B.Sc. in 4 years vs. B.Sc. Honours in 5 years

[logicalpoet]

I won't be applying for 2009 admission anyways, so I want to stay on another year and upgrade my B.Sc. Ad. Major in Chem to a Joint Honours in Biochemistry. Does anyone know how this would affect my application? I'm in this situation because of my inability to pick a major in my first two years, not because I couldn't handle the Honours program in 4 years. Plus, the extra year would afford me the opportunity to strengthen references, get an NSERC, be on the Union exec., etc...

 

Also, does anyone know if UBC requires a full course load in your final year of study prior to the application?

[Biochemnerd]

Here is my 2cents about your qeustions:

 

1. UBC never requires full-course load. In fact, most people I know who got in already didn't even take full-course load throughout their entire undergrad years. The overall avareage and the last 60 average are what the adm is looking at. I don't believe they even know if you are taking full-coruse load or not when they are deciding your admission. The paper simplay indicates your average; that's all.

 

2. I did my BSc in biochem honours program. It was full of crap. There were very few biochem profs who would be nice to the pre-meds. From what I heard so far, Microbio seems to be a better choice. People there are mroe lay-back and helpful. Who knows! maybe it is common misconception that other people's lawns are always greener. The only reason I can think of to spend another year to do the honours program is to get to know your supervisor so that you can earn a awsome reference letter. In this case, biochem is definetely not the program you wanna go. Unless you find the right prof; very few are good tho. the only one i can think about are the ones in chem department as well or maybe the one doing blood research. I don't want to mention names here as they might find offended if they ever read this post.

 

I believe you have to check with the advisor to see if you can still get into the program. Before Dr Barton retired, he was pretty strict in granting the entrance into the honours program. What my friend did instead for his extra year was taking a direct study course to get to know his prof. As I mentioned before, biochem is not the place to get med ref letter. My friend who spent that extra yr ended up wasting his year as his prof was only willing to recommend him for graduate school. He has sinced finished a degree in computer science and given up his dream in med.

 

I know I might sound negative, but if you ask around, you will find that there are not too many positive things in the biochem departments. Just think about the prof that talks in monoto in the biochem303 class. How can a prof like da be caring about his students? Again, this is only my 2cents. Hope it helps.

 

3. Last, doing an honours probably don't help your application at all. I am not about this one though. sorry about the rant, considering this is from someone who got rejected 3 times by UBC already. So ..forgive my hostile attitude here

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[avenir001]

i agree with biochemnerd. ubc doesn't care about your program or how long you take to graduate (as long as it's not like 13 yrs)...and as long as u do a year with a full courseload to show u can handle it, they don't penalize u for not always having a full courseload. my degree was also in biochem and, like biochemnerd, i didn't particularly like the department or find the experience to be worthwhile. also, what you intend to do sounds quite challenging..make sure u know what u're getting yourself into, bcuz as i said, your marks matter but your program does not.

[dan0105]

oh man, I took 13 years.... no but seriously ya, so again they wont really notice that you are flipping around between degree programs. While your intentions are good in that you can spend the extra time getting other stuff ready, do realize that (assuming) your course grades are awesome, that extra year will be full of worries trying to maintain the awesome grades. I took an extra year of classes after I graduated (because I didn't know what to do with my life) and I was seriously stressing in a couple of classes during that time.