questioning about the difficulty of chem 1a and all premed courses

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>note: i am a senior s HS so i may sound naive</p>

<p>question: i was checking out the podcasts for chem 1a and at the beginning of lecture 34 for spring 2010 the professor was talking about grades</p>

<p>A- 850-1000 (85%+)
B- 730-849 (73-84.9%)
C- 580-729 (58-72.9%)
D- 430-579 (43%-57.9%)
F- Less than 429 (42.9% or lower)</p>

<p>he also said the + and - are going to be to his discrection. </p>

<p>so anyways my questions is that why are people saying the class is curved and its so hard if he straight out tells you what points you need for certain grades. </p>

<p>or is the grading for spring just so much easier than fall? </p>

<p>because im contemplating going to berkeley for premed. people tell me its tough but it times like these where im thinking its not as hard as people say. people also tell me that if i take premed classes in the offseason that it will be so much easier but how much easier slightly easier (+.1gpa than regular) or so much easier (+.3 gpa than regular )</p>

<p>what im trying to say is that i have so much ap credit that i can afford only to take 13 units an semester for 4 years and graduate so ill only have 3 classes a semester. so will that one class less than average help me to do great in the premed courses and get A's or am i screwed both ways taking 13 units or 16 units if im premed</p>

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<p>Practically EVERY premed thinks they are hot stuff and will come in kill berkeley and come out with a 4.0…I don’t know anybody who has actually achieved this. BTW chem 1A is in the league of easy premed class and have nothing on 3B and 1A/L. Also the off season thing is probably only true for Chem 1A and doesn’t apply to other premed classes and the difference in grades is probably small.</p>

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<p>60% of berkeley premeds don’t get into med school</p>

<p>keeping that in mind, if you’re sweating over 1A…you’ll be part of that 60%. Calbears post is accurate but I think that he meant Chem 3B and 3A/L (not sure though).</p>

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<p>Oh I meant Chem 3B and Bio 1A/L.</p>

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<p>oh that makes more sense…3a isn’t really that bad…the stories about Bio1AL sound amazing though (and for 2 units)</p>

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<p>but will i be fine if im doing premed taking 3 classes a semester make premed so much easier instead of the average of 4 classes per semester or is it hard regardless whether you take 3 classes or 4 classes a semester? i mean woudnt it make more sense if your taking one less class than the average then you should do very good in those premed classes because you are spending more time on the material</p>

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<p>In theory it makes sense. But when adcoms see you performing the same as people who are averaging 4 to 5 classes with half the load, who do you think looks more competitive? </p>

<p>Check out any med school’s “prospective students” section. Course Load and Rigor are usually important factors for acceptance.</p>

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<p>Trust me your thinking is not innovating. My friend is taking Bio 1A/L with 2 cream puff classes and she is scared of not passing Bio 1A/L even though she spends 90% of her time on it. Also med schools are not stupid and will think that if you’re taking only 13 units every semester than you will not handle the rigors of med school (18+ units) and possibly make you a weak candidate. If a med school accepts you than they are putting a lot of resources into your education so of course they don’t want people to drop out. How will med schools know you can handle their school? Also don’t give us the “I will get an A in every class” because honestly that only to a VERY select FEW.</p>

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<p>in the link below look at myth 3,4, and 5 they talk about course load and it basically says that taken an easier load (which i have the luxary of doing because i have worked hard and passed 6 ap tests) and getting better grades is better than having a really hard load and doing poorly </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.questscholars.org/oldstuff/activities/professional/pre-med_letter/premed-letter-2001-2-pdf.pdf[/url]”>http://www.questscholars.org/oldstuff/activities/professional/pre-med_letter/premed-letter-2001-2-pdf.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This is written by a rhodes scholar and this is where im getting SOME not all of my guidance from</p>

<p>btw- no i do not think it will be easy to get a 4.0 in premed classes i just wanna make it so i can have the most time available to study and fully understand material</p>

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<p>I think how easy you find chem 1a largely depends on the background you have in chem walking in. I had a really hard time in it, and actually got a better grade in ocehm (3a) then 1a, since gen chem was easier for those who had taken AP chem in HS, while for 3A that didn’t matter.</p>

<p>I think it’s safe to take 13 units for your first semester… and there’s really no point in planning the rest of your years, I did that a lot as a freshman - and you really never end up sticking to your plans. As for med school, I know people on this forum are saying “med schools will see that you couldn’t handle 18 units” but I really don’t think that’s true. I mean, the first thing med schools will see is your GPA… if you took less classes, and did better in them, that’s what will count more. Doesn’t seem likely they will go through each person’s application to see how many units they took each semester.</p>

