To SCCO and UCB students

[opto2be]

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I have some questions about the exam format at these 2 schools during the basic science years.

For midterms and finals, how many exams are there usually per day? For example, is there an exam for just one class in a day or are there multiple exams?

Also, how are the exams like? Are all the questions multiple choice?

Thanks everyone.

 

[alferec]

For SCCO, 1st year usually involves 1-2 exams per week, then 2nd and 3rd year 2-3 per week. Almost every exam is multiple choice. Most exams are pretty tough mostly due to the sheer volume of material, but sometimes the material itself can be difficult to grasp at times.

 

[opto2be]

For SCCO, 1st year usually involves 1-2 exams per week, then 2nd and 3rd year 2-3 per week. Almost every exam is multiple choice. Most exams are pretty tough mostly due to the sheer volume of material, but sometimes the material itself can be difficult to grasp at times.

Thank you for the info. You mentioned that there are 1-2 exams per week in 1st year. Is that just during exam week or for every week during the quarter? If it's like that every week, then that would be a lot of exams!

 

[alferec]

Yeah, pretty much every week starting with the 3rd-4th week of the quarter...hence it's a quarter system so it's very fast paced.

 

[vendetta319]

At Berkeley, we run on semester system, which means most of the grades are dependent on a month of midterms/quizzes/practicals and finals week (similar to undergrad semester systems) consisting of finals + practicals. For each semester (in the first year), expect ~1 month of not much testing, followed by 1-2 tests per week for a month, followed by another month of not much, then another month of lots of studying for finals. Tests at Berkeley are a mixture of multiple choice and short essays. Some classes only have MC, some only have short essays, but most are a combination.

1st year is pretty chill, so everyone has free time to play intramural sports, go to football games, bar hop, etc. We take less basic science courses compared to many other optometry schools because they were required prerequisites for admission.

2nd year, on other hand, is much more work than 1st year, but very doable. 2nd year is just tougher because on top of normal coursework/tests/practicals, we also do full exams on patients in team care 7x/semester, intern in contact lens clinic 2x/semester, and intern in eye wear 3x/semester. There's usually 1-3 tests a week (during midterm season), and very very rarely are any on the same day.

Hope that helps.