The Undergraduate Scientist

This will probably be the first university chemistry course many of you will take! CHEM 121 is a first-year chemistry course that introduces the basics of chemical bonding theories.

format of the course

The course is very much similar to CHEM 123. There are canvas quizzes, midterms, and final exams. The teaching style of the lecturer will vary (mine used a chalkboard). Sometimes the concepts they teach are sort of abstract, this was one of the courses where I often sat in the lecture not knowing what was going on. However, the textbook for the course is really well designed and will simplify many of the difficult concepts presented in class

There is also a lab portion for this course (I’m a TA for this portion :D). This just consists of biweekly experiments, which is not that stressful. However, the 10 minute quiz at the start of each lab is an unnecessary pain in the butt.

gpa 🙂 or 🙁

This course will probably have a neutral effect on your GPA. It’s not extremely difficult. The exams consist of multiple choice and written answers, and as with most first-year science courses, the multiple choice will drop you a significant amount of percentage points with each wrong answer. If you follow the textbook very closely, you can do well! The average for my class was 71. Here is the distribution for winter 2018:

CHEM 121 grade distribution. Credits: ubcgrades.com

verdict? to take or not to take

If you’re into chemistry, I would take the course, as this is a prerequisite to many higher level chemistry courses. If not, I probably wouldn’t take this course.

Out of all the organic chemistry courses I’ve taken, this one is by far my favorite! CHEM 213 is an organic chemistry course targeted towards chemistry and biochemistry majors.

format of the course

The format is nothing special; there are online canvas quizzes, two midterms, and one final exam. Lecture consists of the professor writing on a doc-cam while talking through the steps and nuances of different types of reactions. The professor for this course is amazing, Dr. Sammis is always willing to answer questions even if they’re simple (and he never makes you feel dumb for asking them). He’s also great at reading the room! He’ll ask if the class with okay with a concept, and even if noone is brave enough to raise their hand, he’ll sense the uneasiness and go over it again. Even though this is a notoriously difficult course, it’ll feel like you’re being set up to succeed rather than fail.

GPA 🙂 or 🙁

Although interesting, this course will probably not be good for your GPA (that said if you’re really interested in the topic it could also boost it like it did mine). The midterms will feel like a time-crunch given that you only have 50 minutes to complete them, but they’re not really designed to trick you. The final exam was significantly harder than the midterms, but that might have been due to the end-of-term topics being inherently more difficult to understand.

Again, Dr. Sammis always tries to make things as fair as possible, even though midterms are 7-8 pages long – they’re out of 80-90 points (lot’s of part marks!). CHEM 213 has by far one of the most thought out and fair marking schemes I have seen in chemistry courses. My class ended up with a 68 average. Here’s a distribution from winter 2018:

CHEM 213 grade distribution. Credits: ubcgrades.com

verdict? to take or not to take

If you’ve taken the introductory organic courses (CHEM 203 or 233) I would definitely take it! The topic is really interesting. It’ll be worth it even though the course is hard.

There’s really no sugar-coating it, this course is a train-wreck from beginning to end. MATH 103 is a calculus course with a focus on integrals and their applications to biological-relevant problems.

format of the course

The format of the course consists of in-person lectures where the professor hand-writes the notes on a doc-cam. There are small assignments done online (web-work) as well as in-class quizzes and exams (may vary according to prof). Unfortunately, it feels like the course is setting students up to fail rather than succeed, in other-words, it is obvious that this is a weeder course.

The notes are very dense, and made even more complicated by messy handwriting (again prof dependent). The textbook just makes things worse by being overly complicated as well, and assumes too much background knowledge that a first-year student should know.

For my class, there were in-class quizzes, and these were very poor evaluation tools. They give you 20 minutes to solve a bunch of integrals, which gives absolutely no room for thinking. Albeit, when I was taking it the course, we were the guinea pigs for the new quiz format. On the other hand, the web-work questions were hard, but I found them challenging and fun! They got one thing right!