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<p>Very few med school admission officers will sit there sifting through all the applications and trying to equalize the disparity between high GPA and low course rigor (and the other way around). If you get a high GPA, then that’s all they’ll really look at, not the difficulty of your courses. I mean, look at it this way, plenty of humanities majors get into med school, are those classes really that tough to begin with?</p>

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<p>imo i have a good not great background in chem i recived 3 on the AP Chem test. but that was because my high school is on the quarter system so i learned all of AP chem from sept- feb. and the test was in may so if i had taken the test in feb right after the class was over i might have gotten a 4.</p>

<p>tastybeef: are you premed? because i vaguely remember you post a lot of the UCSD versus UCD thread a while back. </p>

<p>if so how are the premed classes at cal and do you agree with what im hearing about the premed classes in the offseason and how people get better grades taking them at those times.</p>

<p>for example ( i aped out of 2 semesters of math with a 5 on the ap test)</p>

<p>first fall- No premed classes just 3 GE, and seminar
first spring- chem 1a, GE, GE, and seminar
summer- chem 3a, 3al
second fall- bio 1a, 1al, GE, GE
second spring- chem 3b, 3bl, bio 1b, GE</p>

<p>how much of a difference in gpa can someone see in the offseason. very little (.1)? or very big (.3)? </p>

<p>im asking these questions because i am questioning whether or not to go to berkeley if my dream is to go to a very prestigous medical school (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, UPenn, UCSF, Etc…) i know that i need a 3.8+ and 36+ MCAT to get into those schools and Berkeley from what i have heard is very hard</p>

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<p>If your accepting somebody into med school and forcing them to go through a lot of hoops than I assume they will do more than look at your GPA and shift quickly through their application. Obviously a 2.3 with 25 units a semester will not trump a 3.5 in 13 units, but when you have a GPA difference of .3 or less than other things become much greater. A LOT of people even an admissions officer at UCSF who gave a symposium said that GPA gets you through the door, but other factors are what determine who gets in and who doesn’t. If GPA was all that matter than why don’t they just make the application your name and GPA?</p>

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<p>Dude like we have been saying there is a VERY little difference (<.1). Nitsche* in one spring only gave 17% As and than like 50% As the other spring so its a crap shot.</p>

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<p>AP classes mean *****…</p>

<p>Your schedule seems fine, I would switch bio1A and chem 3B though so there isn’t a discontinuation in your chem series.</p>

<p>Bio1B isn’t supposed to be as hard as 1A/L and i don’t think that it’s on the MCAT</p>

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<p>oh…and I would be weary about taking advice from anyone who hasn’t gotten into medical school in the past 5 years. That letter is from 2002 and a lot has changed since then. Even 4th year med students aren’t familiar with how the MCAT is taken these days and they don’t even care about the admissions process.</p>

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<p>calbear, I think what they meant by “other factors” was not load of course work or distribution of courses, but rather the E.C’s (clinical experience, research) and interview skills/personal statement… course load would seem like a very minor factor, and your GPA is not worth the risk… </p>

<p>FutureENT - everyone comes in dreaming of getting into a top 10 medical school during the their freshman year… once you get into your third/fourth year - you realize you’d be lucky to get into even 1 med school anywhere in the country. Berkeley’s not the best place if you’re aiming for that high of a GPA, but you have to take all other factors into consideration when making this decision.</p>

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<p>Im starting to believe you guys about how hard Berkeley is and i am start to doubt whether to go there or not</p>

