Behavioral Neuroscience course as a freshman?

[HoonMasta]

I only recently found out that the Behavioral Neuroscience course I had signed up for is a very high level class that was intended for older ages. I'm currently a freshman and "Accidentally" took this challenging course because I had extra credit hours to fill in the gap. My scholarship required me to take 15 semester hours and the necessary courses I had only filled 12 hours. So I told my adviser I was interested in any class about the human brain and she stuck me in Behavioral Neuroscience.

The class itself is very interesting and the professor is very good. However, I am a bit worried because the class is full of upper classman and there is only a couple of freshman. I understand some of the material but I heard the exams were very brutal. Does it look bad to withdrawl from the class? I like to be challenged with hard courses but I may have a feeling this course may drop my GPA, and that is definitely not what I want as a freshman.

Any advice? Suck it up and study hard or try and talk to my adviser to get me out of the course without any damages to my resume/degree plan? It's already 4 weeks into school and our exam is in 6 days.

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[Avicenna]

If you study long enough, you can get an A 🙂
Ace it!

 

[DrFreshMeat]

i would probably drop it..my semester is relaxed and i personally want to start college off easy. BUT i would not drop it if it would put a mark on my transcript...if its too late gut it out and hope for the best

 

[PreMedRookie]

I only recently found out that the Behavioral Neuroscience course I had signed up for is a very high level class that was intended for older ages. I'm currently a freshman and "Accidentally" took this challenging course because I had extra credit hours to fill in the gap. My scholarship required me to take 15 semester hours and the necessary courses I had only filled 12 hours. So I told my adviser I was interested in any class about the human brain and she stuck me in Behavioral Neuroscience.

The class itself is very interesting and the professor is very good. However, I am a bit worried because the class is full of upper classman and there is only a couple of freshman. I understand some of the material but I heard the exams were very brutal. Does it look bad to withdrawl from the class? I like to be challenged with hard courses but I may have a feeling this course may drop my GPA, and that is definitely not what I want as a freshman.

Any advice? Suck it up and study hard or try and talk to my adviser to get me out of the course without any damages to my resume/degree plan? It's already 4 weeks into school and our exam is in 6 days.

Do not drop it. I took a class my freshman year and I was the only freshman. Everyone else was a Junior or Senior. I was nervous at first also but ended up getting an A. You are going to have many many challenging classes where you hear the exams are hard..you can't drop them all.

Also it is probably too late to add another class and if you drop it you will lose the scholarship.

 

[Aerus]

I took an upper level bio class as a freshman too. You can get an A if you study properly and put enough effort into learning the material.

In fact, this might be a good thing. The fact that I was the youngest person in that class actually motivated me to excel.

 

[HoonMasta]

Thanks guys! I've decided that I am going to put 100% effort and commitment to this class! I am pretty motivated right now to succeed. The exam is in 5 days and I am going to study my a** off! Thanks for the support.

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

Although you already said you're not going to drop it, I just want to chime in and add that you really shouldn't put any stock into whether a class is upper-level or lower-level, or if you're the only freshman, or what people say about its difficulty. I had a 100-level class that was one of the hardest neuro courses I took (god only knows why it was labeled as a 100 level class, even the professor said that wasn't right), and I had a 400 level neuro course that I breezed through. I had one class in my final year that everyone said was a GPA killer; the department really hyped it up saying that it wasn't uncommon for previously 4.0 students to get C's in the course. I ended up with a grade of 100 in the course without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile I had several classes throughout my college career that I thought were going to be easy A's which turned out to be anything but. My point is that you really don't know what a class is going to be like before you take it, and in most cases the difficulty won't be anything out of line with what you've had before.

Just take whatever interests you

 

[yehhhboiii]

if you think you need help, go see the professor during office hours or find the TA right away. i didn't do it as a freshman in physics and i really regretted it. i didn't learn the material well the first time around, did poorly and i had to learn it all when i was studying for the mcat.

then when i was a senior, i took a graduate level chemistry course and studied my ass off. i ended up with the third highest grade in a class of nine, over all of the graduate students and right behind the other two undergrads. your grades depend on your effort and your understanding of the material. your grade level isn't very important although people who've been in college tend to have a better idea of what's important for examinations. work hard