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TRIPSE - BioPharm

 
Old 05-31-2014 at 01:52 PM   #1
-Ish-
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TRIPSE - BioPharm
Can anyone in the BioPharm program comment on the difficulty of doing the TRIPSE and whether the 3hr allotted time was sufficient to complete all the work. Also, is there any other information regarding TRIPSE that would be beneficial to know?
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Old 05-31-2014 at 06:27 PM   #2
airvcarmelo
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Hey, the TRIPSE is a really interesting way to test someone. Probably the best way to really test your abilities in a course. It relies very little on memorization and highly on application and the ability to interpret data. This is actually a paper that explains the TRIPSE in some detail. The allotted time is more than enough and I personally found it not to be very difficult but others in my program have. If you have any other questions please feel free to message me.

http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/pbls/pkr-bambed.pdf

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Old 05-31-2014 at 06:35 PM   #3
Chipmunk
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Quote:
Originally Posted by -Ish- View Post
Can anyone in the BioPharm program comment on the difficulty of doing the TRIPSE and whether the 3hr allotted time was sufficient to complete all the work. Also, is there any other information regarding TRIPSE that would be beneficial to know?
Hey Ish,

I am assuming your professor is Dr.Rangachari. Though I have not taken the course, I took first year cell bio with Dr.Rangachari and was required to write two TRIPSEs.

In terms of difficulty, I personally found the TRIPSEs really challenging. They were my lowest mark in first year . They are challenging because they don't REALLY test your knowledge of content - though you will certainly be required to know your content - they will moreso test your ability to extract pertinent information from a written passage, diagram, dataset or any other form of information and then apply what you know to rationalize the information. Usually, the problem will be puzzling in some way and there won't be an obvious answer.

The TRIPSE consists of three components:
1) Observations of the problem
2) Hypothesis generation/experimentation
3) Re-evaluation upon receiving new information

My advice is to spend a lot of time reading the problem over and over. Make sure you know exactly what you need to "hypothesize" about. When I wrote the TRIPSE, we had a problem on anxiety & beta-blockers. The problem essentially wanted us to hypothesize about why beta-blockers might effect people's anxiety differentially, given certain controls (i.e. age, sex, occupation). You would need to generate two hypotheses, select the strongest one and generate an experiment to test it. You would then hand this part of the TRIPSE in and receive an article on which the paper was based. For us, the differences in individual response to the beta-blocker was related to polymorphisms in the beta-adrenergic receptor. Most people didn't get this as the answer, but that's fine, as long as your hypotheses were sound. There isn't really a right answer here...only a set of correct answers.

Anyway....hope this helped. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

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Old 05-31-2014 at 09:14 PM   #4
~*Sara*~
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Hey Ish! Just a clarification, the professor won't be Dr. Rangachari. Chari was a previous director of BioPharm, but he's not a professor in the Biopharm program currently. I know Health Sci has TRIPSEs as well, but the ones in Biopharm are slightly different, but using the same type of idea. The 3 hours were definitely sufficient to write it. Professors have always advised us to spend over an hour on part I (hypothesis for the problem at hand), a little over an hour for part II (possible tests and solutions to test your hypothesis) and about an hour for part III (to read a paper/supplementary info and re-evaluate your hypothesis and tests and state how you would change things. This varies a little bit from 3rd year to 4th year, but that's pretty much the basic outline. They're not easy as someone with no background in PBL, but you do practices in class together and ensure that you're set to succeed. So while it's not easy, you can definitely do well and even if your hypotheses are totally off, you still end up doing well because they're worth only 10-15% and the class average is never below a 70 (I only know my class average from 3 years ago, but professors changed now, so I heard it's higher). Either way, Biopharm is an awesome program and I totally recommend it. I've just finished 5th year, so let me know if you have any questions! Ooh and join the Mcmaster Biology and Pharmacology Society page!
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