UCSD Scheduling Help!

[Lurid]

Hello all!

I'll be a freshman at UCSD in the fall, majoring in biochemistry and cell biology. I'm a bit confused as to what classes to take during my freshman year because some people advised me that I should take fewer classes to transition into college.

Right now, I'm planning to take BILD (biology), Math 10 (calculus), Chem 6 (chemistry), and DOC (my college's writing sequence). I'm not sure if it's a tough schedule to handle, especially if I want to ace every class. Someone told me to drop either biology or math 10 and move it to sophomore year, but I'll be taking physics 1 and organic chemistry then, and I want a lighter schedule so that I could dedicate more time and effort to those two classes (organic chemistry is difficult, from what I've heard, and I struggle a bit with physics).

And also, since chem 6a is a pre-requisite to BILD1, does that mean I should take BILD 3 first (it has no pre-reqs), then BILD 1 second quarter? I looked around and also found on SDN that I could ask the professor to waive that pre-req, but I couldn't find out more about how to waive chem 6a.

Sorry for all the questions, but if anyone from UCSD can give me any advice or tips, that would be super helpful. Thank you! 🙂

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[AlteredScale]

Hello all!

I'll be a freshman at UCSD in the fall, majoring in biochemistry and cell biology. I'm a bit confused as to what classes to take during my freshman year because some people advised me that I should take fewer classes to transition into college.

Right now, I'm planning to take BILD (biology), Math 10 (calculus), Chem 6 (chemistry), and DOC (my college's writing sequence). I'm not sure if it's a tough schedule to handle, especially if I want to ace every class. Someone told me to drop either biology or math 10 and move it to sophomore year, but I'll be taking physics 1 and organic chemistry then, and I want a lighter schedule so that I could dedicate more time and effort to those two classes (organic chemistry is difficult, from what I've heard, and I struggle a bit with physics).

And also, since chem 6a is a pre-requisite to BILD1, does that mean I should take BILD 3 first (it has no pre-reqs), then BILD 1 second quarter? I looked around and also found on SDN that I could ask the professor to waive that pre-req, but I couldn't find out more about how to waive chem 6a.

Sorry for all the questions, but if anyone from UCSD can give me any advice or tips, that would be super helpful. Thank you! 🙂

hi there! I am a junior at UCSD 🙂

You should complete your BILD track by the end of this coming academic year. You're going to need as much attention to your organic chemistry lecture and lab and don't want to mix those two together I'd say. So take BILD 1/2/3, chem 6 A/B/C and Math 10 A/B/C.
Keep the DOC right now, see how you feel with the schedule. If you feel overwhelmed, you have time to drop it (the deadline is usually 4 weeks out from the beginning of the quarter). I think second year should be all Ochem and Physics lecture and lab as well as your GE's. The next two years will be many, man tough upper division bio lectures and labs.

If you have any specific questions just PM me 🙂 Best of luck!

Also, if try to take Keefe Reuther for any of the BILDs, great lecturer and curves very strongly (you'll witness how easy big sized classes are because of the curve, so if in doubt, ALWAYS take the class with the most kids because the curve will save you!) 😳

 

[deleted462159]

Looks like someone already answered this 🙂 but congratulations on getting accepted to UCSD!

 

[Lurid]

hi there! I am a junior at UCSD 🙂

You should complete your BILD track by the end of this coming academic year. You're going to need as much attention to your organic chemistry lecture and lab and don't want to mix those two together I'd say. So take BILD 1/2/3, chem 6 A/B/C and Math 10 A/B/C.
Keep the DOC right now, see how you feel with the schedule. If you feel overwhelmed, you have time to drop it (the deadline is usually 4 weeks out from the beginning of the quarter). I think second year should be all Ochem and Physics lecture and lab as well as your GE's. The next two years will be many, man tough upper division bio lectures and labs.

If you have any specific questions just PM me 🙂 Best of luck!

Also, if try to take Keefe Reuther for any of the BILDs, great lecturer and curves very strongly (you'll witness how easy big sized classes are because of the curve, so if in doubt, ALWAYS take the class with the most kids because the curve will save you!) 😳

Thank you for helping! I have an AP biology exam tomorrow, and I'm planning to deliberately fail it so that I can take lower division biology for a grade/credits. Is that advised? I know that for some medical schools, like UC Davis, they explicitly state that the one year biology requirement can only be satisfied with lower division biology. Because of UCSD's ap credit policy, I'll have to take the class for no credits. But the thing is, other medical schools allow the one year biology pre-requisite to be fulfilled with upper division biology courses. And with my situation, would be foolish to fail the exam? I'm not sure what to do.

 

[ComradeDoktor]

Thank you for helping! I have an AP biology exam tomorrow, and I'm planning to deliberately fail it so that I can take lower division biology for a grade/credits. Is that advised? I know that for some medical schools, like UC Davis, they explicitly state that the one year biology requirement can only be satisfied with lower division biology. Because of UCSD's ap credit policy, I'll have to take the class for no credits. But the thing is, other medical schools allow the one year biology pre-requisite to be fulfilled with upper division biology courses. And with my situation, would be foolish to fail the exam? I'm not sure what to do.

