<p>I'll be taking bio and chem over the summer, and I was wondering how much I should study for these tests? I haven't taken bio and chem in over a year (I finished them in grade 11). Is there a list somewhere of materials I should know for each course?</p>
<p>the email that we were sent explicitly states that we don’t haev to study for the classes. I have heard that they are more like suggestions and guidelines for where we shoudl be placed instead of a hard and fast rule. But that’s just my opinion.</p>
<p>Don’t study for them at all. The point isn’t to do well the point is to see how well you can do based on what you’ve actually retained.</p>
<p>And yes the placement tests are not upwardly binding but they are downwardly binding, meaning you can’t take a class that you are clearly too qualified for. But you can usually negotiate taking a class a little bit above how you did if you took the test on a flight layover at 3 am or something and you feel you actually can do better.</p>
<p>Honestly, I’ve never heard of anyone being disallowed from taking a class higher than what their placement test indicated they should take. Harvard seems to be very self-motivated; they give you a recommendation, and if you choose to try to do more, no one stops you. This is how it works with prerequisites as well, in my experience; no one is going to stop you from enrolling because you don’t have the right coursework.
So your results aren’t binding, and you shouldn’t study; they give you an idea of where you would probably be most comfortable.</p>