Should Professors Stop Grading on a Bell Curve?

[freak7]

I suppose I was thinking mostly of sGPA, which at least in my experience was giant lecture halls with optional attendance and a grade built off 3-4 difficult exams that again rewarded differences in ability and not just prep.

+1

(And the 700 other people in lecture)

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[aldol16]

Sadly, that tells us how well you are able to prepare for a high stakes exam. It doesn't tell us how well you do with day to day responsibilities for assignments, being on-time with reports, participating in group/team assignments, speaking up in class discussions, writing and speaking well. We do have LORs for that but it can also be reflected in grades.

I dunno, to me seeing low sGPA/solid MCAT combos pouring out of tough undergrads is a result of the competition there, not that the schools attract a lot of irresponsible students that can prep well for high-pressure test.

I believe you're missing each other's points here. @LizzyM 's point is that 1) how well a student does on an exam only tells us how well he/she prepared for it and is a one-dimensional metric and 2) it does not measure intangibles such as reliability, class participation, etc. @efle 's point is that while there are exceptions to the fact that only students who have mastered the material will achieve high scores on this theoretical exam, it's senseless to design policies based on the exceptions. That would be like saying vaccines kill people so we shouldn't use them. Sure, some people have severe, serious reactions to vaccines but that doesn't mean that it doesn't benefit the vast majority of the population without side effects. Similarly, sure, some people will do well on the proposed exam only because they studied only the material that is on the exam and did not necessarily master the subject but that doesn't mean that the vast majority of those who score high on the exam haven't mastered the subject. There will always be exceptions.

The solution to this is to design the exam so that it is difficult to prepare for. Give out outlines of what is on the exam but make it a vague outline - an outline that resembles chapter names in a chemistry textbook, for instance (e.g. "acid-base chemistry"). These topics would cover the breadth of a field and be deemed what mastery of the subject would entail. This is similar to the ACS exams in chemistry. Then, test critical thinking and data analysis based on that content knowledge rather than simple content recall. This ensures that it becomes hard to "study to the exam" because one has to understand the material at a sufficient depth so as to be able to reason from it. Other strategies can also be incorporated to ensure that the exam becomes harder to study for and reflects mastery of a subject rather than mastery of the test.

Furthermore, the exam itself does not need to be the sole determinant of a grade. Weight the exam by a certain mandatory amount nationwide and then let professors have flexibility with what they use the rest of the points for. So, say, weight the standardized comprehensive exam by 60% and let professors decide what to do with the remaining 40%. That 40% gives them leeway in assigning grades to participation, punctuality, etc. The 60% weight is large enough that it will help to standardized grading across the nation whereas the 40% is large enough that other intangible factors can be taken into account.

 

[efle]

how well a student does on an exam only tells us how well he/she prepared for it

I didn't miss this at all, it's exactly what I disagree with! A highly competitive MCAT score does not just represent proper preparation, but also ability. The same is true of science exams (in my experience, obvs. n=1)

So when I see people with strong MCATs and mediocre or poor sGPA, it's possible that they just didn't try at all in their classes but switched on the effort for the MCAT...or it's possible that they are capable, hardworking students that simply struggle to be far above average when surrounded by similarly capable, hardworking peers. Compare them against the nation, and suddenly boom, they aren't struggling to hit the median any more, they're top couple deciles. Witnessed this enough times to convince me.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

it's possible that they are capable, hardworking students that simply struggle to be far above average when surrounded by similarly capable, hardworking peers. Compare them against the nation, and suddenly boom, they aren't struggling to hit the median any more, they're top couple deciles. Witnessed this enough times to convince me.

And this is precisely why I'm against grading systems/exams that punish above average students.

 

[aldol16]

I didn't miss this at all, it's exactly what I disagree with! A highly competitive MCAT score does not just represent proper preparation, but also ability. The same is true of science exams (in my experience, obvs. n=1)

So when I see people with strong MCATs and mediocre or poor sGPA, it's possible that they just didn't try at all in their classes but switched on the effort for the MCAT...or it's possible that they are capable, hardworking students that simply struggle to be far above average when surrounded by similarly capable, hardworking peers. Compare them against the nation, and suddenly boom, they aren't struggling to hit the median any more, they're top couple deciles. Witnessed this enough times to convince me.

