how to survive in Bio, Chem 33 and Orgo

sakky · January 10, 2006, 4:24pm

no…thats not a “trick” and thats not even close to being right. The only thing “weeder” courses do is take out people who clearly do not have the desire to go through the premed course or become doctors and by your logic wouldnt the absence of those people who got “weeded out” in earlier courses make the curve WORST and make it HARDER to get a better grade because you are competing against individuals who did well in those earlier courses and you no longer have those people who are consistently pulling 30% on their tests? The answer is clearly yes from a logical standpoint and its definately true from my experience. Let me give you myself as an example… I am a biomed engineering major (and premed) …i took the easiest engineering physics, basically knew nothing because i had no HS background at all did terribly on the midterms and finals and was pulling Bs since i was doing about average because the class had alot of people who had not been “weeded out” yet. Same thing with Gchem…first semester was an easy A since there were people who were getting 9/25 on the midterms…those people clearly did not end up in any of my higher level courses and as a result i did infinitely better in my thermodynamics course last semester than i ever did in physics yet got a B- since the class avg was a staggering 80% since you no longer had those people that generously helped out the curve. So all in all, no, you are wrong, it isnt easier to get an A in a higher level course.

Well, I can’t speak for your experience. But I can definitely speak for mine. The grade I got in my gateway weeder courses were FAR AND AWAY the worst grades I ever got in my life. My grades got substantially better as I got into the upper division. The same could be said for most of my colleagues - the worst grades they got were in the weeders and they found getting high grades in upper division work a breeze by comparision.

So, no, all in all, I am not wrong. Maybe in your specific case, it doesn’t hold. But this is something that has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. I never said that grading gets easier in all cases. But I think you have to admit that you can’t say that it never happens either.

No, the article never says that he never took Gchem, orgo, or bio. It just said that he didn’t take the standard premed sequence of Gchem, orgo, or bio. There’s a big difference. Every school has various tracks by which you can fulfill science requirements. The point of the article is that you shouldn’t feel pressured to having to take the standard premed sequence of courses that premeds usuallyt ake.

For example, at Berkeley, the standard OChem premed track is the Chem 3A/3B sequence. However, there is another OChem track, the Chem112A and 112B track, that caters mostly to Chemistry majors. I would argue that this track is probably a better track than the 3A/3B track. It’s the same material, but it is not as heavily weeded. A lot of Berkeley premeds feel that they have to do 3A/3B because “that’s what normal premeds do”. I have always been a proponent of using the 112 track instead.

Finally I dont know how your tirade about self study has anything to do with what i posted. But just like you are telling people not to underestimate self study i think you shouldn’t underestimate other forms of study like going to class and taking notes. I personally learn alot better by hearing things and writing them down myself…so i go to class…also i dont exactly always trust myself to sit and open a book and study on a regular basis so class gives me this structured way of keeping up with the material. I’m glad that only studying from books worked for you and your brother, but everyone learns differently…there are people at ever college who you only see in class three times: on the first day, on the day of the midterm and on the day of the final…some of those people do well and some do poorly…on the otherhand there are the people who show up to every class, sit in the front row and take diligent notes…again some of those people do very well and some do quite poorly…you really cant generalize or give out some set formula on how to study, it is a very individual matter.

I’m afraid that it is you that is the one that is doing the generalization. I never said that these tactics were applicable for everybody. I am saying that there are many ways to be a premed. So is the article. My point is that self-study is an option. Is it an option that is good for everybody? No. I didn’t say that. But it is an option that you shouldn’t discount out of hand. Some students really do perform better through self-study.

In the case of my brother, it wasn’t that he’s a great self-studying and that’s why he self-studied. It’s really a testament to just how poor the teaching is at Caltech. Caltech profs are great researchers, but tend to be bad teachers. I furthermore don’t mean to pick on Caltech. Many profs at Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and other elite research schools are also great researchers but poor teachers. The point is that there really are a lot of premed classes where you probably learn more just by just self-studying than taking the actual class. Is this true in all cases? Of course not. I never said that. But I am saying that this does exist. Hence, self-study is always an option that you should respect. I never said that everybody should use this option all the time. However, you should keep in mind that this is a tool that you can use if you need it. To say that nobody should ever consider self-study at all is itself the real generalization.

norcalguy · January 10, 2006, 4:41pm

Grading typically gets easier in upper division courses but, as noted, there are much fewer poor students in upper division courses (since they have been weeded out). Hence, the people who typically dragged down the means in intro courses are missing. Overall, I’ve found the difficulty in intro and upper level courses to be a toss up.

sakky · January 10, 2006, 9:18pm

I’ll give you the story of the MIT LFM students. LFM is the 2-year dual-degree MBA/Masters in Engineering program run by MIT. Randal Pinkett, the winner of Donald Trump’s Apprentice 4, is an LFM graduate.

