An interesting course where you dive into the biochemical pathways of lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. BIOC 302 is a biochemistry course where you are assaulted with biochemical facts and information.
FORMAT OF THE COURSE
The lectures were live at 8AM…fortunately they were asynchronous and recorded due to the pandemic. Lectures were every MWF. There were also optional tutorials where the teaching assistants would go over a set of practice problems. The course was broken down into 3 broad sections. Biochemical processes and metabolic pathways of lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids and overview of DNA replication, transcription and translation. This course is super memory-heavy as you had to memorize most of the structures and names that appear in the slides as well as the complex metabolic pathways. What makes it even more difficult is that you also have to apply this memorized knowledge in different scenarios on the exams.
The assessments for this course consisted of one midterm and one final exam of equal weighting. The midterm tested the first half of the course only (lipids and proteins) while the final exam tested the latter half of the course only (nucleic acids, DNA replication, transcription, and translation). Both exams consisted of matching questions, structure recognition, multiple choice, and long answer questions adding up to 100 points.
GPA 🙂 OR 🙁
This course is very hard and you will need to put a lot of work in to be above the class average. It is imperative that you do not fall behind because then you will need to memorize more content, while trying to decipher what you are memorizing. The midterm exam was by far the hardest exam I’ve written this year (my 4th year); however, the final exam was much easier. The instructor is not shy about scaling, and usually scales the exams by 2-4% to reach an average above 70. The class average for my section was 74.
BIOC 302 Grade Distribtution. Credits: ubcgrades.com
verdict? to take or not to take
Despite being a very hard course, I would definitely take a course if you have a strong interest in biochemistry. This course is also a prerequisite for some professional schools in healthcare like dentistry. The assessments can be tough in terms of ambiguous questions in the exams, but if you’re not too worried about that then you’re good to go!