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Picking 3rd/4th year Bio Courses

 
Old 06-02-2012 at 01:19 AM   #1
Angoose
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Picking 3rd/4th year Bio Courses
Heya! I've just been trying to pick my courses for next year, and I can't seem to decide on the bio/molbio courses that I need to complete my degree requirements.

So far, I've taken Bio3UU3 and Molbio3B03. The other courses that I've been considering are
Bio3AA3 (pharmacology), Molbio3II3 (Eukaryotes, which used to be Bio3I03), molbio 4H03(Cancer), and bio3MM3 (invertebrate form/function).

I've looked through some of the reviews, but I'm having trouble deciding whether or not to take bio3aa3 at the same time as 3uu3. Are the other upper year courses I've listed pretty good choices? I'm not expecting them to be bird courses, of course. Just something manageable with fair midterms .
Old 06-03-2012 at 04:18 PM   #2
rkb12
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I'm going into third year, so I haven't taken any of these courses, but I'm interested in the difficulty of 3II3 and 4H03 too.

I don't really hear much about Mol Bio 3II3 (most upper year mol bio students warn about the difficulty but interest of 3O03 or bio 3S03) so I don't know if that is something I should be looking out for. To my knowledge mol bio 4H03 is supposed to be pretty tough, lots of memorization but I guess it's doable? You've probably seen the course review on it. 3B03 we can't say because it's a mix of two old courses, but 3H03 and 3HH3 were supposed to be manageable.

I would also appreciate more information about these courses
Old 06-03-2012 at 04:55 PM   #3
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Alright boys and girls, gather round:

Overall, the core Mol Bio classes are all very similar in terms of lecture content. We've taken molecular biology classes before, they're all pretty much par for the course: signal transduction pathways, gene regulation at the molecular level, memorizing proteins and their inhibitors etc. Pretty much all the upper year mol bio courses (3S03 excluded) revolve around this kind of stuff in terms of lecture content. That being said:

Mol Bio 3O03 - Microbial Genetics: This class is a little strange. Lecture content focuses heavily around the topics of genomic DNA replication, plasmid replication and transfer, phage replication and lifecycles, and gene expression in bacteria. Dr. Finan is a nice guy, though sometimes I found his pacing to be a little slow. There's also a good portion of the class focused on how these topics relate to culturing bacteria in the lab. However, the tests ARE NOT LIKE THE LECTURES AT ALL. Sometimes the lecture content goes into very minute details and huge signal transduction pathways, but for the most part the midterms are *all* about how those topics relate to lab work. This class is essentially preparation for 3V03, the Mol Bio lab class.

Mol Bio 3V03 - Techniques in Molecular Genetics: Here we are, our first real lab course! There's 1 lecture a week which goes over the theory of the experiments you are doing (3 hour labs twice a week). You can technically get away without going to these, but I wouldn't recommend it. You'll have a lot more confidence and understanding in your lab work if you do. You'll be doing transformation, transduction, and conjugation experiments, beta galactosidase assays, reporter gene assays, enzyme activity assays, etc. You'll have a lot of experiments going on at once, so it's important to keep up with the theory while you're doing all your lab work. There are 4 lab reports, 4 or 5 quizzes, a lab book completion mark, and a lab exam (like the quizzes but longer). The TA's will tear you a new ***hole on your first lab reports. But it's okay, you'll learn how to write better ones by the time you get to the last reports - which is one of the best parts of this class. YOU CANNOT PROCRASTINATE ON THESE REPORTS. They're all about 20 pages long (10-15 pages text plus figures, tables, appendices, references) and you will be pushed to write more in-depth discussions than you have ever done before. This class is not necessarily easy, but you will learn a lot!

Mol Bio 3II3 - Eukaryotic Genetics: This class is entirely a par for the course mol bio class. Think 2nd year cell bio, but the entire focus is on molecular genetics in terms of gene expression and regulation. I was very surprised to find out how short the tests were, however. About 15 multiple choice questions, sometimes even true or false questions. About 3-5 short answer questions, and perhaps 1 "design your own experiment" type question. I found this class to be the easiest of all my 3rd year Mol Bio classes because the tests were very straight-forward.

Mol Bio 3S03 - Introduction to Bioinformatics: This class is nothing like your average bio class. It will be outside your comfort zone, but if you have any plans on doing research then definitely take this class. You'll learn about next generation DNA sequencing techniques, protein/DNA sequence databases, database file formats, phylogeny construction, and alignment algorithms. There's some bizarre mathematical approaches (from a bio student perspective) gone over in lecture in terms of some of the algorithms, but you'll never have to re-write them. But you'll need to understand and apply the algorithms. The lecture material goes into much more detail than you'll ever need to explain on the midterms (there are 3, 2 during the term and 1 as the "exam"). There are weekly assignments and an optional tutorial (I only went when I had some problems or questions with the assignments). Overall if you put as much time into this class as your other classes you will do fine.

