing from that point. I do plan to take rigorous classes, to prepare for possibly pre-med, but more importantly out of interest. </p>
<p>Another question, what percentage of students (rough estimate) would you consider to be intellectually curious instead of being pre-professionally obsessed?</p>
<p>what are the fail rate (as in people who get less than B) in the biology/chemistry classes?
are there a lot of people doing the nursing major?? how hard are the science/lab classes compared to AP chemistry/bio?</p>
<p>I really wish I could tell you. I would estimate perhaps 20-30%. This is higher than what I would have initially estimated. I realize that my close-knit Emory friends are essentially split down the middle mainly because all of my “legacies” (the ones I made as soon as I got to Emory) were through a program that encouraged undergrad. research and leadership in science very early on. As for those that I would consider less close friends or associates, a great deal are pre-professionally obsessed, but I realize that many of those in the humanities and the social sciences are genuinely interested in the topics and are willing to carry on conversations outside of class or attend events. Some display their intellectual strength/curiosity through action. For example, in my Utopias/Dystopias course, there were two students that were really active in terms of class participation and volunteered to lead the class discussion on the day that the prof. was absent (yes, this is a prof., not a grad. student. He’s a noob from Notre Dame. I recommend him, he’s pretty good) and did an excellent job. While a bitter one would probably claim that they were simply trying to show off, it was clear that there heart was into the subject matter. </p>
<p>I guess I’m trying to say that it is there, but one hardly ever sees it surface. One reason, is that, among people like pre-meds, only certain science courses encourage anything other than rote memorization. The students’ curiosity will become exposed in social science and humanities courses. Both of the students I mentioned are pre-med by the way. So I guess Emory probably needs to restructure more of its science courses so that you can see that type of excitement in such a course. It starts in the classroom. If the science courses become predictable (as in essentially same method of teaching, same exam style, same workload), then no one will have anything to be excited about. The courses then become just obstacles to get past and hopefully receive an A. I will admit that many more science professors are attempting to teach and structure the course in a manner that that is memorable and will get people excited about science (and therefore more careers in science, but if Emory had engineering, it would at least partially solve this problem while mandating that the math and physics courses be bought up to par). So the school is certainly trying. I got curious one day and found a website that documents its efforts over the years (since like 2000) to reform sciences here, with a primary focus on the intro level courses. They’ve done well in many areas, but have clearly fallen short in others. I’d imagine the increasing enrollment hasn’t helped as keeping class sizes relatively small is kind of important when you want to implement methods that result in greater student-teacher interaction in the classroom.</p>
<p>I want to futher opine on Bernie’s statement. My son’s group of friends are very intellectually curious and seem to truly enjoy the course material. As a premed, if you take Muhlford/Morkin (and go to office hours) you will learn and love intro chem. If you take Weinshenk (and go to office hours) you will learn and love orgo. If you take Bing (and go to office hours) you will learn and love physics. If you take Eissen (and go to office hours) you will learn and love bio etc. The key (as Bernie insinuated) is professor selection. All these professors are readily available (as they tend to be more difficult) and outstanding lecturers/teachers. However, if you tend to have the attitude of trying to obtain the max for the minimum effort (what my son describes as a “bro” attitude) then you will not have the truly outstanding intellectual experience my son is enjoying. </p>
<p>Just as an example. This semester alone my son has signed up for 2 “extra” electives. One is a 2 hour course entitled “Intro to Biomedical Research” which essentially teaches you how to obtain a valuable research experience AND how to pursue your own independent research project. He has also enrolled in a combined graduate/undergraduate 1 hour course entitled “Current research and discoveries in Emory’s Woodruff Health Science Center” which meets weekly and has a class description as follows:</p>
<p>This new course is a weekly series of lectures/discussions on current
biomedical research programs in Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center.
