Degree: BS in Computer Science with a Concentration in Computational Biology

Experience

I had a little over a year of programming experience applying to CMU, with one year of AP CSA and a Computational Biology High School Program at CMU. I wanted to initially major in Computational Biology and pre-med (computational biology and pre-med have a lot of cross-listed courses) when applying to CMU, but settled on CS for more broad courses and because I didn’t want to do pre-med.

Ranking Scheme

I rank each class by the tier format: S, A, B, C, and D, where S is the highest and D is the lowest, inspired by the popular ranking meme videos. There are some minuses thrown in when a ranking is in between two. I don't rank work experiences. After ranking, I write some bullet points (sometimes less, sometimes more) about my experiences in the class.

Final CMU Reflections

I am extremely grateful for the past 3.5 years at CMU. The people I have met, both faculty, staff, and students are people that I can’t wait to have in the rest of my life. I’m super excited for everyone to graduate and settle down in their post-grad respective cities (I think NYC is starting to become more of a staple post-grad location, but the main other cities I’ve heard is obviously the Bay, Washington State, Chicago, and some of Texas) Some special shout-outs:

• SCS SAC. Truly the highlight of my experience at CMU.
• CMU CS Academy team
• Computational Biology Society & Computational Biology Majors!!
• Catherine Copetas, Phillip Compeau, Tom Cortina, Veronica Peet, Nichole Merritt, Martial Herbert
• 251 chums, Girl Fiends, Women@SCS, 451 staff, G7 Group, my junior-senior roommate + girlies, and so much more
• SDC Buggy & JSA

Fall 2023

• 15-418:Parallel Computer Architecture and Programming
  • S tier
  • One of my favorite classes I’ve taken at CMU of all time!
  • It sort of checks out as even though I only took my one systems elective (ahah), I really enjoyed 15-213 and other systems in general (through internship experiences).
  • I enjoyed the parts of the class of measuring/benchmarking performance and seeing performance get better as you parallelerize stuff! This class just reconfirms that I do like performance work (what I was doing primarily over Summer 2023 @ MongoDB, and where I will be rotating in for one of my rotations!! — I will be rotating in Performance, Query Execution, and Storage Execution as a New Grad Software Engineer at MongoDB, six-weeks each!)
  • Also thoroughly enjoyed the CUDA homework. It got me to actually think about hardware-software intersection for the first time!!
• 15-451: Algorithm Design and Analysis
  • C- tier
  • Ahaha algorithms are hard :(
  • Highlight was having Danny grade my last oral 🤩

Workload: I was taking two classes LOL

• This was really a semester to do literally the bare minimum class-wise; I decided to go part-time and just fulfill my requirements.
• I really honed in on wrapping up club stuff and being around people I love at CMU.

Summer 2023

• Software Engineering Intern @ MongoDB

My favorite summer ever. I ♡ NYC!

