Questions of an incoming first year

Colleges and Universities A-Z Wellesley College
1

<p>Hi everyone! I was admitted ED for the class of 2014, and I have some questions about Wellesley that I've been meaning to ask. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>I keep hearing Wellesley students talking about up-tight and stressed out premeds. My question is, why is it so stressful to be premed (I know, dumb question). I mean, doesn't being a premed just mean that there's a set of science courses I have to complete? Are the science courses really stressful or is it something else? Is it remotely possible to be sane and still be premed? Also, is it possible to double major and still do premed? Or is that totally out of the question?</p></li>
<li><p>How are the intro language classes at Wellesley? Are they easy to ease into, or are they pretty intense? Because I might want to take a language next year, but I'm not exactly language savvy. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thank you in advance for taking the time to answer my questions! :)</p>

2

<p>i sooo recognize you on facebook :)</p>

3

<p>General pre-med info
Being pre-med can be as stressful or stressless as you want it to be. Yes, being pre-med means that you are only taking a certain set of courses to prepare you for medical school. That is generally two years of chemistry (one year of inorganic and one year of organic), a year of biology, a year of physics, an English course… I think that’s all… Yes, it is a lot of courses. No, you don’t have to be a stressed out pre-med if you don’t want to be. </p>

<p>What stresses out a lot of people, especially first-years, is that college is (usually) their first time experiencing actual college courses and five hour labs that go along with most science courses. Put that course load on top of activities, general college life, and a first year being in a new place with a new roommate at a new school. It can be overwhelming for some. </p>

<p>First years also come to college with the idea that you WILL get an A in every course you take. That’s very very very unlikely. Accept that now and your life in college will be much easier (regardless of where you end up going). I’m not saying don’t study, but don’t feel that because you’re getting a B in a class, that you’re not going to get into medical school/ other graduate school/ fail at life. It’s ok. Breathe. (That’s generally where most of the first year pre-med stress comes from).</p>

<p>Side note: I am not pre-med and not a science major (anymore…did two years of it and stopped), BUT I am two credits away from fulfilling pre-med requirements. </p>

<p>You can do it without being stressed out about it. What you have to do is plan out it out if you expect to be pre-med. Yes, there are juniors and seniors who have a change of heart and become pre-med, but if you’re a first year who’s considering being pre-med, take intro bio/chem/physics your first semester and see how you like it. If things go well, take another lab science your second semester. After that, see if you want to double up on sciences in sophomore year. (This is just my opinion; other people have approached it differently. And yes you can take multiple lab sciences a semester…even in first year, though it is not exactly recommended)</p>

<p>Double majoring and being pre-med.
This depends on your majors. Are you going to do a science + something else? Or two something elses + pre-med? A science + something else is very doable, especially since your science major will at least cover two units worth of pre-med requirements. Two non-science majors + pre-med is… well, I haven’t heard of anyone doing it. It may be possible, but that just seems like a really bad idea. You can be a non-science major and be pre-med. There are many of those, especially at a LAC like Wellesley.</p>

4

<p>

</p>

<p>Level of intensity depends on the language. All intro languages are time-intensive, meaning you will be in class 4-5 times a week generally, some times more with extra “conversation classes” at lunch or another convenient time. And you will probably have assignments due every day in class. While that may not seem like a lot to everyone in high school right now, in college that is not the norm. But if you want to learn a language and learn it well, you have to practice it every day, so that makes a lot of sense. </p>

<p>How difficult the work is depends on the language, your background, and your knack (or lack thereof) for learning languages. I would argue that for a student growing up in America, spanish is probably one of the easiest languages to learn because it uses the same alphabet as English. </p>

<p>If you come to Wellesley and jump right into intro chinese, arabic, hindi/urdu and you’ve never done anything like it before, you will have to spend a lot of time on it. Those languages are especially difficult, but obviously, very very useful presently.</p>

5

<p>Just a side note, considering the percentages of incoming students who are thinking about being pre-med, it might be easier to start a pre-med thread if there are more questions on the subject.</p>

6

<p>welles10: thank you so much! You’re answer is perfect! I’m just going to try to go to Wellesley with an open mind and hope everything works out. Haha. I’m glad to know that not every premed student is insane at Wellesley :stuck_out_tongue: I’m just going to try to take a chemistry course or something my first year and see what happens. Physics will be hard for me, but we’ll see. </p>

