<p>I'm taking physics 101 and am scared ****less after people telling me to drop it becasue their experience in bio auto was horrid.</p>
<p>Any advice, suggestions, and kind words are welcome.</p>
<p>What problems did people have with autotutorial bio?</p>
<p>I would avoid autotutorial classes in general. If you are paying $45,000 a year to go to a university, you might as well be taught by a professor.</p>
<p>That said, I chose to do Physics 101/102 rather than 207/208 because I had a non-existant physics background. I personally liked the class. I felt like I learned a lot (which was not a difficult task considering I had no phyiscs knowledge to begin with). The class is very flexible since you can go in to do the labs or take the tests whenever you want. The tests are multiple choice with no time limit. The TA's are pretty good generally.</p>
<p>That said, it's not for everyone. I saw people falling horribly behind. It's pretty easy to get at least an A-...IF you keep up with the deadlines. If you know you procrasinate, then don't take this class. If you want answers from a professor rather than a TA, then don't take the class, obviously. If you have taken physics honors or AP in high school, then you probably shouldn't take the class either.</p>
<p>I'm not a bio major but had plenty of friends who took both Auto-tutorial and regular bio. They felt that the curve for Auto was tougher, but they learned the material really well. The trick to auto is not procrastinating and putting time into it. My friends didn't have many good things to say about the regular bio. There is (or used to be) a component of the course where you had to take online quizzes. Apparently there was rampant cheating, and I'm not sure if they've successfully done anything about it.</p>
<p>Autotutorial physics is not very intense. It's ok if you've never had any physics before. I would recommend taking the regular 207-208 because you can't/shouldn't learn physics from a book. At the very least take 207, see how you do, and drop to 101 if necessary.</p>
<p>They reduced the weight of the online quizzes to around 5% of your grade. That's actually a case where cheating benefitted everyone since no one was doing well on the online quizzes (I was getting around 60-70% right using the textbook which you're allowed to do).</p>
<p>Are these online tests timed? Also, do they just cover the lecture material or something else?</p>
<p>The contents of the online quizes depends on which professor is teaching the course. Usually the online quizes cover more than the lecture and the book. Therefore sometimes you will have to search online to find the answers.
And no, online quizes are not timed. You can spend as much time on them as possible.</p>
<p>Long time no "see," fellow CCers. Now that I am officially a Cornellian, I'm back on the board! Btw, I miss your great advices, Norcalguy. I have my chem 207 lect today as my first cornell class. I heard prof Paul Chirik is cool. </p>
<p>I never took any physics class in high school either. I know next to nothing about physics. Is Physics 101 autotutorial ??? how about Bio 101 lect? I have Hopkins for Bio lect. Chirik for chem. Armstrong for math. I found hopkins and chirik had good ratings on ratemyprofessor.com, but no armstrong. Are Frosh writing seminars taught by grad students or TA's ? Couldn't find them on ratemyprofessor.com. </p>
<p>I remember someone saying that ratemyprofessor.com. and a medium grade report for all cornell classes are two indispensible and invaluable , extremely useful... tools for course selections. Does anyone know where is the report that can tell me what the medium grade is for Chem 207, Bio 101 and Math 111?</p>
<p>sorry, I meant to ask for the median grade report in the above post. found it with a search though. here's its link: <a href="http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Student/mediangrades.html%5B/url%5D">http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Student/mediangrades.html</a> , enjoy looking through them, fellow CCers</p>
<p>Physics 101-autotutorial
Bio 101-not autotutorial
Bio 105-autotututorial version of Bio 101</p>
<p>Glad the first day is going well. I received my syllabus for Bio 281 Genetics today, chocked full of problems, reading, problem solving sessions, prelims. I can tell it's going to be a long semester.</p>
<p>Hi Norcal</p>
<p>I'm a junior and I'm enrolled in physics 101. Do you have any suggestions regarding the course? I am looking to earn an A in the course, but the curve is very intimidating (93/100), with points being subtracted if more than two questions are incorrect on the tests. </p>
<p>How long are the labs, and are the TAs generally laid-back about grading them?</p>
<p>I'm also in BioGD 281 - which isn't looking like too much fun right now. It's going to be a rough semester, just like you said.</p>
<p>Median grades</p>
<p>Chem 207 - B- (used to be a B, but because of poor performance on prelims, Chirik lowered the mean. Don't worry, if you study appropriately, you will do well). Chirik may very well be the best professor at Cornell. He is brilliantly awesome.</p>
<p>Bio 101 - B- (The class from hell. I hated it. I got B+s in intro bio but As in every other science (chem, orgo, etc.). We had a terrible teacher, though (Owens) I studied like nothing else for the class, knew the material inside-out, and still did only "above average" on the prelims because they don't test biology).</p>