Spring 2023

• TA for 07-131: Mathematical Foundations for Computer Science
  • I went back to TA-ing this class. The structure was sort of different now, as it involved teaching in groups of 4-5 instead of one-on-one tutoring.
  • I liked the new format because I felt like it encouraged students to participate in a group setting (there wasn’t an overwhelming number of people), but I felt like I still had that interpersonal interaction of getting to know the students on a more personal level.
  • The class also adopted having a weekly seminar more focused on study habits with Tom Cortina. I think this was productive for helping students learn more effective studying habits beyond concepts. Hopefully these seminars were helpful for the students for their other classes as well as concepts!
• 15-317: Constructive Logic
  • I thoroughly enjoyed this class! I’ve always enjoyed more discrete-math/abstract classes, so it was great (even though they may be less practical).
  • Taught by Pfenning so it was cool to hear him teach content that was more in-line with his expertise (I had him for 15-210 in Fall 2022) and it was funny seeing him reference his research for a lot of lectures.
  • I particularly liked how exam 2 was replaced with a mini project and I thoroughly enjoyed the mini project topic that I chose!
  • I really wish I could take more classes in logic/clogic 😢; I was debating taking sub-structural logics in the Fall but decided against it so I could do part-time.
• 79-331: Body Politics: Women and Health in America
  • S tier
  • This was a phenomenal class. I’ve previously not tiered humanities classes because the ones I’ve taken before haven’t left too much of an impression on me, but this class was GREAT!
  • Some of the topics that resonated with me were some of the last units that talked about the commercialization/monetization of breast cancer and how it links to many tenets of capitalism and the history of gynecology (genuinely horrifying and should be required history) and birth control.
• 07-400:Research Practicum in Computer Science
  • B tier
  • This class is the second part of the two-part “Research in CS” sequence, the first of which I took in Fall 2022.
  • This class requires you to work closely with a professor to do research that ultimate culminates in a poster presentation at Meeting of the Minds.
  • I had trouble with finding an advisor. Thankfully, the professor of 07-400 stepped in as my advisor. It was very kind for him to take up more time with me, and I really appreciated his mentorship throughout the course.
  • I honestly blame my lower grade ranking for this class on myself, as I think I came into the topic with a little too broad of a research topic and that made me a little unsure about what paths to take and how to represent my end results. However, I do feel a true sense of ownership with my work, and am grateful I took this class.
  • Overall, I learned a lot about time management and goal setting during this class!
  • Note: I really enjoyed the professor I took this class with and I had him for 07-300 as well. It was nice to have that continuity of mentorship :)
• 02-331: Modeling Evolution
  • C tier
  • This class was a chill paper-reading class.
  • The class is a seminar class, but lack of participation from students made the class quite awkward.
  • I wish I spent more time reading the papers prior to class, but the discussions were pretty dry nonetheless.
• DROPPED: 15-451: Algorithm Design & Analysis
  • I thought this was one of the few CS core classes where the lectures were more applicable to the class and that the class didn’t rely too heavily on recitations to make up for lack of class content.
  • There were some speed issues with lectures — some professors went through too fast, and others went too slow through the content which would make them rush at the end.
  • Purely decided to drop this class in particular because I was doing the worst in it lol

Workload: Medium; after dropping 451, straightforward

• I can’t believe I only have two classes till graduation – remind me to check that this is actually the case with my advisor 😛 [EDIT: Confirmed I have two classes to graduate!]. This has probably been one of the hardest school years in terms of balancing my school and extracurricular life, and I had to take a step back at multiple points in each semester to reevaluate what I want from my semesters and how I want to get there.
 
• For the Spring, I thought I could push myself to do 54 units, but it turned out to sour my balance of work/extracurriculars/fun. I’m a little nervous about putting the only two classes I’ve dropped in my last semester, but they are the only two classes.
 
• By the end of this semester I was pretty burnt out, and I was grateful for the summer to start. I think the primary reason for burn-out over this year was (a) personal issues and (b) not having enough time to invest in my hobbies. Although I love my extracurriculars, I’ve learned through internship szn that I thrive most when I can invest some time in my hobbies and explore them. As of now (during internship szn), I’ve been spending a lot of time lifting, roller skating, and playing trumpet.
• Overall, I am so grateful for the past three years and to start my (hopefully!) last semester. 

Fall 2022

• TA for 36-218: Probability Theory for Computer Scientists
  • [not tiered because this is work]
  • I didn’t enjoy this TA position as much because it was more traditional class compared to TA-ing 07-131.
  • I primarily was a grader for this class, which meant my favorite part of TA-ing from 07-131 (interpersonal interaction with students) wasn’t there.
  • The class was drastically different from when I took it because of a change in professors. Furthermore, it used different probability notation and terminology from the canonical SCS "language".
• TA for 02-262: Computation and Biology Integrated Research Lab
  • [not tiered because this is work]
  • I was supposed to be the computational TA for this class but I think this class had a lot less computational content then compared to 02-261.
  • I didn’t do much for this TA position.
• 15-512: Computational Modeling and Simulation of Biological Systems
• 07-300: Research and Innovation in Computer Science
  • A tier
  • A class that fulfills the technical writing requirement that enables you to learn more about research in CS, often done through presentations.
  • I liked this class because you were encouraged to explore your research topic of interest through research-based assignments, such as writing a literature review, doing paper reviews, summarizing papers, and creating your research proposal with a verbal presentation.
  • It was cool getting to learn more about some of my peers’ research interests as well!
• 15-512: Computational Modeling and Simulation of Biological Systems
  • B tier
  • This is definitely the hardest computational biology class out of the concentration, maybe besides Great Ideas in Computational Biology.
  • You need a remember 3D calc and linear algebra to successfully follow along.
  • I enjoyed the emphasis on how to formulate a scientific question and applying the scientific method. I feel like with how research-based many computational biology classes are, this theme should have come up earlier or should be threaded more within comp. bio. classes.
  • I also enjoyed the beginning topic of the class being related to TCS, nice to see how TCS problems are contextualized within comp. bio.
  • There is a large final project, which can be very daunting. Given that we could make groups of up to six people, it was helpful because the work distributed amongst us was pretty small and the expectations for our final project was reasonable.
  • I am so grateful there are no exams in this class!
• 15-210: Parallel & Sequential Data Structures and Algorithms
  • C- tier
  • The first half of this class was interesting and I liked the content on parallelization. However, as the class went on, parallelization was never brought up again, and the disconnect between the lectures and what was on homeworks/tests became large. The lectures didn’t feel worth going to.
  • I felt this class was the worst in terms of having to rely on the recitations to fill the gaps that the lectures didn’t provide.
  • Everything after Fall Break was so painful. I had to learn to print in SML!
  • SML required language is low-key painful. I think this class should be language-agnostic like 451; I guess its in a weird spot because its in the 200s so people have experience and don't need to be carreled to having to take the same language, but it might make it easier for the TAs to have SML across all students.
• DROPPED: 15-440: Distributed Systems
  • Dropped right before notorious P1!
  • Content was cool though :(