<p>I want to double major in science and history/art history. Do you think that would be manageable?</p>

7

<p>Yeah, that’s manageable. Most majors can actually be finished in about four semesters (you will have to take probably 2-3 courses in that area per semester, but it can be do-able). Obviously, this is not the case for science majors (need at least 3 full years, obviously recommended that you start in that area sometime during first year) and very structured majors (take A then B then C…) like economics and international relations.</p>

<p>Generally, a science + a humanity (history, English, sociology, american studies, etc) is do-able. I would suggest you start on your science requirements first and see if you like those. Then if you want to add a humanity (or drop science for the humanity or do something else entirely) you still have time to do that.</p>

<p>Trying to finish a science major at the last minute is NOT adviseable – it leaves you stuck with lots of difficult courses during your senior year, which is not fun at all…</p>

8

<p>Oh yay!! That’s such a relief :slight_smile: I guess I’m just going to have to plan my courses out ahead of time. Hmm…</p>

<p>There’s something else I’ve been wondering about: what goes on in 5 hour science labs? Do students conduct one 5 hour lab or do they do multiple labs? And is an instructor involved in this?</p>

9

<p>Science labs vary. Bio and chem labs are usually 4-5 hours and physics is about 3-4. Granted some people finish early and can leave early, and others take longer and stay later.</p>

<p>There is an instructor during lab, so you definitely are supervised! In my experience, all labs start off with the lab instructor giving an explanation of the days activities. They’ll introduce key formulas you’ll need for computations, certain computer programs if those are needed, cover all the “stations” in lab if there are different activities going on. After that, you go about the day’s activities: sometimes you focus on one specific thing (eg. dissection, titration, etc) and other times you’ll focus on a variety of different things.</p>

<p>Bio and chem labs have a lot of step by step activities that have to be completed. Keeping a good lab notebook is essential in these labs, since you will use those notes to write up your lab reports afterwards. Physics labs had a general overall theme, and once you finish the calculations, you are free to leave. Physics instructors place much less importance on your lab notebook and lab reports in general, imo. They tend to just want the right thought process and answers, where I feel chem/bio want everything (procedure explicitly noted, materials list, etc).</p>

10

<p>I’m curious, how many credits do a student usually take per semester? I know it sometimes depend on your major, or majors for that matter, but I would just want to know what is the general course load I should take so that I won’t be overloading (or not doing too much) myself.</p>

11

<p>Students generally take 4 credits per semester (science courses with lab are worth 1.25 credits, while (almost) all other classes are worth 1, so students who take 3 courses + lab end up with 4.25 credits). As a first-semester first-year, you are not allowed to take more than 4 courses, and while I have taken more than that in my time at Wellesley, I would assure anyone that 4 courses really is a full courseload. Furthermore, you need 32 credits to graduate from Wellesley, so a student who takes 4 credits every semester throughout their Wellesley career will graduate on time with no outside credits/bending over backwards/etc.</p>

12

<p>A bit of clarification: as a first semester first-year, you can take up to 4 courses (most take 4, some do take 3). 4 courses may or may not be equivalent to 4 units of credit. You can take a lab (or more, though it’s not recommended) and have a credit total of 4.25 or 4.5. </p>

<p>Personally, my 4.0 units first-semester first year was more than enough work for me. There’s a lot of other factors you have to consider you first semester, so you shouldn’t bite off more than you can chew with your courseload. </p>

<p>PS. advantgious – you wake up really really early… especially with daylight savings time</p>

13

<p>^^First of all, sorry for being a bit confusing with the credit/courses distinction. Secondly, I’m studying abroad in Europe this semester, so it was I think 1 pm when I posted that (and we didn’t have daylight savings today). :slight_smile: I did wonder if anyone would notice that I was posting at strange times by American time zone standards–believe me, the last time I saw 6 am in the time zone I was residing in was a loooooooong time ago.</p>

14

<p>Hahahaha OMG that makes so much more sense now! I was like…wow…I just woke up and it’s now noon… :)</p>

<p>Note: I was that first year who woke up at 6am (yay high school habits)…</p>