Pre-med/Bio at Berkeley

<p>Just how hard is it to succeed as a pre-med at Berkeley? I understand that doing pre-med requires a lot of hard work no matter where you go, but is it especially awful at Berkeley? How does it compare to doing pre-med at say HYPS or other Ivies? Also, are pre-meds at Berkeley very cut-throat like, say, at JHU, or is it more of a collaborative effort? And if you fall behind in class, how easy is it to find someone (e.g., a professor, TA, etc.) willing to help you out?</p>

<p>i want to know too.</p>

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I understand that doing pre-med requires a lot of hard work no matter where you go, but is it especially awful at Berkeley?

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<p>It may be tougher because of the large number of premeds. What you've got to do is excel in classes, volunteer at clinics, and get involved in research. If you do those three things equally well, you'll have much better results than the bulk of the other premeds who tend to only focus on classes due to the extreme difficulty of those classes. Essentially, don't expect to automatically get into a top medical school from Berkeley if you have less than a 3.8</p>

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Also, are pre-meds at Berkeley very cut-throat like, say, at JHU, or is it more of a collaborative effort?

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<p>Probably more at Berkeley, since JHU is just so much smaller and the competition will probably be among friends whereas its among strangers at Berkeley (for the most part.)</p>

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And if you fall behind in class, how easy is it to find someone (e.g., a professor, TA, etc.) willing to help you out?

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<p>I don't think any professor or graduate student at Berkeley, in any field, will tolerate an undergraduate student who wants individual tutoring on lecture material. Office hours are there for students who want to learn more, but not for students who want to learn more about lecture material either because they did not attend or failed to understand. </p>

<p>If you are an underrepresented minority or an economic minority and you are premed, I strongly suggest you look into the Biology Scholars program.</p>

<p><a href="http://bsp.berkeley.edu/index.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://bsp.berkeley.edu/index.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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I don't think any professor or graduate student at Berkeley, in any field, will tolerate an undergraduate student who wants individual tutoring on lecture material. Office hours are there for students who want to learn more, but not for students who want to learn more about lecture material either because they did not attend or failed to understand.

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<p>That is not true at all. Every professor and graduate student I know offers office hours for both purposes. The main purpose of office hours, and what most students use it for, is for understanding material that the professor went over in class already that the student did not understand. The other main use is for students to ask questions about homework problems.</p>

<p>Generally, professors and GSIs are very willing to help you out. It is their job, after all. You can go to office hours and ask them any question you want, no matter how trivial, and they'll help you. It would take a real a-hole of a professor not to.</p>

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That is not true at all. Every professor and graduate student I know offers office hours for both purposes. The main purpose of office hours, and what most students use it for, is for understanding material that the professor went over in class already that the student did not understand. The other main use is for students to ask questions about homework problems.</p>

<p>Generally, professors and GSIs are very willing to help you out. It is their job, after all. You can go to office hours and ask them any question you want, no matter how trivial, and they'll help you. It would take a real a-hole of a professor not to.

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<p>Well, you've been pretty lucky eudean. Most professors that I've had and most professors almost everyone I know has had, have tended to have extremely hostile attitudes towards students who want a repeat of lecture material during office hours. I know many students who have asked for a repeat of lecture material only to be reprimanded about what the professor assumes to be horrible note-taking skills. </p>

<p>I also think that students who show up to office hours asking for a repeat of lecture material are harming their chances of getting good recommendations. After all, what kind of professor would think highly of a student who must be told things twice? Few, if any. The students they WILL like are the ones who "get" the info the first time and go to office hours in hopes of either talking about OTHER info or getting more ADVANCED info related to lecture material.</p>

<p>Or maybe students need to go to office hours for a "repeat" of lecture material because most of the professors I've had so far are WELL below average when it comes to teaching abilitiy. There's no reason to autmatically be a bio major for pre-med. Statistically speaking, I believe non-science majors have a slightly higher acceptance rate to med schools and also tend to get slightly higher scores on the MCAT but there's just some common misconception floating around that being a science major will increase your chances of getting into med schools. If you like science, then definitely major in it, but it's definitely difficult, especially biology because the competition and the curve in your classes will be tough to say the least. And TAs will help you out if you're nice but some may get annoyed, it all depends on which TA you have and which professor you have.</p>

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I know many students who have asked for a repeat of lecture material only to be reprimanded about what the professor assumes to be horrible note-taking skills.