I can't comment on 3B03 as I took 3H03 already, but 3H03 was a lot like 2nd year cell bio, but just focused on topics relating to the nucleus of the cell. As with most upper year mol bio classes, they stressed the importance of lab techniques and interpretations of experimental results and techniques.

Overall, in your upper year mol bio courses there is still a lot of memorization. However, there is going to be a much stronger emphasis on understanding experimental techniques and designs. Our degrees are pretty useless as a B.Sc only, so if you're in Mol Bio you really should be looking at grad school - and that means lab work! So get excited to start learning a lot more about the importance of lab procedures and techniques in your classes.
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Last edited by Freak705 : 06-03-2012 at 05:02 PM.

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Old 06-03-2012 at 05:03 PM   #4
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In case anyone missed it, I edited my previous post to include Mol Bio 3V03!
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Old 06-03-2012 at 06:14 PM   #5
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3rd year and 4th year bio are easy as shit if you have a decent background and are able to figure things out by reasoning through them. Just take what you're interested in.

I took Bio 3I03 and wanted to gouge my eyes out the entire time. 3UU3 isn't bad in terms of work, but it's actually interesting. 3AA3 should be fine, I've heard that it was easy but it could have changed over the years.
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Old 06-03-2012 at 07:13 PM   #6
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How about Bio 4X03?

kwyhan likes this.
Old 06-03-2012 at 07:31 PM   #7
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Easier said than done
Old 06-03-2012 at 08:19 PM   #8
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Oh wow, Chris thanks for outlining all of those courses for us . I'm also trying to take a bunch of psychology courses at the same time, so I don't want to pile on too much work so I screw myself over again like in second year. Ooh...second year...:(.
Old 06-03-2012 at 10:29 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Angoose View Post
Oh wow, Chris thanks for outlining all of those courses for us . I'm also trying to take a bunch of psychology courses at the same time, so I don't want to pile on too much work so I screw myself over again like in second year. Ooh...second year...:(.
^ I feel your pain
Old 06-03-2012 at 11:05 PM   #10
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Ahaha, Mike4 have you picked your 3rd year courses yet? I can't seem to decide :'(.
Old 06-03-2012 at 11:52 PM   #11
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To both above, what was it that made second year bio hard to handle? Was it just a lethal combo of bio and psych electives? Please share! I'm curious because I am doing bio this fall!
Old 06-04-2012 at 12:58 AM   #12
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Naw it was just a lethal combo of me wanting to do too much, and me not doing too much...and orgo. That was pretty tough, especially orgo 1.
Old 06-04-2012 at 08:59 AM   #13
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Okay time for a quick review of all my upper level bio courses so far! (I'm going into 4th year)

Bio 3SS3 - Population Ecology -> this was by far my easiest course taught by Dushoff. Some people had trouble with it because it did involve some math and intrepreting graphs, but it's not hard at all. It seems scary a bit at beginning but stick with this course.

Bio 3FF3 - Evolution -> the tutorials in this course were quite a bit of work (500 word paragraphs due weekly or another assignment/short presentation) but TAs marked very easy. And the material is pretty dull but everything is in the textbook, and in my year (2011-2012) it was an easy open-book exam! But can't guarantee it will be open-book always...

Bio 3U03 - Physiology Homeostasis-> this is the physio with labs (just as painful as second year physio) and course material goes into more detail about topics you have covered previously, good med-school type course in terms of content. I didn't do so well because I didn't like my second prof (Dr. Nurse) since it was hard to understand what he was saying at times but my fault for not reading textbook too.

Bio 3UU3 - Physiology Regulatory Systems-> my favorite course so far at Mac. The material is really interesting and testing style is very fair (makes sure you understood material). Covers topics such as sleep, feeding, stress, aging, etc. Readings were a pain though (over 30 journal articles, some over 20 pages long and difficult to read).

I would say that if you did your readings and went to lecture and studied well, it's very possible to get a 12 in most of these courses. Be careful with 3U03 though.
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Old 06-04-2012 at 09:18 AM   #14
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This thread is getting really good responses so I'm gonna ask here
Can someone give some info on Bio 3P03?
I'm deciding either taking that or Molbio 3B03 but I can't decide
Old 06-04-2012 at 11:19 AM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 5.98e24 View Post
To both above, what was it that made second year bio hard to handle? Was it just a lethal combo of bio and psych electives? Please share! I'm curious because I am doing bio this fall!
Its all about time management as the workload gets heavier, keep on top of your material and you'll be fine.



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