<p>I’m sure we’ve all heard of the song, but what I really want to know is whether or not the song is actually valid. </p>
<p>Is biology really an easy major at MIT? If not, then why do many people think so?</p>
<p>Anti-biology bias is fairly pervasive among people who want to see themselves as hardcore – there’s an unofficial hierarchy among scientists, where the physicists look down on the chemists, who look down on the biologists, who look down on the psychologists. And engineers think they’re better than all scientists. (And, at MIT, everybody looks down on the Sloanies.)</p>
<p>As a biology major at MIT, I don’t think biology was particularly easy. I think the lack of concrete problem sets in many upper-level classes can create the impression that biology majors don’t have as much work outside class as engineering majors do, although of course there’s a lot of assigned reading from the literature in biology courses that doesn’t get “counted”.</p>
<p>I also think it’s probably fair to say that the worst biology majors aren’t working as hard or getting grades as poor as the worst engineering majors are. So, in that sense, it’s easier to skate by in biology. But for the average students, I’m not sure there’s a huge difference. And the best students are working their everloving hind ends off.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the same kinds of people (generally engineers) who gleefully sang the “MIT is easy when you study biology” song in my presence were the ones who were in my room until all hours of the night begging for help on their 7.013 problem sets.</p>
<p>Agree with Mollie. Also…don’t fall into that crowd of people who get suckered into that anti-Bio craze and decide to do course 20 to be “hardcore,” only to discover that 7 is way more interesting. :P</p>
<p>IMO much of being a bio major involves UROP. When I’m not working on classwork, I’m doing research and reading literature. And well…UROP is not easy, and I am seriously grateful for my post-doc’s limitless patience and optimism.</p>
<p>I feel like a lot of other majors just try to take a lot of classes and de-emphasize research. For example, my roommate is an engineering major, and when she’s not doing psets for her 6 classes, she’s gaming like whoa.</p>
<p>" (And, at MIT, everybody looks down on the Sloanies.)"</p>
<p>Doesn’t seem like an appropriate comment from a supposed “super moderator” on behalf of MIT! That’s the kind of comment that gives College Confidential a bad name!</p>
<p>Watch out… you may need a job from one of us Sloanies one of these days… even with your Harvard Ph.D.!</p>
<p>(BTW, I also went to grad school at Harvard.)</p>
<p>Oh God no. Biology at MIT is not easy. Biology at MIT is hard. Especially considering that your grade is relative to the performance of or a standard set by the performance of people who are probably as good as or better than you at memorizing and understanding large amounts of information.</p>
<p>Sorry, toomanycats – my tongue apparently was not firmly enough in my cheek. 
I don’t look down on Sloanies, and I don’t allow chemists and engineers to look down on me, either.</p>
<p>I think bio is easier in some respects. For one, in class things fit together and “make sense.” Intuition is more valuable in the pure sciences and math than in engineering. In engineering, you may try to make sense of a system or a machine or something, but logic doesn’t always help. It was an epiphany for me to learn that some of the equations in fluid mechanics were empirically derived, but I still spent hours trying to derive them. Actually, I think science grad school is a lot like engineering undergrad–being resourceful and being willing to bang your head against the wall until something works is very valuable.</p>
<p>The other thing is that bio is not as what I would call ‘vertical’ as some other subjects. In physics you build on the foundation subjects, and then build on top of the more advanced subjects. So flaws in your background tend to be amplified more-- a “B” in freshman physics may become a “C” in quantum mechanics or even worse. In contrast, if you get a “B” in 7.013 (intro bio), my bet is that you could get B’s the entire time. Hence, in this sense, other subjects may be “harder.” </p>
<p>If you aren’t good at or dislike memorizing, then bio will be hard for you. Also, I think the reasoning is more verbal than in engineering. (Also, it helps if you have an affinity for aquiring a large vocabulary.) So if you don’t think that way, it will be harder. The lab component can be challenging, though not as challenging as, say, Digital Lab or some other lab where you could walk in and not have a clue as to what they are talking about. </p>
<p>If you are good at every kind of thinking, the most effortless major might be applied mathematics, actually. </p>