Proper preparation and ability are correlated more often than not. You're talking about 1) exceptions to the rule (e.g. didn't try in classes but tried for MCAT) or 2) students at 10-15 schools in the country (i.e. grade-deflating ones). Most students who score high are both well-prepared and talented in ability. But being well-prepared and talented in ability are just two aspects that go into making a candidate great.

 

[Cotterpin]

And this is precisely why I'm against grading systems/exams that punish above average students.

That's not what's happening with a curve, is it? If you're on the upper end of the distribution, i.e. above average, you will get an A or at least above a B. And the students who are literally average will get average grades. That's what the letter grades are supposed to signify.

 

[Cavs5284]

And this is precisely why I'm against grading systems/exams that punish above average students.

Grading on a curve IMO doesn't really "punish" the students, it just grades them. It allows them to know their performance relative to their peers, which I think is a good thing.

What punishes average students at rigorous universities are medical school admissions committees that hold an unstandardized metric (GPA) to the same or almost the same regard as a standardized value (MCAT).

 

[Kgizzle]

Shoutout for the Incredibles reference

 

[Lucca]

Grading on a curve IMO doesn't really "punish" the students, it just grades them. It allows them to know their performance relative to their peers, which I think is a good thing.

What punishes average students at rigorous universities are medical school admissions committees that hold an unstandardized metric (GPA) to the same or almost the same regard as a standardized value (MCAT).

This is correct. The grades are just a tool. In an ideal world, they would only mean something to the instructor and the student and what it means varies by the grading system, the class, and other contextual circumstances.

ive made this suggestion 900 times on SDN but it's not very popular because it will "exclude" people explicitly:

Use historical data on passing the steps/passing medical school to determine a palatable risk ratio for an applicant in terms of MCAT and GPA, make that a minimum competency cutoff, tell everyone what that cutoff is explicitly (have it on your website) and then do not include MCAT or GPA in the review of the application anywhere downstream.

Saves many people time and money and will still generate classes with a very high probability of succeeding in medical school (where success is defined as passing the Steps in one try and graduating on time).

This won't happen not because it excludes people who "might have low scores but be exceptional" (we already do that anyway, almost systematically, if we really cared about that group then the 10th %-Iles for most schools wouldn't be 6-8 LizzyM above what we understand to be "prepared") but because having a class with high stats influences your ranking on USNWR, the cancer of higher education. If we knew that a third party ranking was going to be so influential, we should've started one a long time ago that doesn't suck. Secondly, medical schools don't care about students merely succeeding at becoming competent physicians, they want dermatologists, "future academics" (read: matched at penn, BWH or MGH) and plastic surgeons to fill their match lists.

 

[Sardinia]

If we're looking for medical school risk aversion, then the easiest way is for NBME oriented exams geared towards the core sciences. These exams will be factored into a student's GPA and will be used to ensure that when a student sinks $300 into their MCAT they have been building a real foundation over the course of four years instead of getting burned out in four months. In addition, forcing schools to have standardized core subject tests gives students a yard stick for how effective their $40k tuition at Private U is actually panning out for them.

 

[Sardinia]

USNWR rankings exist because schools themselves benefit from the obscurity. Most schools will not post information like general student matriculation into competitive graduate programs and post-graduate job income statistics per year of post-graduating class. This is because with successes, come the losses. And being held accountable for losses hurt, perhaps this is why students have such a hard time with addressing red flags when schools themselves refuse to recognize their own short comings. In a similar vein, schools are more than willing to plaster their winners on billboards and on buses. All is fair in marketing, however obfuscating the actual statistics is fraud. A line that apparently gets lost when you treat everything as being fair game.

Law schools have simultaneously lied about their numbers and manipulated categories when submitting them to the American Bar Association to which a federal judge's ruling was, "Caveat Emptor." If professional schools want to legitimize undergraduate "pre-anything" programs, then they need to make a proactive effort to actually set up standards to provide a fail safe for the open box collection scheme run by universities to collect capital from all the students passing in and out of their schools.

Is the MCAT enough? No, it's not. Requiring students to perform on one standardized exam isn't analogous to all the exams a medical student will have to take whether it's paper & pencil, a physical, or the USMLE/COMLEX. Requiring core subject evaluations mimics the nature of the constant testing required in medical schools that students are expected to perform on.

