Penn curriculum

[BobDog]

I have heard that Penn allows students with advanced coursework to get waivers for some courses. I know that you have to petition the department who teaches the class to get a waiver. A few questions:

1. Does anyone know any more details on this?
2. For the Penn students, how many people in your class got waivers to get out of coursework? What types of previous classes will usually get you a waiver?
3. Is it worth getting a waiver? Or would it be better just to be with your class and do all the things everyone else is doing (even though you may already know the material in the class)? I guess it may help your GPA, if nothing else.

Thanks for any responses. I tried to search for this, but it is too hard to define the search terms.

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[RemyRipper315]

Hey BobDog!

I'm not sure of the exact number of students that got exemptions for certain classes. I know quite a few students were exempted from Nutrition, which is in the upcoming 4th quarter.

Some of the classes that people were/will be exempt from:
-Developmental Biology
-Histology (some got exempt from lecture and only had to take the lab)
-Nutrition
-Immunology

To get exempt from most of them, students needed to submit a syllabus from their undergrad course and copy of their transcripts for the instructor to review if the material is equivalent or not. If you are exempt, you receive an "X" on your transcript (no grade), but you still get the credits for the course.

I haven't been exempted from any classes so far, but I will be exempt from Nutrition and Immunology in Quarter 4. In my personal opinion, I think it is worth it. I'm going to try to use some of the time this frees up for boosting my Physio grade (hopefully). I think exemption is good in that you have additional time to study for other subjects. It seemed to be helpful for some of the students that were exempt from dev bio/histo in the Fall!

That being said, I'm one of those people that is afraid they will miss something if they don't attend class/review session/get exempted and don't take a certain class. However, I rationalized that it would be OK because I could always go attend the lectures if I really wanted to do so! One of my buddies could have been exempted from nutrition, but she decided to take it because she really enjoyed nutrition in undergrad and figured it might be a grade booster for her personally.

OK, I hope this is helpful. Feel free to ask any other questions! I'm not an expert, but I can at least give you my opinions/experiences.

 

[cyrille104]

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[BobDog]

Thanks for the responses. Very helpful =o)

 

[cyrille104]

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[RemyRipper315]

Haha, let's be serious now.

Yeah... that's not going to happen.....