<p>About sloanies, yes, starting your own business is tons of work, but the major is just plain easier than other ones unless it has changed drastically.</p>
<p>I believe there is broad misconception about the relative difficulty of biology at MIT especially by non-biology majors. Excellent memorization skills simply don’t help you at all on tests which rely typically on understanding interactions between complex systems. My D recently graduated from MIT in the BCS department (Course 9) and had to take a number of biology courses especially in biochemistry and neurobiology. Even the seemingly innocuous Course 7.05 on biochemistry she found nightmarish. No amount of memorization could help you pass that class and a number of her classmates who were biological engineering majors actually flunked the class. It was the only class she ever got a C in. </p>
<p>MIT does not even offer many of the traditional introductory biology courses found at typical universities such as development biology. MIT’s biology department is deservedly the top ranked biology department in the country by the NRC in pretty much all fields it covers. Much of the work is focused on areas such as computational biology, neurobiology, cancer biology, human genetics, biochemistry and biophysics and even the undergraduate classes reflect that focus on leading edge research. My D found the classes fascinating as they were often taught by Nobel laureates, NAS members or Howard Hughes investigators, but scary in that textbooks were essentially obsolete with most classes taught from original “bleeding edge” research. </p>
<p>Chemistry classes at MIT are just as much of a pain as biology classes. As part of her premed requirements my D had to take organic chemistry. After working her butt off in 5.12 (Orgo I) for a B she cross-registered for Orgo II at Harvard (as many MIT premeds do!) the next semester where she got an easy A. These MIT classes are just NOT for non-chemistry majors!</p>
<p>Actually, there are quite a few people I’ve met at MIT who are afraid of biology. From what I’ve heard (and I haven’t heard very much yet), non-course 7 majors either admire course 7 majors or look down on them. Which is probably not true, but hey, I guess I’ll find out more since I’m planning to major in course 7!</p>
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I disagree with this somewhat, but would agree more if you had integrated your point from above – if you don’t have and aren’t willing to develop a good biological intutition and you aren’t good at memorizing, biology will be very hard for you. But memorization is not necessary if you actually understand what’s going on biologically. I think memorization represents the ugly brute-force solution to the problem of learning the biological sciences. (And chemistry, as well – organic chemistry is much easier if you understand what’s going on, and hard if you’re trying to memorize everything.)</p>
<p>I never memorized anything as a biology major, not even in 7.013, and it always puzzled me to hear my non-bio friends talking about memorizing for 7.013 tests. Anyway, upper-level bio tests are almost always open-book and/or open-note, so there’s never any need to memorize some pathway or another – the point of a test question is never that protein X phosphorylates protein Y at serine 145.</p>
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<p>Well…I think prior experience in a UROP really helps. For example, the people in 6.101 (Analog) who were successful, obviously knew what they were doing, because they’d done a similar project in their UROP or on their own. If a lab is “challenging,” it just means that you need to spend a lot of extra time understanding what’s going on, and people who UROP have a distinct advantage on how to troubleshoot and design the circuits. And honestly, the only reason why these labs take so long is because of the troubleshooting.</p>
<p>Which is the same as course 7! There were students who’d never even held a pipette before 7.02, and they really struggled. However, the class had lab manuals and protocols and explanations of the theories that were all part of the required reading. The kids who had prior experience could leave after 1 hour, whereas others had to stay the full 4 hours.</p>
<p>…and btw I got a B in 5.13 and a B in 5.43. :P</p>
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<p>Thanks, you captured what I was trying to say.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’ll add that in o. chem, all you need is an ability to visualize these molecules in 3D, and a general sense of whether element in a molecule will push or pull electrons. Then, once a reaction is intuitive, it helps to strengthen it by memorizing it.</p>