<p>Anyway I did fail another chem test, I got a 68, and class average was a 74, ***</p>
<p>This is how this semester has gone for me</p>
<p>88,69,68 in chem, which makes my test average a 75, and I have like a 95 on homework, and a 95 in chem lab, so if I make a 80 on the final (I doubt I can do this, will probably fail), I will get a B- (81.3 in the class), I need help and advice, I don’t know what to do anymore.</p>
<p>Stop for a minute and take a deep breath. Things seem to be going quickly down hill but you’re still in your first year. </p>
<p>We’re having the same problems at my school, our class average always hover around 65 or 70 in chem, no matter how well we think we know the material. In our case the tests aren’t too well designed as our professor is still fairly new and also i’m just a bad test taker in general.</p>
<p>Clearly if you’re studying you must know what is in the test. Look at your mistakes and ask yourself, could you have answered this if you took your time and thought it out? Or was it a question where you were completely lost.</p>
<p>In many cases I look at my mistakes and it turns out that I could have understood the question but ended up making a stupid mistake or rushing through it out of anxiety.
However in others where i’m just lost, I go to the professor and have him explain it. I make sure I understand the material. Though you seem to be doing well on HW and the lab so it might just be that you need to look over your tests and try to figure out what went wrong on the exam.</p>
<p>See if you’re understanding all of it, truly understanding the material, if so maybe just working on getting better at test taking could do the trick.
If you’re not understanding the material (and it’s a sad truth that in college tests they’ll expect us to apply what we know on questions we’ve never seen before), then go for extra help and try to get the concepts down etc…</p>
<p>I don’t know just some ideas from a fellow premed working his *** off freshman year. Hope it works out and good luck.</p>
<p>^^^ Thanks for the input dude</p>
<p>If I make an 86 on the final, then I would get a B for the class, and if I make a 75-86 its a B-, and if this trend continues and I make a 68 on the final, its C+ in the class;I am screwed.</p>
<p>I honestly am thinking about dropping the class (Freshman are allowed to drop 1 class before the final WITHOUT a W appearing on the the transcript;I don’t think any medical school would want a kid who can’t even make a B in general chemistry 141. (Make a B-/C+ in the class ***).</p>
<p>Biology its going to be around a A-/B+ in the class, I don’t know where. </p>
<p>I am so screwed. I have already started looking at foreign medical schools particulary in the carribean and in eastern europe, maybe even transferring to Penn state, I may do better there.</p>
<p>My other 2 classes should be A’s…</p>
<p>I have never had a 75 test average in my life, and I have never made anything lower than a 88 for a class. College was a reality check.</p>
<p>It’s kind of early to be looking at medical schools at all, let alone foreign ones. Focus on doing as well as you can now. A couple B’s and C’s aren’t the death of all hope. Chillax a little, the extra stress isn’t going to help you focus.</p>
<p>Make an appointment ASAP with the professor. Discuss everything you have said on this thread. See what he/she thinks.</p>
<p>^ He told me I am doing just fine, because I am at the class average. I don’t even know how to respond to that. When I explained my studying technique, he told me to continue doing what I was doing. What the hell?</p>
<p>Average on the past 3 tests : 74.2
My average on the past 3 tests: 75 =(…</p>
<p>Average in the class after labs and finals have been factored in: 81 (B-)…
So my average should be a B-…=(</p>
<p>Vanderbilt is ■■■■■■■■. I took those exact same classes at Vandy as you in Fall '04 and they aren’t appropriate classes for a college freshman. I got a 48 on the 1st Bio test and that was above median (they curved that to an 80). I had friends in my class who were really smart that made like a 12 on that test.</p>
<p>It had nothing to do with intelligence either, it’s that they put you in these classes that no college freshman is prepared for, when freshman are just learning what it’s like to be in college.</p>
<p>Also, Vanderbilt is on this crusade against Grade inflation, which may be good in principle, but when they are one of the only schools doing it, it just ends up hurting their graduates. I’ve no knowledge of the med school applications process, but for Law School essentially grades and LSAT are teh only thing that matters, and if you fall below a certain GPA, you basically aren’t considered for admission. Yet Vandy deflates grades so badly that it seriously hinders their chances of law school acceptance.</p>
