Any people from Irvine?

alicantekid
Thu, 10 Feb 2005 03:28:29 +0000

Hi egg,

Glad to answer your questions.

Are biology courses curved? Yes, they are. Usually about 14% of the class will get an A or an A-, and 14% supposedly get an F. 20% get some kind of B, and 20% get some kind of D. The rest are supposed to get a C. Whether or not they stick to that, I’m not sure. Usually if you are at the mean, you’ll get a C+. But keep in mind that NO ONE gets 90% on stuff in college (I shouldn’t say no one does, but very few). So in most cases having a curve actually helps you. Many of the other science classes (chemistry, physics, math) will also have some kind of curve as well.

Is UCI’s psych program any good? UCI actually has two different psychology majors that you can choose from. The first one, Cognitive Psychology, is a part of the School of Social Sciences. The second one, Psychology & Social Behavior, is part of the School of Social Ecology. I can’t really explain the difference between the two except by saying that the former is a tad more scientific than the latter. Both programs are pretty good from what I hear. Not many colleges have a School of Social Ecology. One of the professors in the Psych & Social Behavior program is Elizabeth Loftus, who was named as one of the top 100 psychologists of the 20th century (I think she was #58) and she was the highest ranked woman on the list. She often serves as an expert witness for criminal trials and I heard that she charges several thousand an hour for her services.

I would say that neither of the two psychology majors are that difficult. As a matter of fact, psychology is where a lot of the people who couldn’t cut it in bio end up. You obviously still need to go to class and stuff, but the material is pretty easy to grasp if you do what is asked of you. I got a minor in Cognitive Psychology and I loved it. Many of my favorite professors were in psychology. In my experience with psych classes, they don’t curve them. This could work against you, since it is theoretically possible for no one in the class to earn an A on a straight 90-80-70-60-50 scale. In a curved class, there will be people earning A’s, regardless of what they score.

If you are pre-med, I would say that majoring in biology is the better way to go, unless you truly have a strong interest in psych. To be eligible for medical school, you have to fulfill all of the pre-med requirements, which include two years of chemistry, a year of physics, a year of calculus, and two years of biology with lab. All of these requirements are fulfilled by the bio major, but none of them are fulfilled with either psych major. So basically you’d have to do your major classes AND the pre-med classes. And you’re still going to be in class with all of the super-competitive bio people. They don’t grade you on a different scale just because you’re not a bio major.

I had a friend in college who was a psych major and wanted to go to medical school. She was a psych major because she loved the subject, but as time went on she realized that by doing all of the pre-med stuff, she was just a few more classes short of completing the entire bio major. She ended up adding the bio major as a double, since she felt that it would be a waste of time if she took all of those bio classes and didn’t end up with a degree in the subject. She did fine (got a 3.95) and is now a medical student at USC.

Don’t feel like you need to get a 3.9 GPA to make it to med school. One of the guys in my class got into medical school with a 3.18 GPA, and I know a handful of others who got in to schools with GPAs below 3.5. Of course, they’re not getting into Harvard or Stanford, but they’re still getting into U.S. schools and are getting good residencies.

Once you get to college, wherever you go, it’s going to be hard to escape curves. Everything in life is curved. College admissions and med school admissions are based on the strength of the applicant pool, not just on hard numbers. Same with grades in biology classes. You kinda just learn to live with it.