Questions for a Fordham University Student / Pre-Med

Colleges and Universities A-Z Fordham University
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Hey everyone,

I’m currently a second-semester Freshman at Fordham University Rose Hill! I know how scary and tough this entire process could be and with May 1st approaching, I thought I would make this post to answer any questions any of you may have! To give you a little insight, I am a commuter and I’m also on the pre-med track with my major currently being undecided. I’m going to go ahead and explain the Fordham pre-med program, specifically freshmen year since I’ve seen a lot of posts about it on this website that had tons of incorrect information!

Fordham University Rose Hill: Pre-Med
Typical first-semester schedule: English class, Math, Biology 1 with Lab, and Chemistry 1 with Lab and Recitation.
You are allowed to take four classes your FIRST-semester as a pre-med if you’re taking Chemistry Biology and a math together. Lab and Recitation don’t count as separate courses.

Typical second-semester schedule: 2 Core requirements, Next Level of the previous Math course, Biology 2 with Lab, and Chemistry 2 with Lab and Recitation.

I absolutely love the Pre-med program here. The amount of guidance, support, and resources you are given by Fordham is absolutely amazing. People on this website were discussing how Fordham was “lacking” in their sciences or their science department was not “up to par”. Based on those post, it’s obvious they were posted by other Freshmen. There is a common trend at any school you decide to attend where students expect the grades simply for work or effort they put in. They may not have studied enough in advance or they simply were not studying correctly, however, because they put the work in, even if it was the night before, they feel infuriated that they didn’t receive an above average grade on the said exam or that they flat out failed it. That’s the issue. Pre-med is difficult wherever you go! If you do not put in the TIME you will NOT do well. I cannot stress this enough. One of my Pre-med friends from first semester actually transferred out of Fordham stating they were “not good for science”. This same friend also told me how he would come home from school and not do anything productive until maybe 10 PM. On the same hand, I was coming home from school and starting my work right at 4 PM and continuing all day as necessary. I’m not trying to say I was an exemplary student, though. I wasn’t. Because guess what, I was studying wrong. I wasn’t used to college-level exams and I was studying the way I would for high school level exams. My point is, although I did poorly due to this adjustment, I was able to redeem myself second semester. When I wasn’t doing well, the first thing I did was blame Fordham and say they were being unfair. It was when I got to class and saw that students got 80s and 90s on the same exam I got a 60 on, that I realized it was time to buckle down and take control. I’m not saying it is the best program, but it is pretty amazing.

My brother went to Fordham for pre-med, graduated in 2012, and is now in his last year of medical school. I can honestly say, Fordham helped him a lot. In fact, (and I swear we did not make this up!!!) one of his interviewers for a medical school said “Oh you went to Fordham? Okay.” and completely skipped over the majority of his grades and such simply because they were impressed with the school. Fordham isn’t one of the highest ranked, but admissions counselors who have been dealing with Fordham and their students for so long know the rigor, intensity, and workload we endeavor. Point is, Fordham was able to help my brother a ton in 2012, and since then, they have undergone drastic improvements to the Pre-med program.

The improvements to the pre-med program are something all pre-meds know of because when we get exams from previous years, they’re usually a LOT easier than what we actually get on exam day. Making these exams harder and asking more in-depth and thorough questions ensure students understand a full range of topics and are used to dealing with “difficult” questions come MCAT time. Biology lecture is a fair class that typically isn’t too difficult, besides the first semester when you’re learning how to study for it. For Chemistry, it gets a bit tricky. Now, the Fordham Pre-med advisor does say that Fordham has no “weed out” classes for pre-meds, however, I certainly believe Chemistry is the one. The exam averages for Chemistry first semester ranged VERY poorly However, this is why Chemistry has a HEAVY curve. Once again to reiterate, if you’re expecting to get a 4.0 your first semester, I hope you’re successful and you achieve your goal, but it is VERY difficult. Your first semester of Pre-med is practically the lowest your GPA will and should EVER be.

Now to address another statement made by a student on this website stating something along the lines of “The labs are all outdated and nothing works”. I simply don’t know if this person was posting under the wrong school or they made this up out of spite for some reason?? I never experienced this and I have been taking 2 labs each semester. One chemistry and one biology lab each semester. I have never had an issue with something not working in the laboratory. This same person also says a lot of his friends were all transferring out of Fordham pre-med at Rose Hill. This is where I know they were lying or exaggerating. I have only met one person who said they were transferring out, and I mentioned his story above. I’d like to think I’m friends with a lot of pre-meds and even still, he was the only one I heard who had transferred out.

I think another reason pre-med might be difficult at Fordham is simply due to the addition of core requirements and labs. Biology lab is infamously known amongst pre-med for its difficult exams with low average grades as a result. In fact, it’s often thought to be harder than Biology lecture. I truly have to say, even though I may have been cursing Fordham back in the first semester when I was up all night studying for the lab exam or when I got back my first lab exam score and getting a 60 on it, I totally would do it again. The way the lab exam and course is made is to make you understand a wide variety of material and learning how to study for exams where so much information will be tested on. I’m currently in Biology Lab 2 where although the exams are still difficult, preparation for them has gotten so much easier simply because of Biology Lab 1. This is the kind of studying that helps on MCATs! Chemistry Lab is also challenging but completely possible to get an A in.