Perhaps the only positive about law schools is that due to the lack of student demand, schools have finally been forced to close applicant seats. However, this change was only brought about until law schools across the board tried to defraud students and tell them that a market existed in a profession that is largely defined by an, "You kill it, you eat it" model of business.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Grading on a curve IMO doesn't really "punish" the students, it just grades them. It allows them to know their performance relative to their peers, which I think is a good thing.

What punishes average students at rigorous universities are medical school admissions committees that hold an unstandardized metric (GPA) to the same or almost the same regard as a standardized value (MCAT).

I was referring to above average students at grade deflating schools who end up with meh gpas due to their competition. As @efle often points out, such students would certainly do better at more forgiving programs, including some of the Ivies.

In addition, I don't see why you're laying blame on med school adcoms. They already get plenty of applicants from the Wash Us of the world with competitive gpas, so why would they take the 3.4s from grade deflating programs when they have a plethora of 3.7+ applicants from Duke, Dartmouth, etc?

 

[Cavs5284]

I was referring to above average students at grade deflating schools who end up with meh gpas due to their competition. As @efle often points out, such students would certainly do better at more forgiving programs, including some of the Ivies.

In addition, I don't see why you're laying blame on med school adcoms. They already get plenty of applicants from the Wash Us of the world with competitive gpas, so why would they take the 3.4s from grade deflating programs when they have a plethora of 3.7+ applicants from Duke, Dartmouth, etc?

I'm not really blaming adcoms (I have influence in my own school's admissions), all I am saying is that the policies that many adcoms employed are what dictate the rules of the admissions game and what ultimately "hurts" the applicants in question. It would be much to complicated a task for control for the differences at each university that applicants attend, it would hurt the medical school's average stats if they chose students with deflated GPAs, and many adcoms are simply unaware of grade deflation at all. I think the simplest solution would be to find a better metric in place of GPA's to compares students, whether it be standardized subject tests or giving more weight to the MCAT in place of GPA.

Why should adcoms care about the 3.4 from Dartmouth vs the 3.8's from Brown? The two could be equivalent but the GPA will tell a different story. In my opinion, the current system weighing GPA and MCAT almost equally leads to many perfectly competent students falling through the cracks. It's likely that many great doctors leave the field of medicine altogether or spend an extra year of tuition on an SMP or end up going to a worse medical school than they would otherwise because they went to WashU instead of Mizzou or Princeton instead of Rutgers and I don't think it should be the case. I think the point of going to university is to challenge yourself so that you learn and learn well, but what is the point of going to a rigorous university which provides an excellent education only to be prevented from entering your desired field?

 

[Doctor-S]

For what it's worth, I teach classes in medicine, science and another core discipline at my school. Most of my classes focus on an analytic/diagnostic competency-based educational framework; and I assign numerical scores based on a clearly-defined standard assessment scale. In the medical class and graduate seminar, there are no letter grades.

Thank you.

 

[Sardinia]

@Doctor-S How many love proposals do you get at the end of a week?
@Cavs5284 Agreed 100%. Except Rutgers providing a rigorous education is debatable.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Are we paying homage to the dead homiez?!

 

[Goro]

One has to keep in mind that while my wily old Admissions dean may know the answer to this, I as a generic faculty, and Adcom member have no idea what the rigor of schools like Brown or Dartmouth are, or any other schools save my state college system.

At least I have heard of the "Gentlemen's C" at the Ivies.

Also keep in mind that it's a seller's market in med school admissions, and schools can afford to turn away many good and talented candidates.

I'm not really blaming adcoms (I have influence in my own school's admissions), all I am saying is that the policies that many adcoms employed are what dictate the rules of the admissions game and what ultimately "hurts" the applicants in question. It would be much to complicated a task for control for the differences at each university that applicants attend, it would hurt the medical school's average stats if they chose students with deflated GPAs, and many adcoms are simply unaware of grade deflation at all. I think the simplest solution would be to find a better metric in place of GPA's to compares students, whether it be standardized subject tests or giving more weight to the MCAT in place of GPA.