LFM students are generally management students that happen to have an engineering background. However, they’ve been out in the workforce for at least 2 years (as that is the minimum work experience requirement for LFM), and usually more like 4-6 years. Hence, it’s been awhile since they’ve been in school. Furthermore, they are expected to complete the same graduate engineering curriculum as the regular MIT graduate students do, IN ADDITION to simultaneously completing the MBA at the Sloan School.

So think about what that means. A typical MIT engineering grad student takes maybe at most 2-3 classes a semester. An LFM student takes 7-8. Keep in mind, a typical Sloan MBA student takes something like 5 classes a semester, and the LFM students, because they are also Sloan students, have to complete all the Sloan requirements. Most of the regular MIT eng grad students have never taken a break from school. They went to MIT grad school right after undergrad. In contrast, the LFM’ers have had at least a 2 year break, and usually a 4-6 year break from the academic world. Hence their academic skills are rusty. {The other day, I heard an LFM student complaining that he couldn’t remember how to do basic integrals anymore. Makes sense - it’s been awhile since he’s had to touch calculus.} Quite possibly the biggest difference is that the regular MIT grad eng students get to hang around the School of Engineering after class, where they get to socialize with other engineering students and faculty, have access to labs and books, and basically get to completely immerse themselves in engineering. Most of them have their own desk in the engineering department, etc. When LFM’ers finish an engineering class, they generally have to run back to Sloan, which is all the way on the East side of campus, far away from the engineering offices. LFM’ers have their own desk in their own office too, but it’s near Sloan, not near Engineering.

Maybe the worst part of the lifestyle is the simple context switching. Graduate engineering work is hard. Yet just when you actually start understanding your advanced thermodynamics or electromagnetism, you have to put it away because you have to do a Sloan Accounting homework or you have to run to meet with your Sloan team to complete your Marketing team paper. Hence, there’s no opportunity for you to really immerse yourself into engineering.

Furthermore, LFM students will freely admit that they are not as good as the regular MIT grad eng students are. One LFm’er once said it best when he told me that if he really was as brilliant as those other grad students, then he would have been the one going to MIT grad school straight out of undergrad (just like they did), rather than having gone into the workforce and then only years later going to MIT through LFM.

Yet the fact is, in the entire history of the LFM program, every single LFM student has managed to complete the program. Yep, EVERY SINGLE ONE. Think about that. That means that every single LFM student has managed to do well enough to earn an MIT master’s degree in engineering (in addition to, obviously the Sloan MBA).

Think about what that means. At MIT, there really is little distinction between an upper-level and a graduate-level course. They’re basically the same thing. Most upper-level courses have plenty of graduate students, and most graduate-courses have plenty of undergrads in them. You need at least a GPA of at least 3.5/5 (equivalent to a 2.5 on a 4.0 scale) to successfully graduate with a master’s degree from MIT.

Yet the fact is that despite all the disadvantages that LFM students suffer from, they still all manage to get that engineering master’s degree. That means that they still all manage to pull at least a 3.5/5 in their graduate and upper-division engineering coursework.

That must therefore mean that that coursework is inflated. Otherwise, I have a very hard time believing that these LFM students, with all their handicaps, would ever be able to graduate. There are no idiots in upper-division and graduate-level MIT engineering courses. {Heck, it’s the LFM’ers that are probably the idiots in those courses}. Yet they all manage to graduate. Granted, a lot of them barely graduate from their engineering programs. But they all still graduate. It’s a remarkable figure I think can be explained only by the grade inflation of the higher-level courses. If this were not true, then given all their handicaps, LFM students would have great difficulty in graduating.

