How are the science professors at your school?

[JustLookingforAnswers]

I won't mention the name of my University, but so far most of them are absolutely terrible. Provide little assistance in lab. Additionally, in lecture, they will teach you 25% of the material and leave the other 75% to be taught on your own. Constantly omit or add material needed to learn for exams at the last minute, days before the exam especially for lab practicals. Have Professors who can't speak proper English (no offense to anyone, but seriously I am paying for a course that should be taught by a professor that can be understood EASILY by everyone) and they even teach material that contradicts the book. I hear this type of behavior is the norm at other schools, but this is absolutely the norm at my College. Is it always like this everywhere or does my College just suck?

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[chickpeagoals]

I go to a really small Texas college (TWoman'sU), but the professors that teach lecture and lab are absolutely amazing and they care about their students. If you don't like the science departments over at your university, why don't you consider transferring?

 

[Dream_big]

I too went to a small undergrad state school in PA. The professors really cared about their students...the occasional a hole here and there was an a hole within reason. Education is what you make of it and getting by with the help of your professors that want to see you as an individual succeed is just the icing on the cake.. but who is in charge? Who brings home that cake? You.

 

[aldol16]

Most of the time when students think that material tested on is completely different from material taught, it's because the student didn't understand the material at the required depth. The English issue though, is real and it's more of a consequence of universities hiring professors for their research potential rather than teaching potential. Contrary to what you might think, it's more important to the administration what kind of research they're churning out than what kinds of students they are graduating. Except for the very top schools, at which it's more of dual goals of research and education.

 

[tessellations]

I've had some really good and some really bad professors. Two really good professors of mine were both just lecturers and don't do any research, but one of them was the head of the undergraduate chemistry program. I've also had really bad professors who were just lecturers. My Biochem I professor used be the provost of the university and he totally sucked. He never explained things well and never really said what would be on the tests.

While I generally like my large university, part of me wishes I could have gone to a small liberal arts college (but money) because I get the sense that the professors care a lot more about teaching undergraduates at those types of colleges.

 

[ciestar]

I won't mention the name of my University, but so far most of them are absolutely terrible. Provide little assistance in lab. Additionally, in lecture, they will teach you 25% of the material and leave the other 75% to be taught on your own. Constantly omit or add material needed to learn for exams at the last minute, days before the exam especially for lab practicals. Have Professors who can't speak proper English (no offense to anyone, but seriously I am paying for a course that should be taught by a professor that can be understood EASILY by everyone) and they even teach material that contradicts the book. I hear this type of behavior is the norm at other schools, but this is absolutely the norm at my College. Is it always like this everywhere or does my College just suck?

Read the bolded. Welcome to med school.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I've had good and bad. This will sound horrible, but the vast majority of my bad profs were foreign PhDs who were there to do research. Most of them had trouble with English and just assumed everyone had the same fund of knowledge (usually more advanced than the course we were in--e.g., assuming abstract algebra knowledge in a first linear algebra course).

I'm willing to bet it had little to do with them being immigrants and more to do with their focus on research. All my great profs were focused equally on teaching and research.

 

[Funny_Current]

Generally the lower the ratio of professors:students the more you can expect they will interact with the class and teach better. My undergrad was a large public school and I dealt with some of the things you stated. Needless to say, Gradschool was much better.


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[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Generally the lower the ratio of professors:students the more you can expect they will interact with the class and teach better. My undergrad was a large public school and I dealt with some of the things you stated. Needless to say, Gradschool was much better.


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There were like 12-15 people in my calc 1 and intro linear algebra courses. The profs were terrible.

 

[Funny_Current]

There were like 12-15 people in my calc 1 and intro linear algebra courses. The profs were terrible.

I should have emphasized the "generally." It's funny because my calc teachers were really good even though there was a quite a few of us in the class


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[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I should have emphasized the "generally." It's funny because my calc teachers were really good even though there was a quite a few of us in the class


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Yeah my calc 2 and 3 profs were great despite having a ton of students.

 

[studpremed]

It is a mix bag in my large school. I've had amazing ones and bad ones. I've had ones that lacked English skills too. The most notorious one for me is my biochemistry 2 professor who did not show up to 40% of lectures. Needless to say a lot of people failed that semester.

 

[Diirez]

Oh boy.

My professors at my school are pretty terrible, depending on the subject. Our bio department is fairly good, and even Biochem is considered not that hard because the faculty is great. But everything else sucks. I had a chemistry professor who couldn't do the math out and would spend the majority of class rechecking her work and telling us that she hates the pace of the class. I had another Chemistry professor tell us that we can't listen to the book because he will only add exceptions to the rules of exams. The labs were also terrible, took me and my engineering roommate the whole weekend to complete those and the labs went faster than the actual class but we still had to take quizzes on the material even though we didn't have lecture on it.

Physics is spotty depending on what you have to take. For instance, Algebra based physics is relatively considered an "easy" class. The professors are good for that. But for engineering calculus based physics, it is exceptional. Only one professor teaches all three physics and he's a lecturer who was a Research Assistant for his career who comes in, teaches to the board and everyone gets 35% average on the exam that he has to scale up to a 65%. The best part was when they did have two professors teaching it his class was 20 points on average lower than the other class.

Some of it isn't just the professors, my school really likes weedout classes. So some classes like Chem 1 + 2, pre-calculus and such have failure rates pushing 50-60%.

 

[JustLookingforAnswers]

Oh boy.

My professors at my school are pretty terrible, depending on the subject. Our bio department is fairly good, and even Biochem is considered not that hard because the faculty is great. But everything else sucks. I had a chemistry professor who couldn't do the math out and would spend the majority of class rechecking her work and telling us that she hates the pace of the class. I had another Chemistry professor tell us that we can't listen to the book because he will only add exceptions to the rules of exams. The labs were also terrible, took me and my engineering roommate the whole weekend to complete those and the labs went faster than the actual class but we still had to take quizzes on the material even though we didn't have lecture on it.

Physics is spotty depending on what you have to take. For instance, Algebra based physics is relatively considered an "easy" class. The professors are good for that. But for engineering calculus based physics, it is exceptional. Only one professor teaches all three physics and he's a lecturer who was a Research Assistant for his career who comes in, teaches to the board and everyone gets 35% average on the exam that he has to scale up to a 65%. The best part was when they did have two professors teaching it his class was 20 points on average lower than the other class.

Some of it isn't just the professors, my school really likes weedout classes. So some classes like Chem 1 + 2, pre-calculus and such have failure rates pushing 50-60%.

I HATE it when in esp. chem lab it does not at all articulate with lecture. It makes it harder, ugh lol. The whole first paragraph is my school! lol

 

[NeuResurgens]

I went to a large private school that emphasized undergraduates, so most of my professors were both invested in teaching while also being active enough in research for me to gain valuable experience. My PI is an amazing human.

 

[wb100]

I went to a UC and the professors were surprisingly very friendly and helpful. It helped that I went to a mid tier and not Berkeley or UCLA (which are amazing schools either way!). I feel like those UCs have professors that are way more focused on research rather than teaching (according to some of my pre-med friends attending LA and Berk). For the most part my professors liked teaching a class since it was a nice break from all the lab work they did. Granted most taught 1-2 class per year.


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