Why should adcoms care about the 3.4 from Dartmouth vs the 3.8's from Brown? The two could be equivalent but the GPA will tell a different story. In my opinion, the current system weighing GPA and MCAT almost equally leads to many perfectly competent students falling through the cracks. It's likely that many great doctors leave the field of medicine altogether or spend an extra year of tuition on an SMP or end up going to a worse medical school than they would otherwise because they went to WashU instead of Mizzou or Princeton instead of Rutgers and I don't think it should be the case. I think the point of going to university is to challenge yourself so that you learn and learn well, but what is the point of going to a rigorous university which provides an excellent education only to be prevented from entering your desired field?

 

[mwsapphire]

Eh, I think curving is a good and necessary system. With static competency-based cutoffs you lose a lot of information and might block the cream from rising - for example I imagine the AAMC making the MCAT a Pass/Fail exam with only "above 500 - likely to succeed" or "below 500" as scores would not be well received.

But what a curve tells you is performance relative to others taking that assessment. Problems arise when you ignore differences in testing populations, without adjusting how you interpret grades. The way things are now, it's a bad idea for a lot of premeds to enroll at some universities. If the admissions game made it OK to get B's when you were at Hopkins or Berkeley type schools, my only real reason to criticize curving is solved. I don't think such environments would be so cutthroat if it became acceptable to be average among a bunch of standouts.

I think it is allowed to have lower GPA's if you went to Berkley/Hopkins


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[efle]

I think it is allowed to have lower GPA's if you went to Berkley/Hopkins


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You are not allowed to have a 3.0 GPA, no

 

[Pagan FutureDoc]

I think it is allowed to have lower GPA's if you went to Berkley/Hopkins


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The thing is it was your choice to go there. Virtually everyone knows these schools are very demanding and those that don't didn't do their homework.

Choosing to go to a harder school and then not excelling doesn't look good to adcoms. Someone is coming out of them with 3.8+ and applying to med school so, clearly it's possible.

 

[efle]

The thing is it was your choice to go there. Virtually everyone knows these schools are very demanding and those that don't didn't do their homework.

Choosing to go to a harder school and then not excelling doesn't look good to adcoms. Someone is coming out of them with 3.8+ and applying to med school so, clearly it's possible.

They don't tell high schoolers about the weedout. In fact on interview/campus visit they'll tell you about how they get premeds into med schools at a far higher rate than the national average. I have a hard time assigning the 17-18 year olds that were the smartest in their highschool the blame for matriculating.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

I have a hard time assigning the 17-18 year olds that were the smartest in their highschool the blame for matriculating.

Especially those who were given good scholarships/financial aid.

 

[neoevolution]

The denial of approval for committee letters also lets schools select an artificially small group of official premeds to pad stats with. It's very misleading even for a student who tries to look up the numbers

 

[mwsapphire]

The denial of approval for committee letters also lets schools select an artificially small group of official premeds to pad stats with. It's very misleading even for a student who tries to look up the numbers

Wait, pre med commitiees can deny their students a letter?

 

[efle]

Wait, pre med commitiees can deny their students a letter?

Yes, many schools will only write letters for people that have grades and scores above a certain threshold. This lets them majorly boost their "% of our premeds that get accepted"

 

[mwsapphire]

Yes, many schools will only write letters for people that have grades and scores above a certain threshold. This lets them majorly boost their "% of our premeds that get accepted"

Damn. That is EVIL.
Is the GPA cutoff , like, hard though? Is it " only write letter for 3.5 or above " or is it something like " Only write letters for 3.85 and above"

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Damn. That is EVIL.
Is the GPA cutoff , like, hard though? Is it " only write letter for 3.5 or above " or is it something like " Only write letters for 3.85 and above"

Probably more like 3.3/3.4.

 

[cactusman]

Probably more like 3.3/3.4.

I've heard of some with 3.5, but that seems to be rare and might be waivable for DO applicants.

 

[neoevolution]

I've heard horror stories where schools are reluctant to write committee lettersfor people with below median GPA/MCAT or who have weaker ECs, even if those students are still in the "below average but still competitive" range for applicants. I don't know how public these policies are since schools will try to hide this kind of behavior, so it's hard to corroborate

 

[mwsapphire]

In my histology class, grading started out with a 90+ is an A-, 93+ an A. Then the professor found out that many people were getting above 90, which considering these were very intelligent and devoted students, wasn't that big of a shock. He then changed it so that only the top 5% of the class received an A. There were people with 95% getting A-s, and people that had above 90% received B+s. It was frustrating that we weren't graded on our merit, but because our school has a quota on grades according to some professors. I understand that going to Ivy league supposedly leads to some (very small) advantage, but sometimes it's a lot of disadvantages.
I get that life isn't fair, so I sucked it up. But still haha

(This thread got bumped)
Omg what a nightmare!!!
I'm normally a little above the average, but top 5 percent!That's wild! It should be at least 10-15!
Just reading that made me clench my jaw ( stress reaction).
Yikes!