<h2>THIS IS A LETTER FROM A NEIGHBOR OF MINE WHO WENT THROUGH PREMED AT BERKELEY</h2>

<p>Hello,
I wished someone had given me this advice before I decided on going to UCB. As for myself, I graduated from Cal in May with a degree in Molecular Biology and am currently trying to apply to medical school, but most likely will have to reapply again, since I took the MCAT in August and applied to schools later in the cycle. I have a 34R MCAT, 3.6 GPA, a 3.5 BCPM, and have taken all my college classes at Cal, so I do not have a bias of being against Cal because I did poorly there. Hopefully, I would just like to give a true account of my experiences there, as well as explain my personal reasons for not doing premed at Cal.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>While UCB does have a great reputation, mostly based on its high US News rankings, that does not necessarily imply that it is a better school. I personally believe those rankings are skewed in the sense that they favor too heavily on admissions selectivity and professor credentials, and not enough on student satisfaction. Furthermore, according to what I have heard about the medical school admissions committees, as well as the people I know that have gotten into medical school, I do not think that the UCB or any school’s prestige factor really matters. Obviously, if two people applied to medical school with identical stats(say MCAT=31, GPA=3.6), except one to UCB and the other went to Chico State, there will be favoring by the admissions committee towards the Berkeley guy since they understand that Cal’s undergrad program is more difficult than the Chico guy. Yet, what is hard for the admissions committees to quantify is how to select between the UCB and Chico applicant if they were identical in every way, except GPA (lets say, UCB=3.3, Chico=3.7). From my experiences, it seems like there would be a preference towards the Chico guy, even though, I believe that a person with a 3.3 GPA at Cal, can easily get a 4.0 at Chico.</p></li>
<li><p>When people say that Cal’s premed program is competitive, they are not joking. Since all premed courses at Cal are curved, and most of the people there are smart and hardworking, this creates an environment where professors are forced to give extremely difficult tests just to generate a fair grade distribution. To do this, many professors create exams where they focus on the most minute details, and not on the important or essential concepts. For example, I knew a person that got an A in one of my bio classes, yet could not understand the concepts of cellular respiration, but knew all the protein carriers involved in the ETC mechanism. In addition, because of the competitive nature of the premeds at Cal, there is a lot of cheating at Cal. I remember one incident, where a student actually stole a professor’s computer right after class because he thought the exam was on it, and afterwards, the professor gave bogus threats to the class about how he had confidential NIH and CDC info on it. Check out the webcast of his threats: <a href=“ifilm.com”>ifilm.com, it is not unusually for students to try to hurt other students either by giving them wrong information, messing up their experiments, and etc. </p></li>
<li><p>UCB is a research school, not a teaching school, and for the most part, it seems like that research side is limited for graduate students there. What I mean by this statement is that many of the professors at Cal are there because of their research, and not their teaching ability, and thus, teaching for them is of little importance. While I have had some great professors at Cal, they were easily by the numerous professors that do not teach or just dont put any effort into it. I had one professor that would just come to class and make up his lectures on the fly, telling us to just read the textbook for the proper information. Furthermore, the premed courses at Cal are huge. I think the smallest premed course I had consisted of about 250-300 students, whereas my general Chemistry class had about 1200-1500 students. It can create an environment that makes learning more difficult.In addition, it is competitive to even get research experience at Cal, especially a position that doesn’t require you to do bull**** tasks like clean petri dishes, remove rat feces, and etc. I believe that this is because of the fact that there such a large supply of students that want to get research experience and limited number of openings available.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>4.Letters of Rec: While I was able to get great letters of rec from my professors, due to the fact that I did extremely well in their classes and was able to use that as a way to interact with them better, I can understand how its difficult for other UCB students to get letters of rec. Since the classes are large, it is hard to get a personal interaction with professor in class, and thus, one will be forced to go to a professor’s office hours to try to interact with them. Yet, even in office hours, many professors are either aloof towards students, or are being swamped by several other students that are in the same position as you.</p>

<ol>
<li>MCAT Preparation: Many people might argue that going to Cal will prepare you better for the MCAT, stating that UCB people have a higher MCAT avg than the other UCs, but I personally believe that is a bunch of BS. I do not disagree that UCB students have a higher MCAT average, but I do not believe that it is due to the education at Cal, but rather, it is just a correlation. As mentioned earlier, I think that the teaching instruction can be lacking depending on the professor. Personally, I believe that the reason why UCB students have higher MCAT averages is due to the following reasons:
A. Hardwork: To succeed at Cal, you must be hardworking, and I think that it instills in its students a work ethic that allows them to prepare for and succeed on the MCATs.
B. Selectivity: While the MCAT is based on premed knowledge, it is inherently, an intelligence/logic test, where one must incorporate their premed knowledge to solve passages related to subjects they know nothing about. Many people might disagree with me on this, and I do agree that there are many factors that can influence one’s MCAT score, as well as there are certain biases in it, but I believe essentially that it is an intelligence test. I am willing to bet that on average, people with higher SATs, will score higher on the MCAT, and since schools, such as UCB are selectively towards higher SATs, UCB’s higher MCAT average is more of an indication of its student pool, and less of its educational program.</li>
</ol>

<p>In the end, I am not saying that you cant succeed as a premed at Cal, because that is obviously not true, but you will have to put in additional effort, work that could have been easily avoided by going to an easier school or lesser UC. If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have gone to UCI, SDSU, or some other school, where I would have been able to have 3.9-4.0 GPA with less effort, which when combined with my MCAT, would probably have made me a strong medical school applicant, rather than just an average California applicant. If you decide on going to medical school and want to go to Cal, I would recommend that you take your premed courses either at a Bay Area JC or even at a lower tier school in the area, such as San Francisco or San Jose State. I know several UCB premeds that are doing that, and they will probably get the best of both worlds. These are just my opinions on my time at Berkeley, and I hope it can be of some assistance. </p>

<p>-Take care and good luck</p>

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<p>yay…someone finally figured it out…(before getting here)</p>

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<p>thanks for the complement?..</p>