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Did you do better in lower-level pre-reqs or higher level?
Started by akrav113
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I did pretty poorly in my basic bios and gen chems (I think Bs, B+s, and A-s) and I ended up getting into school. HOWEVER!!! That means you have to work harder than people who got As in those classes! I worked my BUTT off to improve my GPA. Vet schools know adjusting to college can be tough so what they really look for is improvement! My GPA only ever climbed up after that first semester and while it wasn't a super high GPA like a 3.8 it showed that I didn't let a lower gpa stop me from trying harder.
I thought the general bios were more difficult because they were uninteresting and so broad. I got Bs in them but I’ve gotten As in my upper division bios - they’ve been more interesting and for whatever reason the specifics are easier to me. Don’t be afraid of organic chemistry, it’s not that bad! I was able to get As both semesters, I just found it to be a lot of memorizing mechanisms and what helped was writing them out over and over and over again on a whiteboard.
(Full disclosure though, I was working 60 hours/week when I took gen bio as opposed to 30 hours/week while I’ve been taking upper division bio but I’m also now taking a full course load)
(Full disclosure though, I was working 60 hours/week when I took gen bio as opposed to 30 hours/week while I’ve been taking upper division bio but I’m also now taking a full course load)
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supershorty
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I didn't do stellar in either. I got good grades in the lower division courses because they were relatively easy to memorize, but I really struggled to pull Bs in the upper level chem courses. I did great in upper level bio and genetics because I found them more interesting and had an easier time being motivated.
I do significantly better in vet school than I did in undergrad, for what it's worth.
I do significantly better in vet school than I did in undergrad, for what it's worth.
I did poorly in gen chem and some random electives, which brought my gpa down. But I did really well in upper level courses and most of my pre-reqs! Hopefully that will help me out and they’ll overlook the gen chem and random electives I got C’s in
I did significantly worse in my intro classes than in my later ones (with the one exception of ochem-if you ever read the 2022 hopefuls thread you will see my struggles with that class). Upper level classes for me were much easier because I had learned how to study, content was more specific and to my interest, and I also knew what I had to get in order to fix my GPA and that served as motivation.
I did much better in upper level bio and chem classes than intro courses. It's really hard for me to gauge why, because I don't really think the content was easier in upper levels, but i just gradually cracked the code on how to do well in science classes. I think it can take a couple semesters/years to figure out how to take in mass amounts of complicated information and understand it enough to do well in class.
Kinda off topic, but I think that's one of the reasons why vet schools want us to take so many pre-reqs and have an upwards trend in terms of grades. They want us to learn how to do well in those types of classes before we start vet school so that we have already gotten past the learning curve.
Don't freak out! You'll improve and grow as a student as you continue to move along 🙂
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Kinda off topic, but I think that's one of the reasons why vet schools want us to take so many pre-reqs and have an upwards trend in terms of grades. They want us to learn how to do well in those types of classes before we start vet school so that we have already gotten past the learning curve.
Don't freak out! You'll improve and grow as a student as you continue to move along 🙂
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
I did better the longer I was in school, but I think a big part was just figuring **** out. I know myself a lot better now, and I know more about how I retain information. I was a dumb freshman who was homeschooled for most of high school and who had literally never had a biology course before - I didn't know anything when I started.
I loved O Chem, did really poorly, and managed to be one of my proff's favorite students just by trying so hard. I know I can get a strong LOR from him if I ever need it. So even if a class hurts your GPA, it might be valuable in other ways. 😉
For me it depends what you're looking at. I did a lot of my prereqs at a small college where it absolutely just depended on the professor. Gen Chem was my easiest subject but come the last quarter in the series I had a professor doing this stupid "POGIL" teaching, where he wouldn't lecture, just basically handed out worksheets for students to work out themselves and called himself a teacher! That quarter I got a B.
I did OChem/Biochem at university and was a solid B- student with the exception of an A second part of Ochem.
My prereq GPA sits at about a 3.5 on the VMCAS scale. I am told it is below average. I have a high GRE to compensate. But I am also not yet in vet school.
I did OChem/Biochem at university and was a solid B- student with the exception of an A second part of Ochem.
My prereq GPA sits at about a 3.5 on the VMCAS scale. I am told it is below average. I have a high GRE to compensate. But I am also not yet in vet school.
I did much better in my intro courses but I was also at a community college and not working. When I took my higher level courses, I was working and at a University. I did better with a more personal teaching style (30 people in class max) at the community college.
I struggled quite a bit in the lower level sciences. I took my bios, gen chems, o-chems, and physics courses all within the first 2 years of undergrad while I was working. It didn't help that my university treated those intro science courses as weed out classes to fail people out of their major/university. For me, I had a difficult time balancing work with school and I had been told that me getting more hours at work as a vet tech would help me get into vet school more than my grades (....said by the vet I worked for.... I now look back and question if he said that so that I'd work more 
) and I believed him. I ended up doing fairly well in my upper level science courses and went into graduate school for a biomedical science MS and I did really well there. I think what a few others have said really comes into play with just figuring out HOW to study for science courses and learning what you personally need to do to succeed. As I moved through upper level science courses, the material was so much more interesting and it didn't feel like a chore to study. I could actually see the material I learned as being applicable to being a vet and it helped motivate me to study. When in graduate school, it just so happened that the classes I was taking all built upon each other, so being able to see the "big picture" and integrate those different subjects also helped tremendously. I feel like this is more of how vet school will be as well. I also started working less and I built study time into my schedule whereas as when I first started college, any and all free time was spent at work.
) and I believed him. I ended up doing fairly well in my upper level science courses and went into graduate school for a biomedical science MS and I did really well there. I think what a few others have said really comes into play with just figuring out HOW to study for science courses and learning what you personally need to do to succeed. As I moved through upper level science courses, the material was so much more interesting and it didn't feel like a chore to study. I could actually see the material I learned as being applicable to being a vet and it helped motivate me to study. When in graduate school, it just so happened that the classes I was taking all built upon each other, so being able to see the "big picture" and integrate those different subjects also helped tremendously. I feel like this is more of how vet school will be as well. I also started working less and I built study time into my schedule whereas as when I first started college, any and all free time was spent at work.