 

[aldol16]

Is the GPA cutoff , like, hard though? Is it " only write letter for 3.5 or above " or is it something like " Only write letters for 3.85 and above"

The point of denying committee letters is to deny them for applicants who are not competitive medical school applicants. If a school thinks that an applicant is competitive and can get into a med school, there's no reason for them to deny them the chance since this will be good for the applied:accepted ratio. Many applicants with 3.5-3.8 are competitive and will have no problem getting into med school. It's when you get below the 3.3/3.4 range that competitiveness drops steeply.

 

[efle]

The point of denying committee letters is to deny them for applicants who are not competitive medical school applicants. If a school thinks that an applicant is competitive and can get into a med school, there's no reason for them to deny them the chance since this will be good for the applied:accepted ratio. Many applicants with 3.5-3.8 are competitive and will have no problem getting into med school. It's when you get below the 3.3/3.4 range that competitiveness drops steeply.

Just have to hope they've done their homework on all the other major variables. I'd hate to be the URM kid from a midwestern/southern state that can't get an endorsement because of their 3.4

Edit: Although, it would probably be a recipe for disaster for a prehealth advising office to have different GPA cutoffs for endorsement for each race. Hmmm

 

[mwsapphire]

Just have to hope they've done their homework on all the other major variables. I'd hate to be the URM kid from a midwestern/southern state that can't get an endorsement because of their 3.4

Edit: Although, it would probably be a recipe for disaster for a prehealth advising office to have different GPA cutoffs for endorsement for each race. Hmmm

What if hthey got rid of the GPA cutoff and did a holistic review ( so look at grade trends , MCAT, EC's) . Then it would be more accurate.

 

[efle]

What if hthey got rid of the GPA cutoff and did a holistic review ( so look at grade trends , MCAT, EC's) . Then it would be more accurate.

It would still manifest in a problematic way, imo. If you had a higher GPA than your friend, and you were denied citing weak academics while they were approved? Like I said it's a recipe for disaster

 

[mwsapphire]

It would still manifest in a problematic way, imo. If you had a higher GPA than your friend, and you were denied citing weak academics while they were approved? Like I said it's a recipe for disaster

We undergrads are such babies. Well, if the committee denies you a letter, isn't that grounds to just not use one ( I know that's a disadvantage, but if you felt you were competitive and just *could not* get a committee letter?)

 

[efle]

We undergrads are such babies. Well, if the committee denies you a letter, isn't that grounds to just not use one ( I know that's a disadvantage, but if you felt you were competitive and just *could not* get a committee letter?)

Many schools ask that if your school has a committee and you do not have their letter, you explain why. Denied on academic grounds = very bad answer. You could still try though, yeah.

 

[mwsapphire]

Many schools ask that if your school has a committee and you do not have their letter, you explain why. Denied on academic grounds = very bad answer. You could still try though, yeah.

But if somebody has a lower gpa with an UW trend ( A 3.6 , for example, and amazing MCAT and EC's) you can say the commitee was unreasonably strict?
Idk. I feel like some of the real feeder schools can have 3.7 cutoffs.

 

[cactusman]

But if somebody has a lower gpa with an UW trend ( A 3.6 , for example, and amazing MCAT and EC's) you can say the commitee was unreasonably strict?
Idk. I feel like some of the real feeder schools can have 3.7 cutoffs.

I doubt that. Hopkins knows that if one of their students gets a 516, 3.6 with upward trend, and has appropriate ECs, they have a very good shot, and the premed committee is going to take that chance and write them a letter.

 

[aldol16]

Just have to hope they've done their homework on all the other major variables. I'd hate to be the URM kid from a midwestern/southern state that can't get an endorsement because of their 3.4

Edit: Although, it would probably be a recipe for disaster for a prehealth advising office to have different GPA cutoffs for endorsement for each race. Hmmm

It's because of all the other butthurt pre-meds that the URM with a 3.4 can't get a letter because of the rules being too strict.

