Cell Biology is mostly a mandatory course for a lot of students in Biology and Biochemistry. It really depends on what type of a person you are in your learning style and the way you like to take tests. Some say its boring while others think it is easy and interesting. For me, I'm the interested...

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Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

I'm technically enrolled in BioPsych right now, but I'm still debating changing before the semester starts. It seems like my tuition sharply increased from last year, and I'm trying to figure out if that is because I picked BioPsych or because of natural rises.

Do you recall a large difference between your first and second year's tuition when you picked it?

Nothing to suggest that it was because I was entering Bio Psych, just regular increases in tuition (which I expected).

I enrolled into biopsych and my tuition is about the same. Maybe it's some of the courses you picked?

Originally Posted by Harlequin90

I enrolled into biopsych and my tuition is about the same. Maybe it's some of the courses you picked?

That seems a likely explanation, certain courses have materials fees, things like that.

I think its because my tuition was artificially low last year thanks to entrance scholarships and such, if you guys didn't notice a difference. But I was definitely not expecting it to go over 5 grand.

And I definitely do not recall the MSU fees being so high last year, although maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

How could I find out which courses have materials fees?

Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

I think its because my tuition was artificially low last year thanks to entrance scholarships and such, if you guys didn't notice a difference. But I was definitely not expecting it to go over 5 grand.

And I definitely do not recall the MSU fees being so high last year, although maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

How could I find out which courses have materials fees?

Yeah, ah entrance scholarships, forgot about those bad boys. Good old entrance scholarship. Best part about Canada is if you take the marks I had that earned me a President's Award etc and take them to some school in the states, I'd certainly have gotten a larger scholarship. Ah well, such is life.

Anyways, MSU fees have gone up a little I believe (or at least it appeared so, but you'd have to check to be sure)

As for courses with things like materials fees, etc, it would be on the outline, and possibly the U.Grad calendar (I guess). I wouldn't know/don't know, owing to the fact that so far I have been pretty cookiecutter with the courses I've taken.

Yeah, that's a good point. Even if it turns out any of the courses did have materials fees, its not like I have much room to switch them around, since I have next to zero electives.

Has anyone heard anything about the prof Igdoura he/she is teaching cell bio second semester this year

I've never had him myself, but I've heard good things about him.
Probably not as good as Dej, but meh. Couldn't fit the first term one into my schedule.

I'm signed up for second semester as well, so we'll see soon enough!

I just finished this course (Summer 2009 - Dr. Kim)

The course material is still the same as what Eva_C described. Bio 2b03 had a lot of information and sometimes I felt that all the protein names were confusing. However, Dr. Dej does not expect students to memorize the names of proteins but, for lack of a better word, the nature of a protein. Also, though there are quite a few pathways for each topic, they are very similar and so I find these reinforced the main ideas.

Assignments

1. Computer - Protein folding- a computer assignment where you first use an online program to fold proteins (put hydrophobic residues together in the center of a protein etc). Not very necessary to complete in my opinion but I guess it can be helpful if you were not sure about the lecture. The assessment for this course was an online quiz about protein folding.
2. Wet Lab/Computer – Enzyme kinetics: Wet lab is finding the km of an enzyme for a few substrates. Computer lab is basically altering pH, temperature etc. for a reaction. You hand in an informal report with graphs for both online and wet lab components and theory questions.
3. Wet lab - Cell Properties Lab – Osmolarity of cells (adding different concentrations of salt to blood cells, and doing blood counts) as well as observing protozoan under a microscope. This lab didn’t relate to the course. The assignment was an informal lab report including graphs on salt concentration vs. Blood count, drawing of protozoan and some theory questions.
4. Computer – Online quiz on protein transportation
5. Cancer Essay/Article Review – Sign up for a cancer and a mutated protein online. Research and complete an essay outline assignment which is evaluated by peers. You will also be marking 3 other essay outlines and you receive a mark that includes how well your marking matches up with the average mark that other students gave. You then write an essay and submit it online.

Lab reports, quizzes and essays were pretty easy and the class averages seem to be pretty high for the assignments.

Midterm

Not very tricky, as long as you know your stuff, you will do fine. There were a lot of questions on the midterm but this is not a bad thing because wrong answers don’t have huge penalties unlike bio 1a03.

Exam

Also very fair and a good thing about it was that the exam was not cumulative. There are not too many tricks, except maybe a few multiple choice questions (but there were 60 of them so no big deal!)

Basically, for the tests, as long as you know the material, which is not too difficult of a task if you put in the time, you will do fine. The application questions were not that difficult either.

I really like this course and I went in expecting the worst as I didn’t have a positive experience in bio 1a03. Dr. Dej is a great professor but she does talk a bit too fast near the end. I found the application parts of this course to be very interesting.

Oh, a good thing Dr. Dej does is a career type lecture where she gives advice about approaching other professors for research and the process for getting into senior thesis projects and lab work/research. Make sure you attend that class, I found it very helpful.

thanks for all the info guys!

I need a favor from those who've already done this course:
Could someone briefly write what chapters or contents are under this course heading...I just wanna see the exact type of things that are gonna be taught.

Originally Posted by ishk33

thanks for all the info guys!

I need a favor from those who've already done this course:
Could someone briefly write what chapters or contents are under this course heading...I just wanna see the exact type of things that are gonna be taught.

Bio 2B03 course outline for Winter 2009:

http://www.biology.mcmaster. ca/cou...02008 -09.pdf

I thought the cell cycle lectures were confusing (too many things called cdc-blahblah made everything muddled). Dr. Dej never asked about those details though... good thing.

Does anybody have anything to say about Prof. Igdoura? I was originally supposed to get Dr. Dej for both 2B and 2C, but have to switch out of them due to conflicts.

So in the course material listings, it says the textbook is optional. Did anyone who's taken the course find the textbook useful?

Originally Posted by Harlequin90

So in the course material listings, it says the textbook is optional. Did anyone who's taken the course find the textbook useful?

With Dej, all I did was study her notes. The textbook was pretty dense so I didn't bother reading it.

Oh, except for when Papaconstineau was teaching. I needed the text for her stuff, because her notes were pretty barren.