Workload: Light

• For Fall, my main goal was to get a job and to get more balance in my extracurriculars (primarly, SCS SAC). I also had some personal issues during this semester. This meant dropping distributed, which put me in a whole other space of going under 36 units and having to take Intro to Yoga (where I primarily slept).
• This also meant I contributed a lot of time to SCS SAC, in particular, throwing the first SCS Ball in the history of SCS/CMU! It was such a fruitful experience and I am so grateful for everyone that helped made the ball happen.
• This began my era of putting in 60% of my time into my extracurriculars compared to my classes 😛

Summer 2022

• Software Engineering Intern @ Microsoft

The summer in Washington was fun!

Spring 2022

• 15-251: Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science
  • A tier
  • I really struggled in this class, as I am not a theory shill. But the content was really cool and was stuff I have never considered. I It would be MUCH more manageable if this class was split across two semesters, as it is truly a mammoth of a class.
  • Writing sessions definitely help with information retention. I actually enjoyed them, even though they definitely didn’t help my grades lol.
  • TAs for this class are S-tier. Ada is also really reasonable.
  • Kind of mad I had to take the final though when past semesters enabled you to skip the final if you were satisfied with your midterms + homework grades.
  • Loved my group uwu besties for life
• 98-360: STUCO: Godel, Escher, Bach
  • B tier
  • Chill STUCO to just chill and talk about philosophy, computation, etc. So many connections in GEB with 251.
• 02-261: Quantitative Cellular and Molecular Biology Lab (Comp. Bio Lab)
  • C tier
  • This was a rehash of a lot of bio lab stuff I learned in HS so it was generally not really interesting.
  • Probably the easiest lab requirement (especially because I had prior experience [although you definitely don’t need any prior experience for this class] and I hate physics)
  • Final Project was not difficult – really don’t get deterred from this class because it has a final project
• 02-510: Computational Genomics
  • B- tier
  • I was super scared of this class because it was my first cross-listed (masters & undergraduate class). However, this class was a lot easier than 02-251 (undergraduate introduction to computational biology)
  • Two week assignments that are easier than the one week assignments for 02-251 – write-ups and auto graders were sometimes not fully functional, but staff were quick to fix issues.
  • You have an optional final project (undergrads only). I didn’t do the project because my reasoning was (a) I would be going up against Masters Groups (b) There was probably going to be a curve in the class given the class results of the midterm. It turned out to be a good choice because (see below) the class was curved.
  • One midterm (no final) – so you kind of have to do good on the midterm, especially if you don’t do the project.
  • Definitely take this class with friends (or find friends!) for homework comparisons and potential group project mates.
  • Class had ~5% curve at the end
• 10-315: Introduction to Machine Learning (SCS Majors)
  • C- tier
  • I really didn’t enjoy this class. It was a punch in a gut not being as familiar with the pre-reqs (primarily Linear Algebra) and it was much more mathematically based (not as applications based). It was funny implementing PCA in this class when just using PCA from sklearn in 510.
  • I would say the second half of the class (unsupervised learning) was generally a lot more reasonable and manageable. Homework 2 with its back-propagation derivatives was probably the hardest.
  • Finishing the written before starting the programming is generally a good rule of thumb, but sometimes I lol-ed out and started the programming before.
  • The grading scheme was very good for a student like me, who has a trouble with exams (2 midterms, 15% each).
  • ~5% curve up at the end (I believe).
• TA for 07-031: Mathematical Foundations for Computer Science
  • [not tiered because this is work]
  • This was a new program to tutor CS freshman in Concepts (12-127)
  • This program is wonderful if you would like to have a more interpersonal relationship with your students compared to general TA-ing, because you really get to develop a one-on-one relationship with a student rather than hosting office hours with a bunch of students that can change a lot week-to-week.
  • I enjoyed this experience as tutoring is really fun (especially with students that are willing to learn and are wonderful!; I can imagine it would be really difficult otherwise), and reviewing Concepts was great!
• CS Academy: Outreach Team
  • [not tier-ed because it’s work]
  • Testing team was not available this semester, so I moved to the Outreach Team.
  • Definitely more manageable also considering the taking on 07-021 TA-ing, enjoyed hosting PD Refresher Sessions for teachers.
  • I am looking to apply to the Content Team for CS3, so I’ll be going through the curriculum this summer, looking for anywhere I can contribute!