 

[aldol16]

Idk. I feel like some of the real feeder schools can have 3.7 cutoffs.

There's no point in having a 3.7 cutoff. Somebody with a 3.7 from a "feeder" school might not be competitive for the top schools that school feeds into, but they're still competitive MD applicants. I don't believe many schools publicize the % of their pre-meds that get into top 10 schools - the % of their pre-meds that get into any MD school is more important to them.

 

[moggat]

I doubt that. Hopkins knows that if one of their students gets a 516, 3.6 with upward trend, and has appropriate ECs, they have a very good shot, and the premed committee is going to take that chance and write them a letter.

FWIW Hopkins pre-health committee does NOT have a GPA cutoff for their committee letter. (Their only requirement for a letter is that you actually went there, did some prereqs, and you talked to them more than once)

Couldn't find info about WashU's eligibility and Cal doesnt have a committee, but I would suspect that notoriously grade deflating schools are less likely to have a minimum GPA cut-off, since they have successful applicants with lower GPAs. It's probably more common at large state schools where the committee needs a way to screen out applicants with little-to-no chances so they can devote their limited resources to those who can get in.

Eligibility for a Committee Letter - Pre-Professional Advising

 

[efle]

WashU does not have a cutoff either.

These schools are sort of an exception though, because even without any reputation boost, most of the people with dangerously lower GPAs (say, ~3.3) have competitive MCATs buoying them somewhat.

 

[leonardoson]

Upper level mechanics? Because i can see that happening since the class was really brutal for me as well (it took >30 min to derive equations of motion of a double pendulum attached to a moving cart). The engineers in my class struggled the most.

Do the...LAGRANGIAN!

 

[Lawpy]

Do the...LAGRANGIAN!

Yeah I realized after spending much of the time solving the problem using Newton's laws and complicated vectors under coordinate transformations.

 

[SouthernGent]

I think it should be removed entirely. My orgo class was 30 people and our professor straight up said only 20% would receive an A and 20% would receive a B. The problem was it was an honors class, and no one was stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Our cut off for a B was an A in all other classes. I hated feeling like I was competing against my friends the entire time instead of focusing on learning. It fell like everything education shouldn't be.

 

[leonardoson]

Yeah I realized after spending much of the time solving the problem using Newton's laws and complicated vectors under coordinate transformations.

Sounds like my lagrangian final problem last semester, set up lagrange's equations in a two coordinate system, and then realizing with 20 minutes left to use a single generalized coordinate. This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of exams, don't have time to fully process everything.

 

[Lawpy]

Sounds like my lagrangian final problem last semester, set up lagrange's equations in a two coordinate system, and then realizing with 20 minutes left to use a single generalized coordinate. This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of exams, don't have time to fully process everything.

Yep exactly! The class average for exams in my courses were in the mid-60s. Just 3 problems, each worth 33 points. Each problem had only two lines and all involved derivations using generalized coordinates. Total nightmare. I remember another problem that gave me a hard time involving something about calculating the shortest path around a cone or some weird 3D object.

 

[freak7]

I remember another problem that gave me a hard time involving something about calculating the shortest path around a cone or some weird 3D object.

Reminds me of this

 

[leonardoson]

Yep exactly! The class average for exams in my courses were in the mid-60s. Just 3 problems, each worth 33 points. Each problem had only two lines and all involved derivations using generalized coordinates. Total nightmare. I remember another problem that gave me a hard time involving something about calculating the shortest path around a cone or some weird 3D object.

Yep, we had to calculate the shortest path along a cylinder. spoiler, it's along the z-axis. Sounds like physics isn't any different between institutions...

 

[mwsapphire]

Yep, we had to calculate the shortest path along a cylinder. spoiler, it's along the z-axis. Sounds like physics isn't any different between institutions...

Calc based physics is not hte same as algebra based physics.
At my school there's Physics I, II , and III for physics majors. Everyone else in physics heavy major ( math, physics, chem) had to take the " real" physics I. ( not II or III)
Life sciences and Bio gets to take two semesters of "General physics " I and II.
You take it right after orgo, which makes it seem like a piece of cake, unless you're super lazy or are bad at math.