blazinyan300

Are the labs at Cornell difficult and time consuming? I am particularly concerned with the intro bio lab, genetics lab (I know its tough and annoying), and molecular bio major lab? Are exams tough? What type of work is assigned, how long and hard is it, and how often? Are exams frequent in these labs and how tough are they?

aloe

i don't know, labs are labs. some people find them fun. some people find them frustrating. it depends on what kind of a person you are.

they are all usually scheduled for 3 hrs per week, in which you perform the lab with or without partners. Then you usually do some form of write-up, which could take anywhere from a few minutes to several days. And usually, there is some kind of exam per semester.

Sorry that this isn't very helpful. But labs at Cornell are just labs. Nothing extreme.

AnbuItachi

oh snap someone from bklyn ny!!. i only took bio lab. it's challenging if you dont study. though for you to do well int eh class all you need to do is to ace teh practical exam which is worth like 30% at the end. My TA said rank 1 is A+, 2,3 A, 4 5 A-. normally class starts off with 32/33 people and ends with like 26 or 27 if the TA teaches 2 classes.

blazinyan300

This makes it seem as if it i very difficult to pull off an A, since the grading is so stringent.

Are labs the classes that kill most ppl's GPAs?

norcalguy

Not really. The top 20% or so getting A's is fairly typical of intro premed courses (gen chem, intro bio, orgo). Any course that is curved to a B or lower will have approx. that percentage getting A's (you have to get one std. dev above the mean; assuming a perfect bell curve, that means 16% getting A's).

I found intro bio labs rather lackluster. Not a lot of fun. Basically, you gear up for the 4-hour practical at the end. I got a 90% on the lab practical and my TA gave me a A+ for the course.

Orgo lab was a lot of fun for me (probably because the people around me were really cool). The practicals are a little more stressful because they do grade on yield and purity so you have to make sure not to spill or to accidentally introduce any containminates into your experiment. I didn't grease my stopcock enough in one of my flasks on my first practical so when I turned the flask over to shake, a few drops of my reagents spilled out (even though the stopcock was in, you have to grease it so it plugs the opening perfectly). Just based on that, I got 10% below the class mean on the yield lol

Biochem lab (BioBM 440) was educational, small (around 8 students per instructor), and curved to a B+ so pretty easy.

Genetics lab is a b*tch. But you already know that.

blazinyan300

Norcal, what other labs are available in the molecular bio major besides biochem. I understand why you took biochem, since you have to take the course regardless, but isn't there an upper division molecular bio lab or is that basically the same thing as biochem lab. I am just curious, if you had any particular reason for taking biochem lab. Sorry for prying.

norcalguy

BioBM440 is the standard biochem/moelcular bio lab (bio chem and molecular bio are very similar; that's why the department is called Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; hence the BioBM abbreviation). Don't let the fact it has "biochem" in the title scare you. Call it molecular bio lab if you want. It's basically just learning standard molecular bio techniques (PCR, gel electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE, cloning, Northern/Southern/Western blotting, etc.). Any background science is molecular bio rather than biochem.

There's a couple of other labs (neurobio, animal physiology, etc.) that you can also take to satisfy the molecular bio lab requirement for the molecular bio major. They have a molecular bio component but they're not BioBM courses.

What I liked about BioBM 440:
1. The classes are small
2. It's easy. 3 really short quizzes and a few notebook checks and a final presentation (you present what you learned during the semester in the format of an actual research presentation).
3. It's a 4-credit lab course so that means 2 four-hour lab blocks and a Friday recitation per week. Except we cancelled the Friday recitation right off the bat (it was unnecessary). Out of the 8 hours we were supposed to spend in lab, we spent maybe 4-5 hours. So, for essentially 4-5 hours of lab, we got 4 academic credits whereas normally that only equates to around 2 credits.
4. The techniques are useful if you want to do molecular bio research.
5. You have to spend almost no time outside of class on this 4-credit course. I spent around 5 minutes on the HW and maybe 1 hour per notebook check (roughly every 6 weeks). That's it.

blazinyan300

"i only took bio lab. it's challenging if you dont study. though for you to do well int eh class all you need to do is to ace teh practical exam which is worth like 30% at the end. My TA said rank 1 is A+, 2,3 A, 4 5 A-. normally class starts off with 32/33 people and ends with like 26 or 27 if the TA teaches 2 classes."

This description is about bio lab 103- gen bio lab, correct? No lab reports, right?

hpmbs

I'm taking BioBM440 next semester- I've been wanting to take it for like a year now, so I'm kind've excited. Thanks norcal-nice to know the labs aren't as long as the scheduled time.

Bio102/104 labs were really boring. Not hard material at all, just take the time to memorize. And yes the classes are scaled so theres only a handfull of A/A+'s. Just do your best to stay on top of the curve.
Orgo Lab I wouldn't say fun haha, but definitely a relaxed, managable lab.
Genetics lab was awful, takes up too much time and I saw more drosophila than I ever wanted to see. The lecture was good though, which sort of made it ok.