<p>Relative to other Universities, how renown is the UCLA Chemistry Department?</p>
<p>I plan on majoring in Biochemistry if I get accepted. Is it worth it?</p>
<p>What are you trying to do afterwards?</p>
<p>Graduate or undergraduate? Whatever, just go to Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, or Caltech.</p>
<p>when it comes to chemistry or biochem Berkeley hands down is the best.</p>
<p>What about O-chem?</p>
<p>Graduate level wise, UCLA is top 10</p>
<p>I just graduated with my BS in Biochemistry. The faculty is pretty good and classes are pretty worthwhile but, that's just my opinion....</p>
<p>I'm not sure what exactly what I'm going to do afterwards. I just know for sure that Biochemistry will be my starting point. The subject just seems to come naturally and it's a very interesting field of science that I would like my career to center around.
If everything goes well, I do consider taking it Graduate-level.</p>
<p>is the biochem major really as hard as everybody says it is? wats so hard about it?</p>
<p>Why don't you check my pants and see for yourself?</p>
<p>Just Look at the classes we have to take... then compare that with a major like psychobio and you'll know why.</p>
<p>biochem major here is like bending over and receiving it every single day...one of my friends just took his chem 20 midterm and the average was a 44/100. GFG</p>
<p>MrPink, why don't you take your nosy, self-hating premed ass somewhere else and not make pathetic attempts to answer questions you aren't qualified to answer, for once?</p>
<p>To others, I took my Chem 20 midterm and found it pretty easy. Is it the upperdivs that really start to get painful or are the lower divs good indication?</p>
<p>I love chemistry and biochemistry. i started as a physics major but after taking chem20A, i switched to biochemistry. i really enjoyed and loved the organic chemistry courses 30ABC and the faculty was fantastic (Profs. Garrel, Rubin, and Merlic). </p>
<p>But now that I'm taking biochem 153A, I'm disappointed with the major. One reason is that we have a terrible lecturer who isn't qualified for the job at all. A good TA can do much better job than her imo. Also, I wanted to take honor chem153H series next quarter which are taught by renowned professors in small class of 30 as opposed to few hundred in regular courses, but those courses are gone due to the budget crisis.
and there is also the fact that after 3 quarters of chem153ABC, you can't advance your study of biochemistry further unless you wanna take graduate courses with the department's permission. So only 3 quarters of biochemistry for a biochemistry MAJOR....... (not counting the labs and physical biochemistry).... </p>
<p>i heard that the graduate program for biochem at UCLA is awesome, but for undergraduate it looks grim.</p>
<p>It is very hard to get in from high school. In year 2000, the SAT average for the major was 1430 and 4.3. Also, most of the biochem classes I recalled were ~80% asian. About 20% got into med schools, including Hopkins, Wash U, UCLA, UCSF, UCSD, etc. Another 15% got into Dental, while another 20% got into phramcy schools. You will be competing against very high caliber students that are even smarter than 60% ivy league students. I don't know much about transfer students though...</p>
<p>In response to uchem07: UD 153 series is more like typical MIMG or MCDB classes - a bunch of memorization and application of materials. If you switched your major to Biochem because you liked physicial sciences or G chem, you won't like much the UD Biochem classes besides 110A and 156, which are physical chem and physical biochemistry repsectively.</p>
<p>I have a question for people who were or ARE Biochem majors at UCLA. If you are not affiliated with biochem at UCLA please don’t answer my question.</p>
<p>I switched to biochem because I enjoyed organic chemistry. I also enjoy chemistry concepts as a whole. After taking 153a, I realized biochem is nothing but memorization, with a slight bit of chemistry attached. Is this how the biochem major is? I recently switched to MIMG. How do you think they compare?</p>
<p>Happyboy, </p>
<p>I was a Biochem major at UCLA (c/o 2008.) I found 153B (w/Prof. Courey) to be pretty similar to 153A (w/Prof. Bates) in terms of the amount of info to memorize. 153C (w/Prof. Weiss) focused more on mechanisms. Although, I found that the amount of chemistry included in the lectures depended greatly on the professor. My college roommate had quite a bit more of chemistry when she took both 153B&C with Prof. Clark</p>
<p>In any case, if you don’t like memorization than switching to MIMG wasn’t the best idea since the memorization load is ever higher than the Biochem major – the same college roommate and my boyfriend were both MIMG majors and they spent countless hours memorizing concepts for their classes while I definitely didn’t spend quite as much time cramming my brain full of things that I still find that I don’t need to remember . . .</p>
<p>How would you rate the other life science majors like neuroscience, mcdb, physiology? Any insight into those classes, and how the upper divisions for them are?</p>
<p>I dont know about u guys but im thinking about changing my biochem major due to the horrible professors i have for these two quarters. baugh and neuhauiser enough said</p>