Workload: Annoying & Hard [a slog]

• My average rating of classes this semester was very low compared to the previous semesters.
• It was a hard workload, and I didn’t like the classes themselves. All I can say is that I was very grateful when the semester was over (and that most of my classes curved up in the end).
• I felt like this semester was me trying to see if I liked stuff (ML, TCS) and I just didn’t enjoy the content, or the workload was too much for me to fully appreciate/absorb the class.
• Although I know my next semester is just as hard/even harder, I believe I will generally enjoy it more because the content (Systems, Parallel stuff, Research) are more interesting to me.

Fall 2021

• 15-213: Introduction to Computer Systems
  • S tier
  • I really enjoyed this class! All the content was very interesting. Some of the initial labs could definitely be tedious (data & attack lab), but the later half had rewarding labs.
  • Biggest weakness of this class is definitely the general organization and communication about logistics (different TAs saying different things about exams and course content).
  • Liked only having a Final and no midterms :)
• 36-218: Probability for Computer Scientists
  • A tier
  • I enjoyed this class! I think this class primarily helped me formalize problem solving better, as we were encouraged throughout to use a formulaic problem-solving process which could be applied outside of the class.
  • Liked the take-home midterms (basically the slightly easier homework with a 36 hour time constraint) but it felt a little extra to lecture on days when midterms were assigned.
  • Great class to have a study group with for the homework.
• 05-589: Independent Study in HCI
  • A tier
  • This semester, I asked if I could have a more product-manager-y role for a project and if I could also have experience working on an existing codebase.
  • I integrated WCAG 2.0 compliant features into ClassInsight.
• 82-333: Modern China
  • B tier
  • A great gen-ed! I enjoyed my professor and I also enjoyed the flexibility of the final project and not having any exams for the class.
  • Some weeks could be a little bit heavy (essays), but the grading was reasonable.
  • I took this class as the online version which was more convenient.
• 21-259: Calculus in Three Dimensions
  • D tier
  • Did not enjoy this class, primarily due to the extensively long homework (one question took 12 pages at some point).
  • Annoying mostly due to the focus on testing super difficult integrals (Calc I knowledge) rather than what was actually being taught in class.
  • I would not take this class with the professor I had for this class.
  • Huzzah for being my last math class!!
• CMU CS Academy: Testing Team
  • [not tier-ed because it’s work]
  • An enjoyable position which enabled me to experience a different part of the tech stack (automated testing with Selenium).
  • I believe that this job is more realistic to working compared to my internship with Microsoft, because the New Technologist program was more of a sprint-type full stack web app from scratch rather than working on an existing code base.
  • The learning curve with automated testing wasn’t too difficult, but a lot of minor challenges popped up along the way. Great to work with a team to share and fix roadblocks together.

Workload: half medium half hard

• This was my first semester in person, which meant that time management became a much greater part of the learning experience than before.
• I generally enjoyed classes more this semester than the past, shown with my average tier ranking.
• The last two weeks were a crunch with CS Academy, research, and finals, and I had to spend the first week and a half of break working on finishing up research.
• Learned to look at FCEs for specific professors (pertaining to 259).
• Reflecting on the semester, I realized that because I would like to devote more time to CS Academy and my course workload would be hard the next semester so I decided to stop my HCI research position.

