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Anonymous said...

hey k! just happened to stumble upon your blog (which is SUPER helpful with all this premed stuff!)
im taking chem 3a/3al this semester with bio 1b and wanted to know if you had any tips for that?
are either of the lab sections hard? i'm not quite sure what to expect with these classes, and any advice would be so appreciated!!
thanks,
j

Dear J,

Thanks for stopping by! Glad I can help :)

I haven't taken bio 1b yet but from what I hear, it's not that bad, and very doable with chem 3a. You might want to look on courserank because I know there are quite a few people who are doing that and have asked questions on that site about taking 3a/l and 1b concurrently. Just don't take any more time consuming classes. :) But I can help you a bit with 3a/L. If you've read my past post about chem 3a, you'll see that it was much easier than gen chem, and bio 1b lecture isn't supposed to be very difficult. So with lectures- you're good to go. Ochem lab, like all other labs, depends on your GSI. My GSI was fairly lenient with his grading so the lab reports weren't too stressful for me (lab reports are due with each lab). The labs themselves are not very difficult and most finished before the alloted time (once again, i'm not too sure about bio 1b). At the end of the semester, you'll take a lab final- i believe you only need 50% to pass and it was quite easy- I just looked over my notes a day before the exam and did well on it :). In the end, I felt like my other classes took up more time than chem3a/L so taking chem 3a/L with bio 1b shouldn't be too much of a problem- but don't take my word for it ;). Don't impact your schedule if you take those classes concurrently and don't take classes that would require you to read copious amounts and write numerous essays. Since Pederson is supposed to be a VERY good professor, i'm sure you'll be fine :) 

Hope this helped somewhat! 

Best of luck!

From, 

K