|
I'm going to be in the first graduating Chemical Biology undergraduate class so I'd love to shed some light on the program!
In a nutshell.. I am extremely happy and thankful I ended up choosing Chemical Biology, because I think that my current situation and outlook for the future would be completely different had I not.
Course wise, in second year your year is going to be very similar to those in biochemistry, except you will be taking Bioanalytical Chemistry, Chemical Biology Inquiry, and a Chemical Biology lab course. Bioanalytical Chemistry is pretty demanding work load wise if you want to do well in it.. but it's possible. Inquiry is the first course that you're going to have just with the people in your program, and it's a great way to begin to form those bonds with your fellow classmates. You have quite a few projects (6 or so?) which is the only work you have to do for this course but it still takes up quite a bit of your time. The lab course was.. interesting. There was a lot of kinks in the labs but hopefully most of them will be worked out for the next incoming class. You have two major lab reports of which the aim is to write them as if you were writing a paper. These reports were very time consuming and took a lot of work if you wanted to get a good mark, but we learned a lot. The lab course introduces you to a lot of techniques used in Chemical Biology and some of the labs were quite fun and interesting! (My favourite lab was the first, of which we got to isolate a Natural Product from the source of our choice, to be later screened for inhibition against an enzyme!) The prof/TA ratio to students for the lab course was.. flabbergasting. There was about 20 of us in the class and for each lab period we would have 3 profs and 4 TAs in the same room. Needless to say, in Chemical Biology, you gets lots of special attention.
To be completely honest, the workload at times can be extremely overwhelming. But as I've come to realize (I have friends in Biochem, Genetics, Life Sci, etc) you're going to be overwhelmed in almost everything you're in, and if you put the right amount of effort in, keeping up with your workload and doing well is completely possible. In ChemBio you're going to have a very small class size, lots of interaction with professors, time to form great close friendships with the people in your program, and lots of interesting classes to take. Because of the amount of interaction we get with the professors, nearly half of my program this year got laboratory jobs on campus which is incredible. I'm currently working for Dr. Brennan (who you will get for Bioanalytical) and I truly believe had I not been in ChemBio, I would not have gotten such a job with such ease.
I completely advocate going into Chemical Biology if it's something you're interested in and are ready to work and learn lots!
|