Summer 2021

• Summer Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship (SURA) @ Ogan Lab
  • My lab postdoc was really accommodating and ensured that I could do SURA not as a summer two class (when SURA is usually done) but in the summer one slot so that it wouldn’t overlap with my internship which started late June.
  • During SURA, I primarily worked on doing qualitative coding for the Social Programmable Robots program to identify tasks in the program that helped encourage students to undertake behaviors that would indicate culturally responsive computing (basically, finding if students were reflecting on their culture and community as doing programming tasks) as well as some data analysis about student’s reflections.
  • SURA also requires you to read past SURA proposals, write a proposal regarding your summer project, and interact with other students doing SURA through reviewing their proposals. I was not able to complete this during summer one (this was separate from my lab and was administered by the Undergraduate Research Office), but it was still very light workload.
• IBM Accelerate – Software Track
  • IBM Accelerate is a student program that helps students get in a team of 7-10 students with a mentor from IBM to work on software projects that help students get introduced to full-stack web development.
  • We had three group software projects to work on and three HackerRanks to complete. If one has an 80% and above for all the projects and Hackerranks, you get a badge and a referral to an IBM internship.
  • Some of the weaknesses of the program is that I felt that the projects that we were given were a little bit too small given a large team and that there wasn’t any clarity regarding grading of the three group software projects. The Hackerranks were also tedious. However, there was great support throughout the program.
  • I was able to get a referral, but I think I accidentally didn’t use it as the communication of using the referral was somewhat confusing.
  • I would only really recommend this program if someone doesn’t have an internship during the summer or really wants a referral to intern at IBM, as most of the content can be learned through a web development courses/internship program.
• New Technologist Internship @ Microsoft
  • The New Technologist Internship is a 7-week program where you work with a team of five students and one software engineer and one program manager from Microsoft to undertake the product development life cycle with full stack web app development.
  • Our team React and the Google Cloud Platform for the majority of our project, but there is a lot of flexibility across the different teams.
  • The program was a wakeup call with regards to how customer-centric the product/program manager side of developing a product is, as well as tools like Kanban boards and the general Git workflow.
  • I enjoyed the mentorship and opportunities to learn from some of Microsoft workers throughout the program. Some of the downsides is that the program is only 7 weeks, meaning that it sometimes felt rushed, especially with regards to the later development (we could only really begin programming after the third week, but many [including our group] only began after the fourth week).
  • In the end of the program, ~80% of participants get referred the next summer to Microsoft. Rising sophomores could choose between being referred to the Explorer (SWE + PM), SWE, or PM internship programs for the following year.
  • I decided to chose my referral for a SWE internship rather than Explorer, because I wanted to ensure I got more technical experience even if some of the program/product manager aspects of the program interested me.

Workload: Death

• I pushed myself to do too many things this summer; stuff being online sometimes makes you feel like you can pile on and on and it will still be a breeze, but it really wasn’t!
• I also definitely did overtime almost everyday after the second week working on our project for the New Technologists, which I felt could have been remedied with a longer, more traditional program duration (12 or 14 weeks).

Spring 2021

• 02-251: Great Ideas in Computational Biology
  • S tier
  • I’ve covered the first third-half of the class through a high-school program for Computational Biology at CMU, which made it a little less lighter than most classes.
  • Great content, great lecturer, and great pre-class music.
  • Some of the programming homework felt like speed-runs (more time management to work on). Viterbi Graphs assignment was actually... wild.
  • Loved some of the later topics like DNA programming and slime growth patterns.
  • Final project was collaborative for the first time in course history, which made it a lot more manageable in terms of workload.
  • No exams was great :)
• 15-150: Principles of Functional Programming
  • A tier
  • I really enjoyed some parts of the class, but other parts were very meh. I really liked the second half more, notably CPS, modules, games, regex, and sequences.
  • I also believe this class can have a little bit of a learning curve if one isn’t familiar with functional programming before taking the class.
• 05-589: Independent Study in HCI
  • A tier
  • This was the first semester I did an independent study (research) under HCI (Human Computer Interaction Institute).
  • I simply used the spreadsheet Tom sends out at the beginning of every semester and found the most interesting project to me. I reached out to the post-doc that posted the listing on Educational Technology, and we connected over a short 15-30 minute chat on Zoom. A week or two later I was offered to work on their project. I worked in the Ogan Lab for two projects: ClassInsight (a web app with the goal to improve teacher’s classroom discourse) and Social Programmable Robots (a program for middle school girls of color to learn how they can use CS to empower their communities).
  • For the first half of the semester, I worked with the other undergrad student in the class (who is also my best friend from HS [we unexpectedly signed up for the same lab without even knowing the other was joining]) to do qualitative coding of teacher interviews to help improve ClassInsight, and then for the second-half of the semester we worked on cleaning and analyzing chat room logs from the Social Programmable Robots program.
• 85-102: Introduction to Psychology
  • B tier.
  • Another Gen-ed.
  • I wish I took a more domain-focused psych class, maybe Cog Psych, but this was a very chill, light class.
  • Required participation with cameras on in both lecture and recitation was slightly annoying, but content and asynchronous exams were chill.
• 03-121: Modern Biology
  • C tier
  • Didn’t really enjoy this class; a lot of frequent exams (5 midterms and a final).
  • I wished I took the opportunity to test out. Open notes for exams was great though!
• 76-101: Interpretation and Argument (Interp)
  • C tier
  • I did the Interp on dreams. It was ok.

