Would you consider the Biomedical Sciences to be difficult majors?

[ciel999]

From your own experiences, do you find majors like Physiology, Pharmacology, Cell Biology, Microbiology, Immunology, and/or Biochemistry to be difficult majors in university? Is it hard to get high marks in them, compared to other majors like Psychology or Sociology?

[NeuroPreMed]

Personally..and this is my opinion.

 

I think any class can be considered easy, while Psychology could be easy to some it may be the hardest thing you'll ever do for another.

 

While yes some classes are harder i wouldn't say they're that much worse. I have a friend with her masters in molecular biology and bio chem and she didn't think it was that bad. Like any other class if you don't pay attention and you don't study you probably won't get A's.

[ellorie]

I think it depends on a ton of factors - the school, the individual courses chosen, your own strengths.

 

I was a double major in physiology and english, and I found that english was much more difficult. I got As in almost all my science courses and quite frequently B+ or A- (with a few As) in my english courses.

 

I think that in general arts majors are harder, but perhaps that's just my own strengths and weaknesses, though I feel that I am a very good writer.

[Let'sGo1990]

I think it depends on a ton of factors - the school, the individual courses chosen, your own strengths.

 

I was a double major in physiology and english, and I found that english was much more difficult. I got As in almost all my science courses and quite frequently B+ or A- (with a few As) in my english courses.

 

I think that in general arts majors are harder, but perhaps that's just my own strengths and weaknesses, though I feel that I am a very good writer.

 

Science is more cognitively demanding imo but what makes the arts more difficult is the subjectivity of things like essays and speeches.

[FrenchToast]

From your own experiences, do you find majors like Physiology, Pharmacology, Cell Biology, Microbiology, Immunology, and/or Biochemistry to be difficult majors in university? Is it hard to get high marks in them, compared to other majors like Psychology or Sociology?

 

It kinda sounds like you're from UWO, judging from that list.

 

If so, what I've found so far is that you can do very well in Psychology courses, but only if you legitimately memorize the entire textbook. For many of the science courses, though, you can do well without relying as much on the textbook, so long as you understand the material. Some people understand the material better than others; some need to review the material more in order to understand it; and some people are.. umm.. a little bit more hopeless than the rest.

 

If someone were deciding between one of the BMSc majors and a social science major, I would say that if they've done well in science so far that BMSc is a better call, but if not, they may be better off sticking to rote memorization (i.e. Psychology). I know nothing about Sociology though, except that first year is supposed to be brutal.

[ellorie]

Science is more cognitively demanding imo but what makes the arts more difficult is the subjectivity of things like essays and speeches.

 

I actually find arts more demanding. With science, at least at the undergrad level, you memorize and understand what is given to you. When you write an english paper, you need to come up with a whole new interpretation out of nowhere.

[ciel999]

So do you think Biology majors learn by memorization, more than Biomedical Science majors?

[jerkstore]

I actually find arts more demanding. With science, at least at the undergrad level, you memorize and understand what is given to you. When you write an english paper, you need to come up with a whole new interpretation out of nowhere.

 

As they say (me), it's a lot harder to get an A in English compared to science, but a lot easier to get a B+.

[apache]

High level sociology and psychology are extremely difficult, but so are all the majors you named. I find biochem and micro were most challenging, but I found biochem to be really rewarding so I tended to work harder at it.

 

From your own experiences, do you find majors like Physiology, Pharmacology, Cell Biology, Microbiology, Immunology, and/or Biochemistry to be difficult majors in university? Is it hard to get high marks in them, compared to other majors like Psychology or Sociology?

[apache]

I agree, but having taken high level biochem and chemistry, i realized that in many science disciplines it becomes much more synthetic as well, well, maybe minus micro, lol.

 

I actually find arts more demanding. With science, at least at the undergrad level, you memorize and understand what is given to you. When you write an english paper, you need to come up with a whole new interpretation out of nowhere.

[ciel999]

As they say (me), it's a lot harder to get an A in English compared to science, but a lot easier to get a B+.

I totally agree!

[ciel999]

High level sociology and psychology are extremely difficult, but so are all the majors you named. I find biochem and micro were most challenging, but I found biochem to be really rewarding so I tended to work harder at it.

