For those who have taken this course already how was the exam? MC questions, short answer questions? Layout? Difficulty? I'm having the hardest time trying to study for this course. All it comes down to is knowing the names of a bunch of complexes and what they do and spitting it out on paper.

I've always hated this course, and all pure biology courses for that matter. I find that the way they teach is not effective at all. It's just the same powerpoint after powerpoint of more things to just know. There are no assignments either. I find assignments really help because it makes you look through your notes and use them to solve problems. But its never like that with these biology courses.

It could just be me. I never liked going to classes just to remember facts. I want to learn them and use them in some kind of assignment or activity or whatever. I love my biochem courses because they have all of these aspects. Nice, tough, but fun assignments that make use of class notes.

What do you guys think?

I found genetics to be the least like other bio courses...there's very little if any memorizing. You really just need to know how to use punnett squares and the family tree things, it's all just common sense based on that.

I hate bio courses and I hate the bio department at Mac, and I can't memorize to save my life. Genetics was by far the easiest and most interesting/applicable bio course I've ever taken.

We had little assignments and stuff in tutorials, do they not have that any more?

Originally Posted by starfish

I found genetics to be the least like other bio courses...there's very little if any memorizing. You really just need to know how to use punnett squares and the family tree things, it's all just common sense based on that.

I hate bio courses and I hate the bio department at Mac, and I can't memorize to save my life. Genetics was by far the easiest and most interesting/applicable bio course I've ever taken.

We had little assignments and stuff in tutorials, do they not have that any more?

Oh I apologize I guess I forgot to mention the part on the exam doesn't include punnett squares and what not, that was already covered in the first midterm. The exam covers transcription and translation with what seems to be a large emphasis on those co factors, activators, complexes, and all that junk. And no we don't have assignments anymore. Tutorials were alright but I didn't find them helpful. My TA was useless.

memorizing slides/notes is enough to do well on mc. short answer is hard. you really need to understand the topics fully to do well on short answer. i hated the short answer for this class, but mc always brought me up.

Originally Posted by omgwtfitsp

Oh I apologize I guess I forgot to mention the part on the exam doesn't include punnett squares and what not, that was already covered in the first midterm. The exam covers transcription and translation with what seems to be a large emphasis on those co factors, activators, complexes, and all that junk. And no we don't have assignments anymore. Tutorials were alright but I didn't find them helpful. My TA was useless.

I don't think we handed in our assignments (but I'm not 100% sure), but I do remember them being helpful...they were pretty much just practice problems.

I can't remember a big focus on the molecular basis of transcription/translation. I just remember learning that in excruciating detail in biochem 2B03...How is that your entire exam?

Originally Posted by Silver

memorizing slides/notes is enough to do well on mc. short answer is hard. you really need to understand the topics fully to do well on short answer. i hated the short answer for this class, but mc always brought me up.

I definitely agree with this.. I had the course last term and the short answer was brutal, but multiple choice is thankfully a bit easier.

Also: there will most probably be a probability question on the exam, with multiple parts, so a, b, c..etc

Originally Posted by celtics_fan

I definitely agree with this.. I had the course last term and the short answer was brutal, but multiple choice is thankfully a bit easier.

Also: there will most probably be a probability question on the exam, with multiple parts, so a, b, c..etc

But we already covered that on our first test and the exam is not cumulative so i'm guessing we won't have that kind of question?

I was just going off of the fact that what was on our midterm will probably be the focus of your final exam because they reversed the topics this term... unless they rearranged them altogether, then I guess there probably won't be

Who's your instructor for Genetics? If it's Dej then try to see if you can get your hands on any old practice tests/past exams+midterms to practice with. If it's another instructor then I dunno

And I had an "o.O" expression as I read your comments about biochem. I haven't encountered any biochem course that non-biochems could take that WASN'T complete rote-memorization of facts and then recalling all of those facts for tests.. I always felt biochem courses were by far the worst offenders of that

Originally Posted by PockyWarrior

Who's your instructor for Genetics? If it's Dej then try to see if you can get your hands on any old practice tests/past exams+midterms to practice with. If it's another instructor then I dunno

And I had an "o.O" expression as I read your comments about biochem. I haven't encountered any biochem course that non-biochems could take that WASN'T complete rote-memorization of facts and then recalling all of those facts for tests.. I always felt biochem courses were by far the worst offenders of that

That's because they have separate courses for non-biochems so that they can maintain the quality of the biochem courses

2EE3 and 3G03 suck. And there's a few other biochem courses that depend a lot more on memorization because they mostly deal with molecular bio, but the vast majority are very good.