Agreed with others, I think it is definitely a plus if you can take it, as any exposure to a class you take in pod school will help you do better the 2nd time around. I am also a first year Scholl student, we just finished biochem. In my experience of taking biochem in undergrad, it was much different than what we did at Scholl. For example, Scholl biochemistry doesn’t require you to memorize structures of all the intermediates in the Kreb’s cycle. In fact, we didn’t have to memorize structures for ANY molecules, including amino acids. The class was more of a “medical biochemistry” where you have to understand more about what controls each pathway, what stimulates it, what inhibits it, feedback mechanisms, how hormones regulate it (glucagon, epinephrine, insulin), etc. The professor that teaches genetics and biochemistry at Scholl is a VERY fair professor (his name is Dr. Intine) and almost everyone loves him. Fair grader, generous curve at the end as well, and throws exam questions out if a good amount of the class gets it wrong.
One thing, at Scholl, biochemistry is an online module course. There are no in class lectures (only review sessions, and a few integrative metabolism lectures at the very end of the course). All lectures are previously recorded lectures that are posted online for you to watch at your own pace. But there are lecture exams every 2 weeks for about 1 week of lecture material at a time (around 4-6 lectures usually). Unless it changes next year, it is basically a 25 question exam every 2 weeks. Averages this year were very high for every exam (80-85% each time). The final exam (worth 27% I believe) was 50 questions, which covers about 9 lectures + is a little cumulative, but he will let you know exactly what will be tested.
In undergrad biochem, we had to memorize stupid things like how to draw the structure of each amino acid and memorize all the names of them, memorize structures of each Kreb’s cycle intermediate, all of glycolysis, etc, things that clinically isn’t relative.
Biochem at Scholl is very fair and I think it was fairly easy to pull an A in that class maybe because I had that previous biochemistry knowledge, so it came a little easier 2nd time around. But again, I don’t think that all the memorization I had to do for undergrad biochemistry came into use. It was more enzymology (only the main important ones) memorization, not structure memorization.
But again, if biochem is available at your school and your GPA/time/money can afford it, it wouldn’t hurt taking it.
