marbury4254

Does anyone here know about how difficult bio majors are at Rice? Is there grade inflation at Rice/how hard is it in terms of studying or getting that good GPA?

sorrygrateful

What kind of bio are you interested in? Biochemistry is really tough, while evolutionary biology is more manageable.

If you're a science major, you're going to have to work very hard to get good grades, as there is no grade inflation there. I think there's some grade inflation in humanities courses, as there is a much much larger proportion of people who earned A's in them than in science classes.

jenniferstheman

sorrygrateful,

Can you provide some insight as to why the sciences are hard at Rice? Is it because of competition amongst students? Professors? Too many pre-med students? A set distribution of grades?

And by science major, do you mean all the majors in the School of Natural Sciences and School of Engineering? What about majors not in those schools, like economics?

Thanks

misterme2009

It is hard because science is hard. Other than that, profs do a great job and students work together fine. Not may classes have a set distribution really.

sreis

no that cannot be the reason. grades can be made into whatever the professor wants. however, the reasons are still really complicated i think. it ranges from competition on student's part for med-school and grad school to the standards the professors like to uphold and even cultural reasons for continuing the practices the the professors had to go through. yes, there is no set distribution. i've never seen or heard of one explicitly stated at least.

economics is supposedly a joke major. the intros are very much hated and hard, but i heard it is very easy after that and there are only 2 intros.

mantiz24

by set distribution, you guys mean like a curving system right? To any Rice pre-meds, i've heard Rice is very collaborative overall. But Pre-med is known to be one of the most cutthroat tracks throughout undergraduate institutions. Would you say pre-med students at Rice tend to work together so that they all can benefit, or would you say some are out to get one another? I've heard the former occurs at Rice but I would like some real student insight on this, and if curves and a set distribution of grades are employed in pre-med classes like orgo for example. thanks in advance.

sorrygrateful

I think science and engineering classes at Rice are harder because the professors are tougher on grading. In a philosophy class I took last semester, there was a writing assignment I BSed because I hadn't read the required material. Despite the fact my professor said that my writing was very vague, I got an A anyway. There was also a paper I did a sloppy job on, but got a B. For my bio lab, I worked hard on a paper, but got a lot of points taken off because I forgot to talk about a few things. I can't speak for every class at Rice, but based on my experiences, you have to understand the concepts very well in a science class in order to do well, but in a humanities class, you can get by if you know the jist of the material. There are tons and tons (and I really mean tons) of ambitious pre-med students here, so I guess the professors feel they need to give them a challenge. As for the pre-meds themselves, they are pretty hard on themselves, but they're friendly and willing to work with each other to do well in class.

sreis

"I think science and engineering classes at Rice are harder because the professors are tougher on grading."

yes that is definition of harder.