<p>My daughter is trying to decide between AP Bio and AP Physics C for her Senior year. She’s already taken AP Physics B. She and I were thinking that the AP Bio would really help her prepare for the 2 UB Bio courses that are required for pre-pharmacy. Can anyone comment on that to help her make a decision on which course to take? I guess the question is, how difficult are these 2 bio courses? Will AP Bio help a lot?</p>
<p>[I should preface my response by saying that I never took AP bio or AP physics in high school and that I am not a pharmacy major. That being said…] I took both Evolutionary Bio and Cell Bio as a freshman and found them to be do-able without any prior AP courses. Both classes are moderately difficult and, like most college courses, require study time. However, considering your daughter has already taken some AP physics courses, I would recommend AP bio, since it will give her a broader foundation. Being somewhat familiar with biology will be a huge help when trying to balance evolutionary/cell bio, general/organic chemistry, and physics courses during freshman and sophomore year. Ultimately allowing for achieving a higher grade, which is important because all of the aforementioned classes are 4 or 5 credits, which would have a big impact on her GPA, which is critical when applying for the school of pharmacy!</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>
<p>It does help! Thank you!</p>
<p>I Was actually a freshman last year in the prepharm program at Ub. Definitely take ap bio. There is only one physics prereq and if she already has some background in physics shell be fine. I took regents physics in highschool and the physics I took in college was not that bad. The ap bio I took actually helped out with the bio courses I took the first few semesters. Bio is very difficult at Ub and it helps to have some sort of background in it.</p>
<p>Thank you so much! That’s exactly the type of info we were looking for you, Ilovemydog! If you don’t mind my asking you another couple of questions…what makes the bio courses at UB so difficult? Also, what courses did you take your first year in pre-pharm? Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>You are welcome I am glad to help out. The only reason why the bio and chem classes at Ub are so difficult is because they are such large classes (my bio 200 class had over 400 people in it). My first day of bio 200 my professor said that you would not get an A. It may of just been a bad professor but I put a lot of work to get an B. I think the science classes just try to “weed out” the wanna be med-students. My first semester I took a chem 101 class with lab. It is very similar to the regents chem I took in highschool with an added lab that was about 3 to 4 hours once a week. The chem lab was very organized bit very particular on how you do everything but it was doable. I also took the bio 200 class which I mentioned above which is evolutionary bio. Ap bio is a help but a person could still go without it. I feel ap bio helps give a person background because they kinda just throw alot of information at you and highschool teachers seem to teach the complications of biology better of that makes sense. My first semester I also took just 2 gen Ed requirements of world civ and sociology which were not too bad. </p>
<p>My second semester I took bio 201 which is cell bio. Ap bio helped out in this class also because it gave a background of information that we just went over in more detail in this class. I also took Chem 102 with lab which was a lot trickier then chem 101 for me because it was new information and a lot of the chemistry just didn’t make sense to me. I also took calc 2 because I took ap calc in highschool. I took 2 gen eds which were English 101 and world civ 2. </p>
<p>I just finished taking the only physics class that we needed as a summer course to get it out of the way so I could finish the pre-pharm course in 2 years instead of 3. The physics class was just a lot of thinking but once you get through it you will never have to take another physics class again. </p>
<p>On a side note, alot of the pre reqs for pharmacy are good for other majors so if you change your mind on what you would like to major in it’s not a problem. I just changed my major last week to chemE and I am still on track to graduate on time. </p>
<p>All of the prepharm class require work but they are all curve so it is not too hard to get a grade of a C or above.</p>
<p>One thing that I forgot to mention is that Ub won’t take any of the ap bio or ap chem credits. I got a 2 on my ap bio exam but I still learned a lot of useful info. I am not sure if they will take the ap phys credit though.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the info! It’s very helpful. I did know about UB not accepting AP credits for Chem and Bio. It just seems like a good idea to go into freshman year well prepared for those courses, especially since the early assurance program requires a pretty strong science GPA. Thanks again and good luck in the ChemE program! Why did you change?</p>
<p>Thank you! And yes for the early assurance you need a A- or A in all of math and science classes to keep the 3.5. I decided to switch just because I don’t think pharmacy is right for me and I can’t see myself being a pharmacist for the rest of my life.</p>