The most difficult undergrad course

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Most dificult course

  • General Biology

    Votes: 15 7.1%
  • General Chemistry

    Votes: 25 11.8%
  • Organic Chemistry

    Votes: 101 47.9%
  • Physics

    Votes: 70 33.2%

  • Total voters
    211
Ochem doable so far, physics is a mission. Gen bio was cake.

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My organismic physiology course was so hard it was laughable. Tests required 200 pages of reading and verbatim recall.
 
I think Orgo 2 is the more difficult class because it is cumulative (including everything you learned in Orgo 1). I'm not sure why Orgo 1 is more difficult for people -- I suspect it is because it differs from the chemistry we came to know and love in high school (i.e., AP Chemistry).

Orgo was a killer for most people at my school too, although a huge chunk of people failed Bio-101. I think it's because people expect biology to be really interesting, but, in fact, biology is mostly just a ton of work.

I agree. I think my school emphasized stereochemistry more in Organic I than it did in Organic II, which I think produced the unexpected results. Either that or the poor students never made it to the second semester, accounting for the better grade distribution for Organic II.
 
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Nice 9 year necrobump to add that insightful thought.

Biochem will become the new most difficult prereq.

Oh boy. I get lost in the search feature and forget to check dates!
 
My organismic physiology course was so hard it was laughable. Tests required 200 pages of reading and verbatim recall.
But verbatim recall is the crux of almost all anatomy and physiology courses. I'm confused, did you think the class was going to be strictly comprehension of physiological effects on the anatomy of humans?
 
Physics >>>>> Gen Chem > Bio = Orgo

For me, really had a hard time with physics. Definitely could have put in more time too
 
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None of the above.

Many of my students have told me that their worst fear (grade-wise) is taking a "subjective" class, where they cannot "prove" that they deserve an A.
 
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"Whatever "I" majored in is the most difficult," of course will be a common self-serving response, but not usually an honest one.
 
But verbatim recall is the crux of almost all anatomy and physiology courses. I'm confused, did you think the class was going to be strictly comprehension of physiological effects on the anatomy of humans?
A test question would show a graph, with no labels or caption or title, and you would need to say what the graph represented. Hundreds of graphs.
 
so it showed this and asked you to interpret it?

dvt_graph_line_uc.png
 
Quantum thermodynamics anyone?
 
I must have just gotten lucky with my Biochem class. Physics and Organic were both very difficult for me, while Bio, Gen Chem, and Biochem were pretty straightforward.
 
Actually pre calculus lol. I aced it but it was a super weed out and involved trying to understand how the professor would trick us versus real math skills.
 
I wonder if those who struggled with Physics here took it Calculus based, because Algebra based is pretty easy.
 
None of the above.

Many of my students have told me that their worst fear (grade-wise) is taking a "subjective" class, where they cannot "prove" that they deserve an A.

That's why writing classes always suck. I love to write, and am pretty good at it, but you could hand in the same paper to 2 different English profs and one would give you an A and the other a B. Don't care for that at all.
 
At my school, it was definitely Genetics. It was graded on a true bell curve and our class averages were 50% - on a 40 question scantron! It made ochem and physics look like a joke.
 
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