Workload: half medium half light

• I decided from Fall that with another online semester, I wanted to do easier, gen-ed classes for Spring before going on campus Fall 2020. I think this was a wise decision, and I felt like I had much more breathing room than only taking technical classes like in the Fall.
• I also decided that I would like to take one CS Core per semester, which meant I didn’t do the famous 150 + (213 or 251) pair.
• I really enjoyed my first jab at research, so I wanted to do Summer Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship (SURA). I especially appreciated that the postdoc I primarily communicated in the lab was willing to work with having most of my SURA work done primarily in the beginning of the Summer semester as my internship was going to start late June.

Fall 2020

• 15-122: Principles of Imperative Computation
  • A tier
  • The core DS&A class at CMU. This class seemed to have a lot of variance in skill for the first semester, as this is the first class that you can’t transfer over with college courses or AP credit.
  • It was a pretty ok class, the proofs seemed more involved than needed and were tricky and I still don’t really get the need to program in a safe subset of C (you program in C0 [C knot] before moving onto C in the later third of the class), but so be it.
  • Helpful for programming interviews (although maybe learn a more digestable language for the actual interviews... I use Go!)
• 15-151: Mathematical Foundations for Computer Science (cross listed as 21-128: Concepts of Mathematics, aka Concepts)
  • B tier [After tutoring in Spring 2022, may have to bumpt his up to B+/A-]
  • Again a lot of variance in this class in terms of strength. If you have had prior competition math and discrete math experience, this class will be easier than going in blind.
  • I enjoyed it, but the end of the course (topics were probability and infinity stuff) seemed to be a bit rushed.
  • Mackey is a great lecturer, but definitely have a study group for this class for homework.
• 07-128: Freshman Immigration Course
  • B tier
  • Required for freshman CS majors.
  • You learn about the numerous CS departments, research opportunities, etc.
  • Great opportunity to connect with your advisors (Tom & Veronica), although being online meant we didn’t have the more communal feel of all the SCS freshman taking the class together.
• 21-241: Matrices and Linear Algebra
  • C tier
  • Pretty forgettable class. Probably need to review content for future classes.
  • Enjoyed the final project at the end (a lot of freedom).
• 99-348: Global Health and Climate Change
  • C tier
  • I had to take this class last minute as a mini-2 to stay over 36 minimum unit requirement after dropping modern chem.
  • An ok but forgettable class. Only had to write a final proposition letter for this class, and the rest of the grade primarily relied on attendance.
• 07-131: Great Practical Ideas in Computer Science
  • C- tier
  • Didn’t really enjoy this class too much, but grateful I learned Vim!
  • Similar to 07-128, a lot of freshman take it, but the communal feel must be less due to the class being virtual.
• DROPPED: 09-105: Modern Chemistry
  • The summer before Fall 2020, I was strongly considering trying to be pre-med. This meant that you couldn’t use AP credit for the classes you wanted to take when applying to med school. However, I quickly changed my mind after a month of Modern Chem :)
  • I should have not done this class especially because I knew from HS that I really dislike Chem, but it was all ok with the drop.

Workload: During the semester death; retrospectively, medium hard.

• Struggled throughly with the transition from online HS —> online college.
• Dropping a class first semester was great though, as I now feel like I can drop a class anytime and be chilling B)
• Biggest advice is to attempt to use any AP credit (which I learned through not using my AP credit for Chem initially, and also not taking the opportunity to test out for Modern Biology).
• I don’t regret using AP CSA credit to skip 15-112, but I did struggle in 122.
• I think the difficulty of doing 122 and 151 concurrently is a little overhyped, as a person that didn’t have prior experience in both content.