<p>I'm a prospective transfer student coming from a community college in New York and I'd like to ask all of you about the level of rigor in academics at your school and to ask that you help reinstill confidence in me that I will be able to succeed in your learning climate. I know that this topic has been covered in great lengths, and I've done a search, but after much skimming through the CC forums, I haven't really found any topics about how transfer students deal with the transitioning of academics at your school. I would love to hear from transfer students from Emory and how you all have faired so far at Emory, and what tips, and advice you all have to offer to someone who wants to do real well at Emory as a pre-med student. </p>
<p>I understand that it's up to the individual to do really well academically, but coming from a community college and only maintaining a 3.73 gpa so far with some Honors classes, I feel intimidated by the idea of being able to get the same gpa my first semester junior year at Emory. Do you all think my transition won't be as difficult as I'm making it out to be? Community college academics is alot different from Emory I would assume, but so are the students. If I'm surrounded by bright motivated students, does that have a big impact on your desire to do well? I noticed that it hasn't really affected me that much in my Honors classes. Any wisdom would greatly appreciated. The other reason why I'm anxious is because I haven't done any of my medical school pre reqs yet except for one year of English. The most advanced math I took was algebra 2 and that was 9 years ago! Should I be concerned?</p>
<p>Don’t worry about it. It’ll be harder than your community college, but your peers will motivate and even help you to do well. The learning resources also make it easier. The profs. are generally very accessible despite Emory more than likely being significantly larger than your CC. Also, grading isn’t tough. grades are generally curved up to help everyone (perhaps a bit too much, but…), so it’s difficult to do poorly.<br>
Most people will just advise you to choose easy profs, but this will f**k you over on the MCAT. You want the best profs. because normally they lecture better and thus students do a lot better even though the exams are harder. Better/harder lecturers tend to do more to make sure that students do well (better office hours and review sessions, lots of perks). As anecdotal evidence, my friend is a transfer from a state school honors program where he got a 4.0, and his first semester here even with stats and chem, he got a 3.48. This is not a horrible start and it was mainly his stats. grade that caused it to be below 3.5. He says it’s significantly harder, but being surrounded by other academically inclined students helps him to perform much better than what would be expected.<br>
Also, don’t expect math to be hard here, it’s not. For example, they teach calc. in a way that assumes no one knows it. Calc. isn’t hard the way Emory does it. </p>
<p>If you get in, I’d recommend Dr. Spell or Eisen(both of them are really good apparently. Spell being great was confirmed when I dropped by it to see one of my friends in here class. She had an authoritative, interested, voice and was really into engaging the class) for gen. bio, and Mulford or Morkin for chem. (actually you can go wrong w/any gen. chem. profs.)</p>
<p>how is freshman language art (english 101 and 200s)? is it worth it to exempt the course using AP scores? I’m pretty good at writing & analyzing but I suck at spelling.</p>
<p>Spelling is what a dictionary is for lol. You won’t have to write things on the spot. All of your papers are either reaction papers or longer essays/research paper, so you’ll have plenty of time to correct that type of stuff. English 100 levels… they have many post-docs teaching. Most are really good profs., but are very excited about the topic area in which they choose to teach (for example, the freshmen English class I chose was on TransAtlantic Romanticism and was actually really good). Normally these post-docs will grade harder than say, a tenured prof. Because of the excitement of something they are either writing or have written a dissertation on, they typically expect you to do it right. I say getting a B+/A- isn’t hard in a class that is all papers (an English class with exams can greatly improve chances for an A if you are great at exam taking and have a teacher that grades papers hard. The dude I was talking about got an A in his I think 200-level course because it was designed this way), but in honesty, many/most may indeed get a B-/B because they don’t write as well as they thought.</p>
<p>If you get admitted, you are probably able to do the work. Taking calculus will probably be difficult for you at any school since you haven’t taken math recently but calculus at Emory isn’t difficult for most students.</p>