What makes high level sociology and psychology extremely difficult? I took first-year psych and sociology, studied the day before the exams, and still got 90+

[apache]

hmmm, ever taken a course where the prof accepts 5 students, and interviews potential candidates, lol.

 

even like social cognition, psychology of aesthetics, existential psych, social influence, cultural psych, study of self through cinema, computational neuroscience, 400 level psychopharmacology, recovery after brain injury, comparative cognition (trying to prove a monkey has theory of mind, lol, have fun), neurobiology of learning and memory, psychology of conversation, spatial cognition and wayfinding, speech perception, collective memory, perceptual systems neuroscience... just a list of some higher level written courses with tons of presentations (one day you'll take a seminar... and suffer like everyone else, haha).

 

What makes high level sociology and psychology extremely difficult? I took first-year psych and sociology, studied the day before the exams, and still got 90+

[toastman]

Psych often gets a rap for being "easy"....as a Psych & Phys major I'll say my psych courses have been harder than the biomed courses I've taken. The biomed courses are generally just memorization..the upper level psych courses require a lot more work, critical thinking and problem solving. I enjoyed psych a lot so it wasn't bad at all. . I feel that psych has helped mold me into a true scientist...its kinda like the field had to work extra hard to ditch the stigma (which it still has) that its just a bunch of slacker social scientists talking about anecdotes. If you want to do well in school go into something you're interested in, and don't try and look for shortcuts

[Illuminant]

I dont understand the point of these kind of threads anymore .. in terms of getting into med schools, there are people getting in majoring in music, engineering, comp science, philosophy, english, foreign language, and (whatever major you can think of) ..

 

The term "hard/easy" is itself subjective -> what seems hard to you is easy to someone else and the opposite is true.

[goleafsgochris]

Not surprisingly, most ppl gave p*ssy answers to this question.

 

Psychology is the easiest, if you are willing to memorize. It is even the easiest at a "high level" (and yes muse, I have taken courses like you describe), because psychology students are worse at writing papers than arts majors, so you can get top of the class easier.

 

Non-medical biology is the next easiest. Because its a science, its possible to memorize your way to A's, and there arent as many crazy pre-meds as in the medical biology's.

 

Medical biology and things like Eng and History are hardest to get A's in, but for different reasons (competition in med, subjectivity in arts).

 

Everyone always answers "its different for different ppl", well of course it is to some extent, but thats really a cop out answer that doesnt encompass the whole truth.

[ciel999]

Medical biology and things like Eng and History are hardest to get A's in, but for different reasons (competition in med, subjectivity in arts).

 

So you're saying, if a large number of the ambitious, gunner pre-med students are majoring in the biomedical sciences, professors in those fields will intentionally raise the bar, therefore, making it harder for students in the biomedical sciences to get high marks?

[FrenchToast]

So you're saying, if a large number of the ambitious, gunner pre-med students are majoring in the biomedical sciences, professors in those fields will intentionally raise the bar, therefore, making it harder for students in the biomedical sciences to get high marks?

 

:s Idk if that's always so true. I know I've heard that for UWO BMSc, class averages go up a lot (to somewhere in the 80s) in 3rd and 4th year and that it's because it's mostly the smarter/more ambitious people who are left. This seems to indicate that there is none of that bell-curving down nonsense.

[apache]

you know, i do agree with you, psych students do tend to be weaker than humanities people in english etc. i took tons of advanced chem and biochem and did well, but i won't deny i had to work much harder because there are more serious students i find. i do agree with you on engineering, a 3.8 in eng is not the same as a general bio sic 3.8.

 

i did enough courses for bsc and ba so im not offended, lol

 

philosophy was by far more difficult than psych classes

 

i love how everyone assumes i'm going to argue with them, i only argue about stuff i'm emotional about.

 

i love being able to learn things from people, lol.

 

Not surprisingly, most ppl gave p*ssy answers to this question.

 

Psychology is the easiest, if you are willing to memorize. It is even the easiest at a "high level" (and yes muse, I have taken courses like you describe), because psychology students are worse at writing papers than arts majors, so you can get top of the class easier.