University of Florida: serious academic challenge or joke?

<p>I am pre-med, fourth year, scheduled to finish and complete everything on time. I think UF is a joke for academics. I only study about 15-20 hours a week and go to about 30-40% of my scheduled lectures (although I have never missed a single lab class). I have plenty of time leftover to work part time 20-30 hours a week and do extracurriculars. I sleep 8-9 hours a night. I really do not understand how my peers complain about being busy 24/7 and occupied 6 hours a night with schoolwork. I have a good GPA.</p>

<p>I became premed my second semester. I didn’t dive right in because I actually thought it would be much harder than this. </p>

<p>The sciences and pre-health environment here has an enormous amount of undergraduates. UF has the fourth largest number of applicants to the AMCAS allopathic medical school application service of all undergraduate students in the country. Lectures are enormous, there is litte if any mandatory attendance, and many professors just present powerpoints that are posted online later. The vast majority of my exams have been multiple choice, scantron tests. One notable exception is organic chem, where the answers are just drawings. Any written or expository examinations (which have all been in smaller elective classes) are graded on a rubric anyway. The end result is having a large number of students falling somewhere on a curve that distributes grades based on the department’s satisfaction. The only time it feels challenging is in the courses where the class is forced to a standard bell curve (example: median is cutoff for a B, 2 standard deviations above the mean gets an A). </p>

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<li>My two cents.</li>
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<p>From observation it would seem that you need an SAT Critical Reading score below 500 to major in engineering.</p>

<p>To be fair (since he’s asking about engineering) you can’t really compare pre-med to engineering. Engineering courses are far more difficult and I don’t think our engineering program at UF is a joke at all. Pre-med courses are what they are, how difficult can they really be? They are there to provide you the most basic foundation to prepare you for medical school, which is where the real challenge will be.</p>

<p>The dude who did pre-med has it way too easy.</p>

<p>Engineering will kick your ass at UF if you don’t put in the time. People here are smart and if any class is on a bell curve, you will fail it because everyone else will be smarter than you.</p>

<p>this discussion is a joke.</p>

<p>I’m majoring in Physics right now. It’s definitely a challenge. You can skate by with any major, including physics, or you can take the time and try to gain a deeper understanding of it. You get out of it what you put in. It is the same at any university.</p>

<p>Also, I’m flirting with the idea of pre-med so I’m currently taking orgo 1 with Portmess to test the waters. Anyone saying that any one major or track is harder than another can shove it. It is all relative.</p>

<p>"I’m majoring in Physics right now. It’s definitely a challenge. You can skate by with any major, including physics, or you can take the time and try to gain a deeper understanding of it. You get out of it what you put in. It is the same at any university.</p>

<p>Also, I’m flirting with the idea of pre-med so I’m currently taking orgo 1 with Portmess to test the waters. Anyone saying that any one major or track is harder than another can shove it. It is all relative. "</p>

<p>Are you a graduate student or an undergrad?</p>

<p>I would be very surprised if a graduate student was “majoring” in physics and “flirting” with “premed”.</p>

<p>Yeah undergrad.</p>