In my personal experience, I found that pre-med requirements are more guidelines than hard and fast rules. Since your major is bio (and you'll be taking a lot of diverse upper-div bio courses) no adcoms will have any doubts about your understanding of basic bio.

That said:

1. I didn't even get an interview from Davis. Maybe that's why

2. I had to take the honors lower-div chem series at UCSD to get around the AP credit.THAT was a mistake.

 

[Aerus]

Hello all!

I'll be a freshman at UCSD in the fall, majoring in biochemistry and cell biology. I'm a bit confused as to what classes to take during my freshman year because some people advised me that I should take fewer classes to transition into college.

Right now, I'm planning to take BILD (biology), Math 10 (calculus), Chem 6 (chemistry), and DOC (my college's writing sequence). I'm not sure if it's a tough schedule to handle, especially if I want to ace every class. Someone told me to drop either biology or math 10 and move it to sophomore year, but I'll be taking physics 1 and organic chemistry then, and I want a lighter schedule so that I could dedicate more time and effort to those two classes (organic chemistry is difficult, from what I've heard, and I struggle a bit with physics).

And also, since chem 6a is a pre-requisite to BILD1, does that mean I should take BILD 3 first (it has no pre-reqs), then BILD 1 second quarter? I looked around and also found on SDN that I could ask the professor to waive that pre-req, but I couldn't find out more about how to waive chem 6a.

Sorry for all the questions, but if anyone from UCSD can give me any advice or tips, that would be super helpful. Thank you! 🙂

Hey OP,

First, welcome to UCSD! Congratulations on getting in!

Your schedule looks fine. Your first quarter, you should be taking it easy and seeing how much you can actually handle.

DOC isn't a difficult course, but your grade depends on your TA. It's a primarily sociology dominant course, so if you like analyzing different social phenomena, it should be a very interesting class! Please be aware it is a WRITING class, so if you're not terribly strong on writing, seek additional resources (provided by the DOC office). College writing is incredibly different from high school writing.

Chem can be made easy or hard depending on your professor. This might be your toughest class, depending on your previous exposure.

Math 10 should be incredibly easy if you've had any exposure to calculus in high school or even had a solid foundation in math. If you aren't at all good at math, this might be another difficult course.

I recommend you NOT purposely try to fail out of AP Biology. While part of me regrets not being able to take it, because I passed out of it, I'm able to take upper division biology courses my freshman year. BUT, if you really want a more solid foundation in lower division, then go ahead. To each their own on this one.

To answer your BILD question, yes most freshman take BILD 3 first. None of the BILD's overlap each other in material, so you won't be at any disadvantage taking them out of order. (In fact, most people DO take them out of order).

I wish you the best of luck! If you have any questions, please ask any of us!

 

[AlteredScale]

Thank you for helping! I have an AP biology exam tomorrow, and I'm planning to deliberately fail it so that I can take lower division biology for a grade/credits. Is that advised? I know that for some medical schools, like UC Davis, they explicitly state that the one year biology requirement can only be satisfied with lower division biology. Because of UCSD's ap credit policy, I'll have to take the class for no credits. But the thing is, other medical schools allow the one year biology pre-requisite to be fulfilled with upper division biology courses. And with my situation, would be foolish to fail the exam? I'm not sure what to do.

Hi OP! No problem at all! Glad I could help! I honestly recommend NOT purposely failing your test, do well on the test. And unfortunatley, I'd say take it again. A lot of medical schools will not accept AP credit. Better to not deal with the administration of that while you are requesting your transcripts! As well as that, it will sound a bit odd if you decide to fail a test. It sucks that some medical schools will not take AP credit. But it's just a fact we all had to deal with for now :/.

If you need any help with anything else to get prepared please let me know! Congrats again on the ucsd admissions!

 

[earf]

Welcome to UCSD! I hope you will love it there as much as I did.

I wouldn't worry about the UC Davis "lower-division biology" requirement too much. I passed the AP bio exam, didn't take the BILD series and still got acceptances to multiple schools and even an interview at UC Davis. Schools aren't too particularly concerned about the biology requirement because you'll have upper division biology anyways. And you can take lower-division biology classes later if you find out that you need them (I would suggest BILD 38 - Aids, Science & Society), so I hope you didn't purposefully bomb your AP bio exam!!

In terms of your classes, your schedule looks fine. I would suggest not doing too many extracurriculars (maybe one or two MAX) so that you can see if you can handle your classes this first year, especially since you'll discover how different it is from high school. GPA is the number 1 most important piece on your medical school application. the MATH 10 series shouldn't be too hard, but because people think it's really easy, they don't study or try hard and then end up getting lower than expected grades. Make sure you're not one of them.

If you do want to drop any one of those classes, I would suggest dropping BILD. You can take BILD 3 during winter quarter and then BILD 1 during spring, then genetics, metabolic biochem, and molecular/cell biochem your sophomore year if you're ready. I would suggest taking Mammalian Physiology with Dr. Armour in the summer. Best class I've ever taken and will probably be the most helpful class you take to prepare you for medical school.

Good luck, and congratulations once again in getting accepted into the Triton family! Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions.