<p>curve to a C means ppl who get average score in a class get a C grade</p>
<p>wow For5aken, honors bio is really that horrible? o_o how much work do you think we'll need to put into bio if we want to get an A? (i'm not saying a B is bad at all; it's just that my advisor said that to have a chance for medical school, we can't really afford to get anything but As, freshman yr anyway)</p>
<p>Haha, I didn't mean to scare you. First semester bio really isn't that bad; it's just that I slacked off a bit and didn't really study much. If you have the willpower to give up several weekends of partying and screwing around for studying, you'll probably get an A in 121. 211 is a lot different; the professors start testing you on their research, and the questions shift from more generalized, short answer essay questions to specific, nitty-gritty fill in the blanks and true and false questions. However, the answers are in the book (mostly), so if you slave over the book for maybe 15 hours a week (?), you have a good shot at an A. Frankly, I never studied until the last minute, and it cost me. Plus, I never went to SI, which was a BAD, BAD idea. Go to SI every week, read the book consistently, and it shouldn't be a problem.</p>
<p>The only reason why it seems so difficult is because everyone (well, a LARGE majority) in the class has taken AP Bio and AP Chem, so they know their stuff (I'd say that over 50% of the class has a merit scholarship). If the profs. gave simple questions on the tests (i.e. Outline the steps of photosynthesis), everyone would ace the test. Thus, they must resort to questions such as, Name the enzyme of the sixth step of the Krebs cycle. Something like that. Freshman biology is definitely weeder, more so in regular bio, but is evident in honors too. You don't see honors bio students dropping like flies because everyone is either in Bac/MD, TAP, or is really, really, really set on their career goals.</p>
<p>Again, I don't really know specifics for bio, but that above is good advice for any core "weeder" class with difficult content/grades/etc - go to SI, discussion, office hours, and start seriously studying the first week of the semester. Start strong and follow through the whole semester (since it's nearly impossible, once slipping behind, to completely catch up properly)</p>
<p>so is bio the hardest major to get high grade in?</p>
<p>ohh ok, so as long as we work extra and sacrifice half of our social lives, we have a chance at an A? sounds good to me hahah :) thanks for the advice, guys! and also: do you use the campbell book? maybe if i be a dork and read over a lot of it in the summer, things'll be easier during the school yr.. lol</p>
<p>^^ that was my plan: read campbell this summer</p>
<p>Yeah, we used the 7th edition.</p>
<p>Does anyone know the Biology websites with the youtube style lectures, or any site for the biology classes so I can prepare over the summer?</p>
<p>so... did ap bio in high school not help at all?</p>
<p>Bio in HS provides a general overview of the main concepts, and the AP Bio exam is also pretty general, as far as I can remember. College bio tests the details of the concepts (i.e. "What does MHC II do?" instead of "How do antibodies work?"). BUT if you haven't taken bio in HS, you're wayyy behind compared to others in FSH.</p>
<p>I don't know if everyone else uses the Campbell book, but we did, except we used the 6th edition. And we went pretty in depth with it. You can only pass the test if you read the book at our high school AP class. </p>
<p>I don't see how USC can make it more in depth than having it word to word from the book....</p>
<p>Haha, some are word for word.</p>
<p>Actually, to be more specific, the questions are mostly on a sentence/short paragraph level. Basically, if you accidentally skip a few sentences in Campbell (or didn't read the chapter twice), there could be a test question asking about something in one of those sentences and you would be robbed of 3 (or more) points. They add up, believe it or not.</p>
<p>Also, one professor had a test where half of the test was true-false, and all the answers were false. Fortunately, I didn't have that test.</p>
<p>First semester bio is more like AP Bio, where there are more essay questions and pictures. Second semester, sometimes the answer to a question is only mentioned in Campbell once. It's not fair, but oh well.</p>
<p>I'm taking the normal general bio class, not the advanced one, so luckily I won't be surrounded by FSH kids. I do actually know what MHC II does! lol... How random is that? We had senior teach day, and I taught ap bio for a day. My lecture was on the specifics of the immune system, mainly B cells and antibodies. </p>
<p>Thanks for the info For5aken. That definitely helps. I wouldn't want to walk in thinking that ap bio was really going to help me. I'd be so screwed if I thought that. lol</p>
<p>yay, im in FSH and i didnt take bio in HS. YAY</p>
<p>ah i c, thanx =]</p>
<p>Do you know how different FSH and regular is?</p>
<p>socks, you didn't take ANY bio in high school? Or just not AP?</p>
<p>It's gonna be so hard if you didn't take any biology at all.</p>
<p>my school writes their own curriculum for science in 9th and 10th grade "iSci1" and "iSci2"... so part of that is bio.
and then this year i took ap enviro (as well as hchem).. which is useless on a molecular level but i did learn a lot about evolution...
in my 4 year hs plan i was supposed to take AP bio in 12th grade, but alas, i never got to 12th grade :-p</p>
<p>i took biology honors in 9th grade but that's all the bio my school offered, though I have taken quite a bit of chem (my school offered only reg chemistry but I took a couple chem classes at community colleges). meh..... hopefully advanced bio won't be too hard, nor advanced chem for that matter...</p>
<p>i've heard that chem overall and the first semester of bio isn't too bad, but that bio def gets taken up a notch second semester :\ so scared..</p>