<p>I have had several friends take beginning Chinese. They told me that the professor makes it very hard on purpose so that students really commit to the course -apparently she scared off a couple students after the first day of class. Language courses (except for perhaps Spanish, which I hear is super easy) are very intense, especially due to the quarter system. Being a pre-med isn’t a piece of cake either --Stanford weeds out a large chunk of pre-med kids so you have to really fight for your grades in those classes. Of course, there are people who balance both Chinese and Pre-med and I would advise you to try juggling both and then drop if you decide the work load is too hard.</p>