<p>Hello, I've asked this in another thread already, but did not get any responses. Could anyone comment on this workload? Is it too easy/too hard? Should I take additional modules, or should I drop some of those I chose already? Thank you very much in advance!</p>
<p>Fall 2009:</p>
<p>MCB 130 and 130L
MCB 150 and 150L</p>
<p>Spring 2010:</p>
<p>MCB 110L and 141
MCB 140 and 140L</p>
<p>You need to treat MCB Labs as separate classes, you have four MCB classes each semester, which will be extremely difficult.</p>
<p>You should lower them to at maximum two MCB classes per semester.</p>
<p>BTW most of us think of the word "module" as a portion of a course (e.g. Biology 1B has three modules, plants, evolution, and ecology). Your use of module in the sense that module = course may potentially confuse other readers</p>
<p>anon5524485, did you take many of those courses listed above? Can you comment on how hard they are individually? How many hours a week of additional studies (everything that is not discussion/lecture/laboratory) would I have to do to get good grades (A or A+), assuming I still picked all of them? I saw many people take 17 and even 18 credits for a semester, and it’s only 16 for me. </p>
<p>Anyone else who took either of those courses - could you please write an opinion about their difficulty? </p>
<p>Thank you very much in advance, for any responses you make!</p>
<p>based on the information from campusbuddy.com and pickaprof.com. MCB course are know for being tough, they are not cakewalks and will take a lot of work. I have not taken any of them.</p>
<p>Some people take 17/+ but not all of their courses are MCB courses, generally sophomore/junior/senior biology majors at Cal will take anywhere from 3-10 units of biology a semester. </p>
<p>You have four courses of MCB listed for each semester (MCB 130 and 130L are separate courses, MCB 140 and 140L are separate courses, and MCB 150 and 150L are separate courses), which is excessive.</p>
<p>Also one more thing to note, MCB lab courses are reserved entirely/mostly for students in the Cal MCB major tracks that require them, meaning that getting into MCB 110L, 130L, 140L, and 150L might be hard.</p>
<p>IIRC, MCB 140 (is it Urnov's class?) is considered one of, if not the most difficult MCB class out there.</p>
<p>^that is probably true, the IB UG adviser said that she's sent straight A IB majors into that class and they all got pwned</p>
<p>141 is hard as well. I heard 150 is also one of the hardest ones. To the OP, I don't advise that schedule at all. That's suicide.</p>
<p>I would be grateful if I could hear some more opinions. I am probably going to talk to an advisor regarding the courseload. I know it is tough, but is it tough in the sense that it will not be possible to get good grades, regardless of how much the person studies? I have some cell biology background, and I do believe that it helps a lot that there are technically only 2 different subjects, which also frequently interrelate. I really don’t want to drop any of the classes, as my time at Berkeley is limited, but I also don’t want to end up getting a B or worse.</p>
<p>It’s definitely doable, but you have to work very hard. You’ll probably be spending the vast majority of your time studying.</p>
<p>I took MCB 130 and MCB 141 last semester. They were both difficult classes. Material wise, MCB 141 is by far harder-- not only does it require spatial processing, it also requires temporal understanding of development. MCB 130 just felt like another weeder class. Nothing too special about it.</p>
<p>I hope you realize that for MCB upper-div classes, you have to know experimental design fairly well to even consider getting an A. Most exams will NOT be straightforward at all, instead, they will ask you to design experiments. These experimental design questions will test whether you memorized the material or you understood and can apply it in scenarios you’ve never encountered before. For the last module of MCB 141 on the final, it was just 10 pages of pure experimental design. I felt some stomach acid seep into my mouth when I first saw that.</p>