Core requirements, like I mentioned earlier, can be very overwhelming. In fact, if there’s one thing I dislike about Fordham, it’s certainly these requirements. There are a ton of them and although its “do-able”, it can get annoying. But hey, Fordham wants to give us a worldview education. A common trend among Fordham classes is that they are not easy. Nothing here is easy. Pre-med or not. But, that’s why Fordham’s name and reputation continue to improve. It truly is a challenging school, but if you don’t slack off and truly work hard, you will do wonderfully. A lot of kids drop pre-med. I don’t think it has anything to do with Fordham, but more that students weren’t willing or able to put in the time or energy required. These kids didn’t transfer to other pre-med programs, however, like someone else suggested. They entirely changed their major and stayed at Fordham.

LINCOLN CENTER V. ROSE HILL:
If you go to Lincoln Center for pre-med, completely disregard everything above. Lincoln Center is where the sciences are lacking and need significant improvement to their faculty. Rose Hill is the known location for Pre-Med students. If you decide to attend Lincoln Center for Pre-med, be sure of your decision. It will only be ten times harder at Lincoln Center.

Please ask any questions you may have!!! I will try my best to reply.

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Since this was quite obviously directed towards my post, I’ll respond first by saying that close reading and reading comprehension are absolutely essential, especially if you’re trying to counter an argument. You claimed that the post was clearly written by a freshman, but I stated that I was a sophomore at the time. More importantly, you stated that all your claims in your post can be negated when looking at the Lincoln Center campus, and I explicitly stated that I was at the Lincoln Center campus. The entirety of all my posts discuss the fact that LC has an extremely poor premed/natural science department.

“This same person also says a lot of his friends were all transferring out of Fordham pre-med at Rose Hill.”
Except I never said all my friends were transferring out of Fordham premed at Rose Hill. I wasn’t a student at Rose Hill. I also talked about myself and 2 or 3 other people transferring to other schools, not every single premed student I was friends with at Lincoln Center. When I was a sophomore, you were still in high school, correct? How is it possible that you know for certain that my cohort at LC didn’t have many people transferring out when you were not at LC, or even Fordham, at the time?

It’s interesting that you missed those key details about everything you tried to counter being in regards to LC, not RH. So, when referring to the professors, curriculum, outdated equipment, etc etc, it was all referring to the Lincoln Center campus, which was emphasized repeatedly.
Here are some direct quotes from my old posts:
“I’m also speaking solely from my experience at LC so it might also be different at Rose Hill”
“Hi everyone, I’m currently a sophomore at the Lincoln Center campus, so if anyone has any questions about anything pertaining to LC, I’ll be more than happy to answer them.”
“I’ve only taken 1 class at RH so I’m not too familiar”
The times when I did talk about RH were when I would refer to another user’s posts about her daughter’s negative experience being premed at that campus, and when I would refer to my experience with RH chemistry labs or interacting with some RH premeds.

In terms of you claim that I stated that “all the labs are outdated and nothing works” here is what I actually said:
“The equipment is often broken and there’s not enough materials for everyone to use even though my class isn’t very big this semester” this was referring to the chemistry lab I took both semesters at RH because chem lab is not offered at LC. Here is the entirety of my post about my experiences at RH with chemistry lab, since your oversimplification distorted my original message:
“In chemistry labs we depend greatly on proportions of chemicals and substances being as close to exact as possible and within reasonable margins of error, which is extremely difficult when many of our scales don’t calibrate properly. There’s also not enough of chemicals we need at times which means some experiments will either be compromised or the professor will do one experiment and everyone copies the result from it. That doesn’t help building lab skills especially for those of us want to do research, since a lot of the very important lab procedures end up being the ones where we end up having to copy the professors results without getting to do the procedures ourselves. Theres also bunsen burner parts that are not working well which ends very badly. For one, the ring stand screws are loose on a lot of them, so they aren’t stable enough to hold heavier beakers with substances in them. There’s metal mesh that goes over the ring stand and under the beaker that are disfigured so many of my classmates have had their entire beaker filled with what they needed for results ending up falling off the beaker and shattering. Then the entire result for the experiment is completely lost. Premeds only typically take intro physics, which I am taking now, and our labs are simpler mechanisms so we don’t come across issues with equipment.”

Also, just a note for anyone else, I’m not sure if it’s been changed at LC yet, but the set up for the curriculum is/was different than it is at RH. The sequence goes Bio I&II + calculus freshman year, Chem I&II + Physics I&II sophomore year, and Orgo I&II junior year. There were conversations in the natural science department during my last semester where they were considering changing this to match up with the RH curriculum for incoming freshman, but I don’t know if it has been approved or not.

