<p>For your last two questions, their answers are no.</p>
<p>As regard to the difficulty of premed classes, it mostly depends on how well you are prepared in high school, IMHO. If you are the top few students from the very top high school in the suburban area of a major city, you will likely do fine in the majority of the classes.</p>
<p>It is rumored that the premed classes are hard because of the pool of students in it, not because of the difficulty level of the materials in the intro classes, no matter what school you go to. Also, at the college level, you may notice that the achievment levels of students could vary significantly. It is not easy to be the shining star in every class like in high school. I remember DS once commented A- may be within his control, while requiring some “luck” in scoring a straight A. I think that in his graduation class, there was no one whose accumulated GPA is 4.0. It does not require anywhere close to that kind of GPA in order to be a successful premed at any college though.</p>
<p>The above is just my subjective opinion as a parent who has a child having gone through the proces hallf a decade ago (so it may not be up-to-date info.)</p>