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<p>Do you mean the student goes in and asks, "Could you give that hour long lecture again, right now, in office hours?" I could see a professor not wanting to do that. I've never seen a professor that wouldn't answer questions to clarify material discussed in class, though. For example, "I didn't understand your proof of Stokes's Theorem. I followed you up to this step. How'd you go from here to here?" Yeah, he did it in class. But any professor I've had would answer that question without any hostility. If you still didn't get it after he explained it another 5 times, then maybe some hostility would show up.</p>

<p>I'll admit, a student can't ask anything. If it looks like you made no attempt to understand the material before asking for help, then the professor/GSI will probably tell you to think about it first, ask you where your reasoning got you so far, and give you ideas towards the next step. If you still don't get it, they'll tell you how to do it (unless it's a homework problem). But they won't refuse to help you. Or at least that's how it's been with all the professors I've had and the professors my friends have told me about.</p>

<p>dobby, I think my experience have been in line with eudean's. maybe it's field or departmental specific, or just bad luck. I'm not sure.</p>

<p>op, I have to iterate that you are asking two different questions, how hard is bio and how hard is pre-med. You probably know this, but the title is somewhat ambiguous. Anyway, is it hard to succeed at Berkeley as a pre-med student? Yes. Is it hard to succeed at most top schools as a pre-med student? Yes, I think so. Is it harder at Berkeley? I'd guess Berkeley is on the scale somewhere between the middle and harder end. HYPS and the like might be more demanding (some say it is, some disagree), but the grading seems to friendlier, as in a higher percentage of As are giving out than Berkeley, higher percentage of Bs, and seemingly a smaller percentage of Cs, with seemingly few Ds, and few Fs. This seems to be true of most top LACs. I would guess that the Berkeley pre-meds are somewhat above average with regard to cutthroatness, but many seem to form small collaborative efforts. Friends often help out friends from what i've seen. There are many types of biology at Berkeley, and many think of some as being harder and more impressive and some easier and less impressive.</p>

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Generally, professors and GSIs are very willing to help you out. It is their job, after all.

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<p>It may be their job, but often times not really something that they are particularly enthusiastic about. Just like it may be my job to wash the dishes, but it's not like I am particularly enthused about it. Sadly, some profs and GSI's see teaching (and dealing with undergrads in general) as an annoying task that they do only because they have to do it, but you can clearly tell that they don't really want to do it. And there's often times little incentive for them to care. Profs who have obtained tenure are basically unfireable, and so poor undergrad teaching evals won't hurt them a whit. {In fact, some of them may even be incented to WANT poor undergrad teaching evals, for they may deduce that if they get poor evals, they won't be assigned to teach another undergrad class that they never wanted to do anyway.} GSI's also may or may not care about their evals. For example, those GSI's who are just serving as GSI's because they are forced to by their department (because it's a graduation requirement) probably won't care about their evals, especially if they have a fellowship that will support them for the rest of their time. </p>

<p>Personally, I've found a rather mixed bag on this score. Some profs and GSI's are indeed helpful. Others, not so much.</p>

<p>Why should pre-meds join Biology Scholars Program? According to dobby. By the way, anyone in this program?</p>

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Why should pre-meds join Biology Scholars Program? According to dobby. By the way, anyone in this program?

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<p>BSP provides URMs and financially needy students with increased faculty attention, individual tutoring, and a close group of "real" friends. Many Cal students do not have any of those things, leading me to conclude that BSP is a worthwhile program to be in if you're a URM/poor Cal student interested in the biological sciences.</p>

<p>Lol, sorry, I guess the title was a bit ambiguous. What I meant was doing pre-med as a bio major. Sorry about the confusion. Thanks for all the replies so far; I'm really learning a lot. :]</p>