<p>^ I am glad I am not the only one. rofl. My chem professor doesn’t curve. Vandy is on a crusade agaisnt grade inflation. ***.</p>
<p>So not only am I dumb, but I destroyed my social life my first semester. Talk about epic fail hahahaha. If I am going to fail tests, might as well have a badass social life rofl and tear up the amazing greek scene at Vandy.hahahaa</p>
<p>Do not give up. I know at least one other top school where the class average of a midterm (the famous/infamous orgo class) in one year was 45 or 48 out of 100. There is a chance that while you are not doing great, many other students are doing even worse.</p>
<p>Is the Vandy medical school a top one? (I guess so.) Sometimes I feel (but I do not have a proof) that at any college which has an associated prestigious medical school (or a prestigious PhD program, or a prestigious undergraduate department like BME recently), some (not all) of their science classes are made notoriously hard. If we look at this issue from another aspect, this actually helps those students who are not particularly good at building an impressive ECs (e.g., some students are just better at these non-academic stuff than others – especially those students who have good mentors or even parents), as they are given an opportunity to stand out at least in one area that is under their control.</p>
<p>I heard, for example, the biochemistry class at UPenn (and maybe also their orgo labs, which many of the premeds there take only AFTER their application to medical schools) are very demanding. Coincident or not, the medical school at UPenn is a top one.</p>
<p>Med schools know which inflate and don’t</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My speculation is that a college has a premed rep is therefore extremely attractive to HS students. Where a regular Uni might have 25% of the entering class indicating premed, it might be 35% at a school like Hopkins. Thus, the competition in Frosh Chem is such that not all of those tops kids can earn grades. Voila: brutal curves where only the strong survive.</p>
<p>I won’t be getting any slack from medical schools when I apply, because according to everyone on these forums, no one cares about undergrad academic reputation/prestige.</p>
<p>Vandy:</p>
<p>For the most part that is a true statement. But if your grades are not as high as you might like, you can still shine in the mcat’s. And, I would guess that Vandy would prepare you well for that test.</p>
<p>Weed out classes freshman year are absolutely absurd, and Vandy actively encourages freshmen to take them. Most high school kids don’t know how to study or budget their time freshman year (I sure as hell didn’t). Based on performance later down the line, I think it’s safe to say I would have done very well in Bio-Sci if I took it as a junior, but as a freshman coming from a garbage public high school, and who was doing the full semester long rush Vandy has, I didn’t have a prayer in hell of succeeding.</p>
<p>buck:</p>
<p>While every college has distractions, the plain fact is that every premed wannabe cannot and will not be accommodated. By definition, 49% of all the kids enrolling in college x will be at the bottom half of their class. And in premed courses, where only xx% are As, the others find a new career path. Looking at in another way, half the of kids enrolling in UC Berkeley as a premed WILL earn a C in Frosh Chem. And they will earn a C in Calculus. At the end of the year, premed is over for them.</p>
<p>I have no problem with weedout classes. Not everyone is smart enough or hard enough working to be a doctor, and that’s the way it should be. I do have a problem with encouraging the weedout classes to be taken first semester freshman year, when success has has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with not yet knowing how to succeed in college. They should make the med school weedout classes start sophomore year, when freshmen have learned how best to study, and also have learned the crucial fact that they aren’t the smartest person in their class anymore.</p>
<p>I didn’t get burned by the process, because I was so angered by the treatment of Vanderbilt that I withdrew from school and transferred. I wound up making straight A’s and attend one of the top 5 law schools in the country now, so I’m doing fine for myself (although I don’t much care for law school). I just find it ridiculous that it’s encouraged for 1st semester freshmen to take the hardest classes in the school there (they recommend advanced calc, gen chem, and bio sci for freshmen pre-med).</p>
<p>Yeah, I understand. </p>
<p>Some top schools recommend general chem and bio for Frosh (Vandy, Cornell, Emory), but others make Gen Chem a prereq for Bio, such as Stanford, Northwestern (?) and the UC campuses.</p>
<p>Just a different philosophy, I guess.</p>