Hello, I was recently admitted into the Biochemistry (Biomed Research specialization) and I was wondering if someone can answer my questions?
1. This is a popular question but how difficult is it to maintain a 11/12 average? My goal is professional/graduate school and I was wondering whether it would be hard to maintain a high GPA, especially with the research specialization?
2. How close are the students and the professors? I hated the large program in Life Sciences
3. How large are the class sizes? Is it lecture based or more small classroom based?
4. On average how many electives do you get (with and without specialization) in 2nd, 3rd, 4th year?
5. Any comments about the courses?
6. What kind of opportunities does the program give to its students (work, volunteering, clubs)? I have a few friends in health sci who get so many opportunities to get involved with things around school that i have never heard of.

Thank you!
BTW, how many people are in the program?

Biochem has around 120 people. I thought that the courses were a decent amount of work but not too hard to score 10+ in. Many of the Biochem courses are still a decent size so you won't really get close to professors unless you make an effort. The exception might be with Felicia who is the instructor for the lab course, which is split into small groups for the lab portion.

They've made the program easier, overall there's a lot less requirements compared to when I was in the program. In non-specialization, by 3rd/4th year you only have around 2 required courses to do per year. In specialization you'll be doing research projects in 3rd/4th year and there's some options as to amount of units they can be (I think 3rd year project can be 3 or 6 units while now the 4th year thesis can be either 9 or 15). Biochemistry has a broad set of electives to choose from. I'd only recommend not to take drug discovery (4H03) because of the instructor.

Unfortunately health scis do get a bunch of opportunities and other things handed to them, not so much in other science programs. But they are still out there, you just have to find them for yourself.

Overall I'd say Biochem is a strong and well-organized program. There's a lot of great faculty doing interesting research.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by DR.YZ

Hello, I was recently admitted into the Biochemistry (Biomed Research specialization) and I was wondering if someone can answer my questions?
1. This is a popular question but how difficult is it to maintain a 11/12 average? My goal is professional/graduate school and I was wondering whether it would be hard to maintain a high GPA, especially with the research specialization?
2. How close are the students and the professors? I hated the large program in Life Sciences
3. How large are the class sizes? Is it lecture based or more small classroom based?
4. On average how many electives do you get (with and without specialization) in 2nd, 3rd, 4th year?
5. Any comments about the courses?
6. What kind of opportunities does the program give to its students (work, volunteering, clubs)? I have a few friends in health sci who get so many opportunities to get involved with things around school that i have never heard of.

Thank you!
BTW, how many people are in the program?

It will probably be harder to maintain a 11/12 average in a biomedical science program vs. life science. You will have to take a full year lab course, genetics, organic chemistry, so the workload will definitely be tough but doable if you put the effort in. You will also have to take a thesis course that is 9 or 15 units in your final year.

I'm in Life Science and I feel like Life Science requirements are 100x easier to meet than any other science program. You only have to take 8 courses in Level III or above for Life Science, and the life science course list is huge, that it is pretty easy to meet the requirements - just taking two level III courses per semester will suffice. For example, life science students can take stats and psych courses in the life science course list, if you never want to touch a bio course in third year or fourth year, you don't have to, and you can still graduate with a science degree. You also have but for biology, stats and some tough bio courses are mandatory, so they have less options of what courses to take from the biology course list. I think biochemistry would be more or less the same as biology, but I've heard better things about biochemistry than the biology program

Sorry, can't really answer your other questions about biochemistry, but good luck!

Originally Posted by DR.YZ

Hello, I was recently admitted into the Biochemistry (Biomed Research specialization) and I was wondering if someone can answer my questions?
1. This is a popular question but how difficult is it to maintain a 11/12 average? My goal is professional/graduate school and I was wondering whether it would be hard to maintain a high GPA, especially with the research specialization?
2. How close are the students and the professors? I hated the large program in Life Sciences
3. How large are the class sizes? Is it lecture based or more small classroom based?
4. On average how many electives do you get (with and without specialization) in 2nd, 3rd, 4th year?
5. Any comments about the courses?
6. What kind of opportunities does the program give to its students (work, volunteering, clubs)? I have a few friends in health sci who get so many opportunities to get involved with things around school that i have never heard of.

Thank you!
BTW, how many people are in the program?

If you were able to achieve 11/12 avg in 1st year I don't see why you wouldn't achieve it in 2nd year onwards as well. If you are interested in professional school (or anything other than graduate studies) then I would stick to regular honours biochem (or any of the more general science programs). You could still take the exact same courses, including research courses like thesis, as the specialization it's just not mandatory and you can take some easier electives. The only reason why the research specialization might be better is if you intend to do the co-op which i don't think is available to core biochem. Classes in any program decrease in size from 1st to 4th year obviously, some senior classes in biochem having around 20 students. Getting to know profs is a personal endeavour regardless of how large the class is and in general I did not find any biochemistry course to be too difficult but some are hard to get an A+ if the marking is more subjective. Honours biochem has tons of electives, similar to both upper year life sci, biology and health sci. Getting involved with ECs and volunteering can be hard for some people - you really have to make an effort to seek out opportunities as they will not be handed to you. There are hundreds of initiatives at McMaster and asking what some friends are doing would be a good place to start, there are only a couple things off the top of my head that are health sci 'exclusive'.

thank you guys for your response