ndhawk · January 11, 2006, 1:51am

The reason why it becomes easier to do well in the upper-level courses is because they’re usually not curved. You pretty much have to curve a 300-person orgo class. Not so for the upper level 50-person one. In the weed-out courses, professors intend for only certain amounts to do well. In the upper-level courses, they’re looking at their dedicated students who are majoring in their field, the weed-out process is done, so they don’t curve or if they do nowhere near as harshly. It might be different from school to school though, but at Northwestern the curve is only tough in the pre-med courses.

sakky · January 11, 2006, 1:58pm

I line with what ndhawk said and my story about LFM, I would point out that upper division courses in most schools have plenty of graduate students. Graduate students usually need a higher GPA than the undergrads in order to stay eligible. At MIT, they need a 3.5/5 (equivalent to a 2.5/4), compared toa 3.0/5 for undergrads At Berkeley and Harvard, they need a 3.0/4, compared to a 2.0/4 for undergrads. Moreover, most schools are extremely loathe to flunk out their graduate students. When was the last time you ever heard of a graduate student flunking out from coursework? They may flunk out because they can’t pass their quals or can’t complete their research, but from coursework? That’s a rare bird. Schools rarely want this because graduate students are considered to be cheap labor for the school in the form of TA or RA labor.

Furthermore, there’s generally no way to tell who’s a graduate student and who’s not. You walk into a classroom at MIT and the graduate students are virtually indistinguishable from the undergrads.

The upshot is that these upper division courses are then quite loathe to give out bad grades, because it might cause a graduate student to flunk out. Moreover since you don’t know who’s a graduate student and who’s an undergrad, the easiest thing to do is to just give everybody good grades.

Some of you might be thinking that the graduate students are probably better than the undergrads, so it’s natural for them to never flunk out. At some schools, this is true. At others, I’m not so sure. For example, many people at MIT, including many of the graduate students themselves, think that the undergrads at MIT are actually BETTER than the graduate students at MIT (with the exception being those grad students who were themselves MIT undergrads). The same could be said about Caltech and Harvard.

Sam_Lee · January 11, 2006, 2:51pm

My experience at Northwestern was inline with what ndhawk and sakky said. I think it depends on what school you go to. At Northwestern, no premed classes are ever filled with bunch of mediocre students such that you can pull off good grades without putting much work like Sharf described. I wished I were able to find bunch of mediocre weaker classmates but I didn’t! I got a C for my orgo at Northwestern, which was a big shock considering I transferred from WashU with a 3.9+ GPAs and aced general chemistry and phsyics at WashU. My upper level classes, though harder in terms of the materials, were a lot more lenient in grades.

One of my classmates got a C in the first sequence of org at Northwestern and she deferred the second one and took it at a college near her home over a summer and aced it. She said she didn’t study nearly as hard because her class was indeed full of more mediocre students and the exam questions were much more straight forward. It was a smart move for her.

sakky · January 11, 2006, 3:54pm

Yep, and that gets back to what I was saying before. A lot of people would be better off not taking certain premed courses, especially OChem, in their matriculated school before they apply to med-school. You may be better off self-studying OChem for the MCAT and then taking the class after you’ve already applied to med-school, such that the med-schools won’t be able to see your grade. Or you may be better off just taking it at a community college.

Again, I agree, it does look a bit strange to not have taken OChem before you apply to med-school, or to have taken it at a community college. But what looks even worse is to have taken it and gotten a poor grade in it. In other words, the truth is, it’s better to not have taken OChem at all (and just self-studied it for the MCAT) than to have taken it and gotten a C. It’s better to have taken OChem in a community college and gotten an A than to have taken it in your regular school and gotten a C. And the truth is, the way that many premed OChem courses are run, a lot of people will get C’s.

Look guys, the truth is, premed is a game. To win the game, you gotta find the way to get the highest grades you can get. If that means taking classes in community college, then so be it. If that means deliberately choosing no to take weeder classes, then so be it.

Sam_Lee · January 11, 2006, 4:41pm

Yep! I actually just thought of another good friend of mine who got B+ twice in a row for 2 quarters. He came to Northwestern as a HPME with killer stats on SAT/SAT II; he took MCAT just for the fun of it (completely unneccessary as HPMEs were gauranteed admission to NU med school and no MCAT was required) and got 36 on it. He didn’t get A/A- on orgo either. He got A in pretty much all other classes. That’s how tough orgo curves can be.

how to survive in Bio, Chem 33 and Orgo

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