How much harder is Bioc 303 than Bioc 302??

[Guest ubc04]

I was just wondering how much harder bioc 303 is than bioc 302? Would anyone recommend taking 303 even if it's not required? THANKS!

[Guest mitchie41]

I'm not in bioc, and I haven't taken 302 or 303, but a lot of my friends took 303 and they said it was REALLY TOUGH.

 

And the people I know that took 302 say that it was easier...compared to BIOL 201.

[Guest Biochem3010]

Bioc 302 is 1 term & Bioc 303 is for a year. Bioc 303 is more geared towards the biochem students & is much more intensive. Overall, the notes are clear & precise but it is very detailed with technical jargon & you have to read them carefully & slowly to fully understand. The midterms are quite applicational but the finals are relatively okay but the catch to the finals is that you have to fully memorize all the mechanisms, electron flow, molecular names, etc for the exam to be easy or else you’re screwed.

 

Our December final exam was set on a much earlier date compared to previous years. It was like on the 1st Saturday of the exam period, whereas before it was on the last week. That pretty much caused all of us to hectically cram the nite before pulling off an all nighter. Many ppl like me didn’t even sleep at all the nite before the exam since we would forget the new stuff we just crammed. The 3rd prof that came in the last week crammed in like ~40 pages of metabolism pathways & all that stuff in 3 classes for the final. I believe that was the most stressful exam to study for of all courses I’ve taken so far. The tradition is that the exams are never scaled even if most ppl do bad.

 

If you compare the Bioc 302 & 303 finals/midterms online, or was online, you realize that the 302 exams are cakewalks or a joke. The Bioc 303 profs usually like to put questions relevant to the research they are doing such as optic signal pathways & brain enhancing drugs, which they don't teach. Besides that, the profs are very dull and boring even though they are excellent researchers. For some odd reason the biochem profs have a common trait of speaking very quietly, slowly, & in a monotonic way. They can put you to sleep easily considering it is the very last class of the day. Only the 1st term of Bioc 303 was really stressful since you had 3 profs teaching, but afterwards it was kinda better.

 

Hope i didn't scare you or anything, it was just what most of us felt. Would I do something like that again? I wouldn’t mind or care, I would like the challenge of it anyday.

[Guest 4EverRose]

Hi ubc04,

 

I took both BIOC 300 and BIOC 303, mind you it was about 6-7 years ago already. Anyways, BIOC 300 was equivalent to BIOL 201 plus BIOC 302, and I found materials in BIOC 303 were quite a bit tougher than those in BIOC 302.