<p>I got accepted UCSD- biochemistry. I know that UCSD has very good reputation in science, in general. What about class work? Is it true that TAs are teaching almost every classes? Is it really hard to get 3.5 or above GPA?</p>
<p>YEP it’s difficult to get good grades, you have to really work hard! I’m not sure about your first question because I’m not a science major. In general, professors teach the lectures and then the TAs have individual sections which are relatively small. The TAs go over lecture material and grade papers/assignments, etc.</p>
<p>The only time Grad TA’s seem to TEACH a class is over summer for the lower div classes/labs.</p>
<p>Class work is fair for most classes.</p>
<p>It’s hard if you don’t try.</p>
<p>Yes. It is difficult. You’re no longer competing against mouth breathers, but against people as intelligent (or those far more intelligent) than yourself.</p>
<p>Have Fun!</p>
<p><- 3.5 GPA</p>
<p>Is it true that most of classes in UCSD are curved so that only top 3 students can get A?</p>
<p>Actually every chemistry course is headed by a PhD of some sort, so teaching assistants (who are graduate students or undergrads) wouldn’t count. You might be thinking of some people who were once graduate students in the department, graduated, and came back to teach as lecturers – Darby Winn, Phoebe Glazer, Tina Johnson, and Mike Hale come to mind.</p>
<p>There are some courses in which your TA will be infinitely more helpful than the professor, like in labs.</p>
<p>@reagan_1991: NOT even remotely true. unless maybe your class has 10 people in it. check out the chem 6 classes here: [Untitled</a> Page](<a href=“http://registrar.ucsd.edu/reports/default.aspx]Untitled”>http://registrar.ucsd.edu/reports/default.aspx)</p>
<p>@astrina: so some professors do curve the grade while some don’t right?</p>
<p>“Yes. It is difficult. You’re no longer competing against mouth breathers, but against people as intelligent (or those far more intelligent) than yourself.”</p>
<p>That’s not true. There are a ton of people in all my classes who are just…um…not very intelligent.</p>
<p>some professors don’t need to curve – they’ve been teaching long enough that they can write good exams that’ll result in proper gaussian distributions and assign grades accordingly. my chem 6b professor always promised that he’d curve, but when class scores came out, he didn’t need to because the average of the class was about where he expected it to be.</p>
<p>but in the end, approximately the same %s of people get As, Bs, Cs, etc, regardless of professor.</p>
<p>Is Political Science (Int’l Relations) a hard major?
(I’m pretty good at the reading/writing stuff)</p>
<p>Is there gonna be any free-time, after studying???</p>
<p>Alice, don’t go into a major just because you “think you’re good at it”. Do it if you enjoy it.</p>
<p>reagan, plenty.</p>
<p>There should be several websites which list all the grades of a given class so you can see which classes give out the most A’s. From what I’ve seen major-related classes people tend to get within the B to C range. As long as you can beat the curve you should be alright.</p>
<p>I think you misunderstood me 
I do like it. AND I’m good at it.
I only said I’m good at reading/writing because I heard PoliSci has a lot of those, and I wanted that to be taken into consideration.</p>
<p>Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Yeah, they’re fairly easy. Some of my Poli friends think that the dept inflates their GPAs (3.5+ isn’t uncommon; Magagna, etc.)</p>
<p>So in college, 3.5 is a good GPA?</p>
<p>it’s all relative.</p>
<p>@alice.du - in my opinion, people are STOKED to get 3.5’s. This is definitely not high school anymore hahaha!</p>
<p>^ you are scaring me=[</p>
<p>@ucsandiego915 - you said people are STOKED to get 3.5’s. Why are classes in UCSD so difficult? What are causes that make classes in UCSD so difficult?</p>