Each week will include an informal talk by a different Emory scientist,
followed by discussion. Scientists will describe their own area of current
research and link its significance to the scientific topic generally and to
progress in the field. The course will cover a wide variety of the leading
biomedical research initiatives at Emory. Scientists will provide handouts
and optional readings.</p>
<p>All the resources and opportunities are available for you to be surrounded by a more academic/intellectual life, but…you will have to spend less time on frat row. The choice is simply yours. My son tends to “hang” with the older students and I do believe it is a maturity thing. As a disclaimer, I was in a fraternity and my son is not. Can you discern which option leads to more intellectual stimulation? Anyway, I hope this helps to further explain Emory academics and the options you will have.</p>
<p>Your son sounds like someone I know lol. One of my friends signed up for that class for the same reason and he is indeed younger than my group of friends, had Weinshenk, and Morking, however did not Bing. But any I agree emorydeac. You named some of the professors I had in mind. I had Jose Soria for orgo. who is essentially the same way as Weinshenck, but since he teaches freshmen, the class is smaller, and he does much more interactive/applicative activities with them. For example, he often invites 2-3 students down to the board to do a tough problem for a couple of bonus points. He also creates and oversees smaller group activities out of class. One involves going into the lab with each group having a different prompt, and they have to solve some really tough problems. As far as I’m concerned, all of the gen. chem. profs. are pretty good mainly because they are lecture track, and are really excited about teaching. In that case, it’s up to the students to get excited. As for Jose and Weinshenck, they are not standard organic. chem. profs. They are very challenging (as in way tougher than the others and even tougher than many of the more prestigious top 20s as I’ve compared the work and it doesn’t stack up) and many people avoid them and go to the standard courses. The students in these courses anticipate getting higher grades than if they went to Jose or Weinshenck, but often do pretty badly b/c they went into the class expecting to not have to work at all. In reality, people in the two harder classes do much better as they put lots of time into providing learning resources that prepare them for tough exams. P-Sets that get them used to asking why a complex phenomenon occurs instead of letting them memorize the outcome and mechanism of various reactions. I know in bio., there are many profs. like this. Eisen, and any NBB 301 prof. comes to mind. And after checking the neuroscience course material available through MIT Courseware, I can see why people at Emory find our intro bio-based NBB course so tough. If you compare the exams, you can tell the Emory is truly health science oriented( as in they will ask you to design an experiment to prove your answer on the exam). The course seemed to collide 3 of the MIT courses into one. And their actual intro. to neuroscience seemed easier than my psyche 110 course (psychobiology which is pretty tough especially if you took Edwards like I did). So the challenge is at Emory if you want it. For example, I didn’t enjoy biochemistry because unfortunately our biochem. class has hardly no chem., so I simply asked to be placed in Justin Gallivan’s grad. level course on organic chem. of proteins. They did so, and I am excited for the spring semester . And I recommend anyone who has experience in a subject matter and a strong interest, to look into the grad. school. They pretty easily accommodate students, even those outside of honors program. Emory does not set up many barriers to intellectual pursuit.</p>
<p>And I took a freshman seminar version (this one was hosted by David Lynn) of the course that you mentioned. I made lots of connections with the grad. students who were doing pretty ground breaking research plus they took us into the lab to both witness and do a small scale participation. It was pretty rigorous though and after each module, we’d have homework assignments and often had to prepare to lead discussion for the next class. We also had to prepare giant research projects, some of which were very successful and influential. One of these was one dealing with sustainability efforts on campus. This actually ended up being present to some of the deans. However, I could be wrong as I heard of another class being offered in spring that is still linked to me. I was actually a test dummy for this course my spring semester freshmen year, and I guess they finally developed it further (however, in ours we actually did a piece of Dr. Spell’s research and presented the results at the bio symposium in the med. school).</p>
<p>Also: As for difficulty of intros., it really depends on who you choose. If you for example choose Escobar, you will not be challenged if you took AP bio. Some AP students will be challenged by chem. 142 as they go into even further depth about acid/base chem. and crystal structure than did AP. The latter applies no matter who you have. If you get a 5 on AP chem. though, you probably should try orgo. with Jose. And if you do, don’t let the first exam make you complacent 
(the 3rd and 4th will be brutal, and you’ll need to make sure you worked hard to gather those bonus points). Either way, if your high school courses are reasonably rigorous. You should at least get B/B+. I’m not going to guarantee you A-grade because I don’t think that’s easy. Physics will be easier because there is no calculus (but you could opt to take the one w/calc.). While I think Bing is great, I don’t science majors should be taking a physics course w/o calc. and I think he should be teaching calc. based because those students really deserve a good teacher and they hardly ever get one.</p>
<p>Here’s a link showing what I was talking about.<br>
[Emory</a> Center for Science Education](<a href=“http://cse.emory.edu/projects/projectstopics.cfm]Emory”>http://cse.emory.edu/projects/projectstopics.cfm)</p>
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<p>^^^ Econ classes here are pretty easy. I am pre-med and majoring in Econ. I really like the Econ department. Most are really willing to help students outside of class. They are also more than willing to help students conduct their own independent research projects in many different areas of Economics.</p>