<p>Physics autotutorial really was not fun, but at least it was possible to get through it without learning anything substantive about physics. No matter what you think, you will not be one of the three people that does the labs on time. You will be trudging up at 8 at night in 2 feet of snow in february in order to finish the labs because you've used up all your grace points already.</p>
<p>BioGD 281. That sucked as well. My advice - do not pick somebody that you like as a lab partner. Because people that you like tend to be fun, and fun people do not want to show up for the fly lab at midnight. Nerdy people will and if you manage to pick the premed that *****es about an A- on an orgo test, you might not even have to go to the fly lab at all.</p>
<p>But the reward is the fact that you can be drunk pretty much your entire senior year without any consequences whatsoever. My crowning achievement was an A+ in a biochem 600-level class that I showed up for maybe about a quarter of the time and did absolutely no reading for.</p>
<p>Hmmmm...that wasn't the policy in Physics 101 when I took the class last year. I believe the class was out of 99 pts and you needed around 93/94 pts. to get an A. Theoretically, you shouldn't lose a single point until the final. All you need to get is 9 out of the 13 multiple choice questions right on each unit test. As long as you do this, you will not lose any points. I only missed more than one question on just 2 out of my 16 unit tests (keep in mind you're allowed to miss four on each test). If you study, you shouldn't need to retake any of the tests.</p>
<p>There are only two areas where you will lose pts:
1) Your lab notebook checks/quizzes-most people lose 2-3 pts on that
2) This means that you can only lose around 3-4 more pts. on the final. The final, unlike the unit tests, is not graded on a pass/fail basis. It's 18 questions (worth 12 pts) and the number of pts you get depends on the number of questions you get right. The questions on the final tend to be harder than the unit tests. This is where you lose most of your points. I've seen people get as little as 2 pts. on their first try. You get 3 cracks at the final but the curve gets progressively steeper each time (if you want an A, you pretty much have to do well the first time or get every single question right the second time).</p>
<p>But what you are telling me is different so maybe they changed some of the policies.</p>
<p>Oh yea, labs. Labs vary in length. The first lab of second semester literally took 5 minutes to do. The longer unit labs will involve several experiments/self demonstrations and will take you more than 3 hours just to do them (not including your lab writeup). Find someone to do the lab with. It's more fun that way.</p>
<p>How anal your TA is about your notebook and your knowledge of the labs depends on the TA. Lab notebook scores are normalized (supposedly) at the end of the semester so people are not penalized for having tougher TA's.</p>
<p>I see. Thanks for telling me.</p>
<p>I think the policy changed this year to the effect that you can only miss 2/13 and still receive full credit. Hopefully, after studying, I will be able to do as well on the quizzes as you did.</p>
<p>Regarding BioGD281 - I spoke with my advisor last Friday and he mentioned that there were several issues with the lab. He said that the fly lab was getting increasingly expensive to run, and would thus be cancelled this semester.</p>
<p>One one hand, I don't want to deal with the dreaded fly lab, but on the other hand, I wan't to see that I am getting a quality education for the thousands I hand over to Cornell every year. Why are there stories of people counting flies at midnight? Isn't the lab designed to be completed during the 2.5 hour period scheduled for us?</p>
<p>If it's cut to 2/13, then sux for you.</p>
<p>As for the fly lab, if they cut it out, I'm not going to mind. Everyone has heard the stories of having to come in at night and on the weekends to count flies. That's why it's a 5-credit course despite only 2 75-min lectures a week and a 2.5 hour lab.</p>
<p>It does suck. You can earn 9/13 and pass with reduced credit. The only way to pass with full credit is to earn 11/13 or better.</p>
<p>I think the fly lab is part of the game plan for us this semester. Hopefully I'll be able to get it out of the way during lab (unlikely).</p>
<p>I'm getting a bit worried about our BioGD professor and the things people have mentioned about him. Remember our first lecture? I was able to follow along, but only because we learned all of that material in Bio G 101-104. What if he teaches new material like that?</p>
<p>Problem solving sessions sound worthwhile...</p>
<p>I'm not too worried. There's plenty of help between office hours, problem sessions, the textbook, etc. Obviously, to get through the material he's going to get through, he can't draw 4x4 Punnett squares every time he needs to do a cross. Just take his answers at face value and work out the probabilities on your own time to see how he got those answers.</p>
<p>I agree. Obviously, it would be a bit tedious for him to draw out squares for each cross, and it would be unecessary considering how easy it is to do mentally. However, the thing that worries me is the lack of structure in his instruction. We're all in the same boat, so it will be fine. I hope.</p>
<p>Oh well.</p>