Majors you take seriously

Alix2012
Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:24:52 +0000

chemistry majors who are not premed (and thus take the full grad-school bound curriculum rather than a watered down version),

Chem majors don’t take a “watered down” version if they’re preMed; the requirements for a degree in Chemistry don’t change depending on whether you’re headed to Grad school, Med school or the real world. They take the exact same classes as other Chem students, since their major covers all the preMed requirements.

People often think preMeds complain because they find the material in their classes difficult - this isn’t true. Intro-level Bio, Chem, Orgo and Physics are not hard. But when you’re in a class of 500 students, only the top 10% can get A’s, and the other 90% are also smart, understand the material and work really hard, it becomes very competitive.
Let’s say there’s 2 Gen Chem classes - one for Chem majors and one for preMeds. Both classes learn the same Intro material, the difference is the Chem majors will be in a smaller class where they focus on learning, the premeds have to understand the material and also beat out all the other smart kids who understand it. In my college they don’t separate preMeds from non preMeds in Intro courses, so this is just what i’ve observed.