GPA 🙂 or 🙁

This will definitely destroy your GPA. It seems like the exam formatting is always changing for this course. Someone thought it was a good idea to change the final exam from a historical 9 questions long to near 30 for my year. I have heard that they further changed the exam to an online format the following year. The class average for my year was 69. Here is a distribution from winter 2018:

MATH 103 grade distribution. Credits: ubcgrades.com

verdict? to take or not to take

If you have a choice, don’t take it! This course is poorly run, and gives off a very off-putting vibe. If you like calculus, I would look into other integral calculus equivalents!

Interested in chemistry, but don’t know where to start? CHEM 123 is a first- year science that covers the fundamentals of physical and organic chemistry!

Format of the course

The format of the course was pretty standard. Like your usual first year courses, hundreds of students are taking the course as a prerequisite, thus the midterm and final exams are standardized among all sections. Even the lecture material is standardized, so you’re not really missing out on any content regardless of who your professor is.

The course is divided into two big portions: physical chemistry followed by organic chemistry. The physical chemistry portions are calculation and theory heavy. Personally, thermodynamics has never been something I was completely comfortable with; however, the professor made it VERY clear what we needed/didn’t need to know.

The organic portion is the complete opposite of the physical portion. It is not a stretch to say that you don’t need to do any calculations for this part. The difficulty comes in understanding chemical visualization (different projections), acid/base stability, and a few reactions. I loved this part of the course so much I went on to take 4 different organic chemistry courses in my 2nd and 3rd year.

There is also a mandatory lab component which drives everyone nuts. The in-lab quizzes are unnecessarily stressful! They give you 10 minutes to complete it, so there is no time to think! The labs themselves and associated assignments were pretty stress-free. You meet once every two weeks for a lab, so the work-load isn’t insane.

GPA 🙂 or 🙁

This course isn’t a GPA booster, however it isn’t particularly a killer. It’s just one of those courses that probably won’t make or break anything. There are two midterms and a final exam, along with quizzes and the lab component. The examinations are part multiple choice and written questions so you get the best (and worst) of both worlds. The multiple choice questions were pretty high risk in that one wrong answer would drop your exam mark by 6%; however they weren’t designed to be tricky. The class average for my section was 69% (which was on the low end). The distribution including all sections from winter 2018 are shown below:

CHEM 123 grade distribution. Credits: ubcgrades.com

verdict? to take or not to take

As this is a requirement for ALL first year science students, there isn’t a choice :D. If you enjoy chemistry, this course will be interesting. Good luck to all of you taking it!

One does not truly know what a vertebrate is…until they’ve taken BIOL 204. BIOL 204 is a 3-credit course that teaches the phylogenetic relationship between vertebrates as well as their physiologies from a comparative point of view.

FORMAT OF THE COURSE

There is a lecture and a lab component to the course. The lecture content was easy to understand, but there was a lot of information that we had to know. Thankfully, Stella was a really nice and approachable professor, and she always took the time to answer our questions.

The lab enhanced my understanding of the topics we covered in class by providing the opportunity to examine structures in more detail; we even got to dissect a pigeon, a rat, and a dogfish!

There were lab quizzes (in the style of group discussions) at the end of each session, and two lab exams, where we circulated the room and answered questions related to structures on display. Continue reading →

Looking for an online course to take? Consider ATSC 113, a 3-credit science course that teaches weather concepts related to flying, snow-sports, and sailing.

FORMAT OF THE COURSE

All of the assignments and midterms were online, except for the final, which may be taken online or in-person depending on the section you’re registered in. There were weekly readings and quizzes, two midterms, a bonus project, and a final.

The assessments were multiple-choice, and the answer options were quite straightforward. Most of the weekly quizzes had two attempts, so I could learn from my mistakes. 

This course requires self-learning 100%. There aren’t any live lectures; you learn everything from the online readings (no textbook to purchase – yay!). Continue reading →