General Biology Question...

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Does anybody feel that their General Biology class fully prepared them for the things on the MCAT? I know the ones at my school do not cover all the topics that the MCAT does.
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I haven't taken the MCAT just have been studying for it but the only sections my general bio class helped with were the cell, cellular metabolism (some), cell division kind of stuff, we went over some genetics, evolution for a while (his fav. topic) and of course plants. He went off on tangents and talked about some human related topics but not really, basically he mostly talked about how plants have sex every day (he mentions it on avg. 23 times a lecture lol, yes we kept tally marks). the class was interesting when he wasn't talking about plants as much lol.
 
My school is on quarters and only has two intro biology classes. You are expected to take another bio class to make up for that spare quarter in order to apply for medical school.

I would say I wish I had taken an anatomy class along with my 2 intro biology classes. My intro classes seriously lacked the phys stuff that TPR covered for the MCAT. I did take mol gen but I don't think it will help all that much. Also, biochem really helped.
 
Well I'm in my second semester of anatomy and physiology. I guess it just bothers me because everyone says I only need General Biology. If I only had that class you could go ahead and count me out on the MCAT lol
 
mrdrdrjp said:
Well I'm in my second semester of anatomy and physiology. I guess it just bothers me because everyone says I only need General Biology. If I only had that class you could go ahead and count me out on the MCAT lol
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I'm definitely going to take Human A&P before I take the MCAT. I start with the first section in the fall. I'm sure it will be much better for you to take it. The few I talked to from my school said it helped along with biochem & genetics like bacchus also mentioned. I wouldn't feel prepared based off of just a general biology course.
 
i just wonder if some schools have classes that in-depth? possibly Harvard or JHU?
 
DrYoda said:
No, it prepared me to identify various types of plants.
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At my school there is no Biology 1 and 2, it's Zoology and Botany. I don't even get the benefit of breaking up the plant/animal sections over 2 semesters...it's an entire semester of just plants! :bang:
 
circulus vitios said:
At my school there is no Biology 1 and 2, it's Zoology and Botany. I don't even get the benefit of breaking up the plant/animal sections over 2 semesters...it's an entire semester of just plants! :bang:
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that's how it was for me too. at least the professor made botany interesting... he also went over random things and went off on weird tangents though lol.
 
mrdrdrjp said:
Well I'm in my second semester of anatomy and physiology. I guess it just bothers me because everyone says I only need General Biology. If I only had that class you could go ahead and count me out on the MCAT lol
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Is anatomy and physiology really required to do well on the MCAT? I was thinking about taking the usual pre-reqs plus bio chem, cell bio, immunology, and genetics. Maybe switch out immunology for physiology?

edit: Now that I look at it, physiology at my school is for animals and not humans.
 
Well anatomy not really but at my school the two are together. Physiology is really useful for the MCAT, especially if your biology is lacking. I have a blog with a link to the biology topics tested and it made my general biology class look straight wimpy lol
 
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mrdrdrjp said:
Well anatomy not really but at my school the two are together. Physiology is really useful for the MCAT, especially if your biology is lacking. I have a blog with a link to the biology topics tested and it made my general biology class look straight wimpy lol
Click to expand...

Is your a&p class mostly human a&p? Do you think I would get any benefit from taking just physiology if it covers the entire 'mammalian vertebrate'?
 
I would think the 100 level general ed bio class would offer almost 0 help on MCAT prep. It's not designed to do so.

I was a physiology major and I think the best prep I got for the MCAT bio section came from molecular, genetics, cell bio, and physiology (and O chem of course). The medical school prereqs are 8 credits of Bio which at my school would have allowed me to cover an intro to bio, molecular, bio lab, and physiology class. I suppose that could be sufficient, but I certainly wouldn't dream of taking the MCAT without having all the prereq courses finished.
 
For the biology section I needed to teach myself a lot of physiology to study (because I had no taken a physiology course). Aside from that, the courses I took prepared. Though my "general" bio courses did not (I technically tested out of most of them...so they may have helped if I took them but I got the information anyway in higher level courses).

You need biochemistry, genetics, cell biology (a little bit), physiology. Those are probably the most important for the biology section.
 
My general biology class prepared me pretty well for the MCAT. But then again, I learned most of the stuff from the prep class, so whatever.
Looking back, I wish I had taken biochemistry and especially physiology before preparing for the MCAT. It would have made studying a lot easier.
 
circulus vitios said:
Is your a&p class mostly human a&p? Do you think I would get any benefit from taking just physiology if it covers the entire 'mammalian vertebrate'?
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Mine is entirely human A&P. And I plan to take the other courses mentioned. I just wanted to see if anyone thought there General Biology class was sufficient lol. I'm starting to feel like they are not. Which means some of the non-science majors may be getting screwed :eek:
 
My school is on quarter system and I can't take physiology until I take genetics, Biochem and molecular bio. -_- sigh. Thats after the 2 into bio classes I had to take which had no physiology.
Oh yea and none of those classes have associated labs, all the Bio department labs are upper division separate classes. Makes it hard for me not to be a science major.
 
Tatertots said:
My school is on quarter system and I can't take physiology until I take genetics, Biochem and molecular bio. -_- sigh. Thats after the 2 into bio classes I had to take which had no physiology.
Oh yea and none of those classes have associated labs, all the Bio department labs are upper division separate classes. Makes it hard for me not to be a science major.
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Wow, that blows.
 
Yea I plan to take physiology Fall of Junior year so it will be before I take the MCAT.
Genetics(Fall), Biochem(Winter) and Molecular Bio(Spring) Sophomore year.
 
mrdrdrjp said:
Well anatomy not really but at my school the two are together. Physiology is really useful for the MCAT, especially if your biology is lacking. I have a blog with a link to the biology topics tested and it made my general biology class look straight wimpy lol
Click to expand...
care to share the said link?
 
While doing the EK 1001...

Honestly, I am SO happy I decided to take Biochemistry this spring. It has helped me on so many questions in this book (as has Cell Biology).
 
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Tatertots said:
My school is on quarter system and I can't take physiology until I take genetics, Biochem and molecular bio. -_- sigh. Thats after the 2 into bio classes I had to take which had no physiology.
Oh yea and none of those classes have associated labs, all the Bio department labs are upper division separate classes. Makes it hard for me not to be a science major.
Click to expand...
LMU Chapman or a claremont?
 
CC General Bio + EK Audio osmosis got me a 14. Your mileage may vary.
 
mrdrdrjp said:
Does anybody feel that their General Biology class fully prepared them for the things on the MCAT? I know the ones at my school do not cover all the topics that the MCAT does.
Click to expand...

Don't do it man. If you only do the pre-req's, 1 year of bio, gen-chem, o-chem and physics, you'll be ****ed. Some people do decent with only these courses, but I haven't met a single person (online or in person) that killed the MCAT (35+) with just the pre-reqs.

Go well past that first year of bio prior to the MCAT. The extra knowledge will help you read through and comprehend the biology passages much more easily. Plus like someone above said, half of your general bio classes are targeted at almost completely useless information like evolution and plants.:thumbdown:
 
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