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Let me tell you…I have written, deleted, re-written and deleted my reply so many times trying to be nice in my response because I also believed his comments were directed not only towards me but also to @EmB1997. And I echo everything that @EmB1997 says, especially in regards to the conditions of the chem labs at RH. There was even an article about the conditions of the chem labs at RH in the Fordham Ram.

https://fordhamram.com/2015/02/labs-could-use-a-facelift-argue-students/

Maybe they updated them since my daughter graduated, I don’t know. But I echo everything that @EmB1997 says about doing work in the labs and nothing is going the way you want. Because that is exactly what my daughter experienced.

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Hello, @EmB1997 ! I did not mean to offend anyone and I apologize if I did! I promise I wasn’t talking about your post, I actually just read it for the first time and infact, reading what you said about the chemistry lab issues actually reminded me that some of those problems do currently exist. The “post” I was reffering to actually was not a post it was several different comments made on a post that was either a general thread about Fordham or specifically about pre med at Fordham but I’m having trouble rememebering. But in regards to what you said about your Chemistry lab experience at Rose Hill: luckily we don’t have issues with not having enough materials or chemicals. The scales are acutally all brand new so they must have purchased new ones due to the issues with calibrations as you stated. Our professor only did one experiement with everyone, but I believe it was because if done incorrectly the results could’ve been very dangerous. However, I certainly agree that there are issues with the bunsen burners. I believe the actual bunsen burners have been replaced as they seem new, but the ring stand with the beaker holder and metal mesh that goes on the ring stand are issues sometimes. Luckily there was never an issue with anyone not being able to do the experiement because of this since there were so many ring stands and metal mesh pieces to choose from and people would obviously leave the faulty ones behind. Again, I apolgize that you felt my post was attacking you! The comments I was reffering to were actually also recent and they specifically stated they had issues this year and last year.

@MomTheChauffer I read the article you attached and I’m shocked! I actually didn’t even believe they were talking about the right school. The article was published in 2015 so they most likely must’ve renovated the labs becuase thankfully none of those issues are present anymore. For example, they stated there was peeling paint and grease on the floors which isn’t true anymore. I tried looking for an image of the labs currently but unfortunately couldn’t find one.

I feel bad that @MomTheChauffer your daughter and @EmB1997 had less than great experiences at Fordham! It must’ve been really tough dealing with those issues on top of the stress that being pre-med already delievers.

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Just a note: your major should not be ‘premed’. It can be anything you want but probably not biology because there’s such an oversupply of them. Philosophy is a good choice because Fordham is known for it, just complement with advanced science classes. Make sure you volunteer at a local clinic, shadow doctors, etc. Fortunately the health assigning should help you with that.

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Oh absolutely no one is offended, we’re simply correcting your post that tried to dismiss actual issues with the school’s program, since your post referenced our posts. You were absolutely making direct references to our posts so please don’t put on a front now that many of your claims have been disproved, both about our posts and about the labs. I just looked back on the board; the arguments you made about people saying they knew of people transferring out, problems with equipment, etc etc were referring directly to my posts about LC and posts by the user above whose daughter dealt with premed issues at RH.

Just to quote what you said in terms of referring to my specific previous posts, “Now to address another statement made by a student on this website stating something along the lines of “The labs are all outdated and nothing works”. I simply don’t know if this person was posting under the wrong school or they made this up out of spite for some reason?? I never experienced this and I have been taking 2 labs each semester. One chemistry and one biology lab each semester. I have never had an issue with something not working in the laboratory. This same person also says a lot of his friends were all transferring out of Fordham pre-med at Rose Hill. This is where I know they were lying or exaggerating.” You read our posts about detailed issues we had but still said that we lied. Additionally, as I mentioned in my previous post, everyone who I knew that was transferring was doing so at Lincoln Center before you were even a student at Fordham, so not your home campus nor during your time there as a student.

Before making such rash claims about other people’s experiences and dismissing them as lies, perhaps you should read closely and think about the current problems with the labs instead of hastily making a post to “disprove” everything we stated. Do conditions at a school change over time? Yes. However, my experiences were from up until Spring 2016, so it’s recent enough for it to be what you were referring to. You made very clear references to both my posts and @MomTheChauffer’s posts so please don’t backtrack now that we have responded with facts and sources.

@MomTheChauffer I, too, have no doubt in my mind that this was directed towards you and I. However, we both know what the conditions of the program and the labs were. Regardless of one person’s quest to dismiss our claims as bogus, it does not nullify the fact that these problems existed for years both at RH and LC.

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@ForUniPreMed thank you for making this thread! I was accepted early action as a chemistry major to rose hill and I was very curious about how pre med students view the program.

  1. How have your experiences with advising been? Also have you been able to get internships and/or research? I know beefing up your resume and having tons of experience is extremely important.
  2. What are the class sizes like for those weed out intro courses? And are you able to develop relationships with professors?
  3. Lastly, I understand the amount of core classes necessary because it is a Jesuit school. Do you think overall this helps you be a more well rounded applicant for med school / does it become more flexible as you progress?