<p>Does anyone think the bio curriculum at UCI beats down pretty hard on their students the during the first 2 years?</p>
<p>You have to go through a full 6 quarter series of bio courses during your first two years. These classes include
93- From DNA to Organism
94- From Organism to Ecosystem
100L-Experimental Biology Laboratory
97-Genetics
98- Biochemistry
99- Molecular Biology</p>
<p>This is also done WHILE taking a full year of G-Chem during your freshman year and a full year of O-Chem during your sophomore year. The program is pretty okay until I reached winter quarter of my sophomore year. Biochemistry is probably the toughest class I have ever gone through. It introduces the chemistry of carbonyls and amides which you don't even learn till the end of the quarter of O-chem. Which is really ridiculous because you have gone through a whole quarter looking at all this chemistry you have never really gone through in O-Chem. So you are forced to memorize everything without truly understanding the full mechanism behind it. Making the material less beneficial for people who actually want to LEARN.</p>
<p>When comparing the bio programs at UCSD, UCD, and even UCLA, they don't push their students as hard as this during the first two years. None of them force students to take 6 full quarters of straight bio courses. None of them force students to take biochemistry while taking O-Chem. The students at the other UC's take biochem AFTER o-chem which should be the right way to go. I don't get why people say biology is harder at other colleges when it looks like it isn't. At the UC's they only take about 3 or 4 quarters of bio during their first 2 years and have a lot more time to relax or concentrate on other things like O-chem or the MCAT.</p>
<p>The curriculum at UCI is a lot harder than curriculum at the other UC's, at least course wise. The "prestige" may be better at the other UC's but UCI is way harder. People may say the "competition" may be a lot harder than the other UC's but I think UCI has ALOT of competition. UCI is full of asians who are mostly pre-med students so getting good grades here is just as hard as the other more prestigious UC's.</p>
<p>I’m planning on majoring in biology and applying at UCI, among with some other UC schools, with UCI at the top of my list. What would you say to myself and other hopefully incoming freshmen that get into the biology and UCI? Like do you recommend anything to prepare or have any hints/tools?</p>
<p>UCI also has a crap load of upperdivision classes that will allow you to specialize in whatever branch of bio you decide to take. because of that, the same lowerdivision classes need to prepare all the kids for them.</p>
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stereotype much?
anyway, i see a lot of bio kids (chem major) in ochem and will tell you A LOT of them shouldnt be pre meds let alone bio majors. i also have many bio friends (im a frosh) and a lot of them will end up dropping bio or not being pre meds. there is a fairly generous curve in most of the classes assuming you’re willing to put in the effort. (at least the lower div bios). Even so, the frosh year is pretty easy. soph might demand you do some work.</p>
<p>also, im not a pre med, but i think most kids focus on mcats during the junior year. take it and the end and study over summer for the start of their senior if need be. not while taking ochem. replace mcat with GRE and its probably what im going to do.</p>
<p>lastly, if you(anyone in general) want to be a med student, stop looking for the easy way out. if you go to a school with kids who do well, you’ll either have to do well or drop out. Do you really think you’d be able to get into med school form UCLA but somehow UCI’s bio program would be so much more difficult so that you would get rejected from med school?</p>
<p>I guess one reason why biology students must take relatively more major-oriented courses, not to mention the sheer number of students taking them, is due to the fact that the school of biological sciences essentially has only one major for undergraduates: Biological Sciences. There are other majors within this school as well but they only have relatively very few students taking them. </p>
<p>So within this single major, you have students who want to go into the medical field, who want to study ecosystems, or humans in general (like anatomy, kinesology, adn neuroscience), or etc. Whether it be the folly or by dliberation of the school of biological sciences to only offer the choice of one major, this major would therefore have to prepare all these students who have diverse and varying aspirations. Thus the simple solution would be just requiring all of them to take numerous courses with hoping that most of them are related to the goals of the students.</p>
<p>No, you do not need to do research. I found the curriculum to be quite efficient. You really don’t need to know organic chemistry to do well in biochemistry.</p>