How Hard is College Bio?

[BuckeyeRandy]

I am a student from a small high school who takes a couple classes at a local CC. Would be smart to take Bio I and II say, next year w/o high school Bio? It says recomended prep is H.S Bio. I don't plan on taking Bio at my high school because of my opprotunity to earn college credit. I'm taking Human Bio this semester and need a another Bio course to fullfill my H.S credit.

Any advice is appreciated.


You can look at syllabi for the courses here: http://www.edisonohio.edu/index.php?page=biology-course-listings

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[alwaysaangel]

I am a student from a small high school who takes a couple classes at a local CC. Would be smart to take Bio I and II say, next year w/o high school Bio? It says recomended prep is H.S Bio. I don't plan on taking Bio at my high school because of my opprotunity to earn college credit. I'm taking Human Bio this semester and need a another Bio course to fullfill my H.S credit.

Any advice is appreciated.


You can look at syllabi for the courses here: http://www.edisonohio.edu/index.php?page=biology-course-listings

Community college biology shouldn't be too hard. The biggest different between it and high school bio is going to be the speed of material. So if you aren't going to have the time to keep up with and actually learn the material its probably a bad idea.

The other thing to consider is that if you take the course at a community college it will be on your college transcripts and you will have to submit it to medical schools when you apply. So if you do poorly it will negatively affect your GPA/application. Also, some colleges may not let you repeat the basic bio classes since you will have already taken them. So if you don't do well or don't get a good grasp of the material then you may struggle in other bio classes in college.

 

[Hum]

I go to a big university so my Bio 1 course was a 200+ person lecture. Since bio is my strong suit, it wasn't a problem at all for me. However, there were kids in my class who had never taken bio before in their lives, and some struggled and some did not. The ones that did well were the ones that went to the extra help office hours and discussion sessions that were offered and put the effort in. If you make a solid attempt to learn the material outside of class and pay attention in class, you'll be fine.

 

[ModernAlchemist]

Intro bio ranges from really easy at some schools to REALLY competitive at institutions known for having a lot of pre-meds. At UCI, intro bio is arguably as hard as any other bio due to the sheer weeding that goes on. Though, I'll admit it kicked me into gear for the rest of college. Wherever you go, just plan to study hard.

 

[EMS5]

general bio isn't too bad. if you're good at memorizing, you'll do fine. i got A's in both semesters, but it was some work for me because I'm not good at memorizing sheer volumes of near-useless stuff

 

[hiyaman]

If you study the material and keep up with the coursework you shouldn't have any problems if you enjoyed high school biology.

I entered UCI with only having taken general biology in high school and excelled. I guess it depends on the person. I like biology and tend to read it/ keep up with the class.

You can get A's in any class if you put the effort in.

 

[Daedra22]

Other than upper-division classes, college courses generally assume that you come in with 0 background information. I never took high school bio or chem, and did find in both in college. I didn't feel disadvantaged at all.

 

[Fort]

So hard it will melt your brain!

I took introductory cell bio and genetics and it was all critical thinking, which is what college bio should be. You definitely had to memorize facts and know your details like the back of your hand; on the test the professor would ask questions that forced you to predict what would happen if something was changed, like if a protein or amino acid was missing. Most questions were short paragraphs, but they were multiple choice (the bad kind, the ones that have multiple answers)! Average on most lecture exams was in the 50s. Lab exams were also difficult as they were short answer explanations to questions.

In short it definitely forced me to think outside the box, but I did well because I put in the time. When you study you should study to understand not memorize, because just straight up memorizing will screw you over in most hard sciences.