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[quote=Anonymous]Premed, at Penn, Bioengineering. Premed classes (chem, orgo, bio calc) include both engineering and college of arts and sci kids, then the actual engineering courses are separate. The classes are not too big, many E classes are under 20. the intro science courses are 80+ per section unless the honors is taken. The so called weedouts have not been at all. They require a lot of work to stay above the mean, wherein "above the mean" is A- and above, usually the top 30-40%. Another 40-55% get B range. Cs are rare. So no one really gets weeded out. People are very collaborative in classes and labs but grading means they are all put on curves in comparison to each other. That is how all schools do premed courses it seems. There are some honors options that are small classes and those have means of A- but require a huge amount of hours every weekend. Mine took a math one because it was fun for them. The different sections of physics and orgo have to have equivalent grading distributions at the end of the semester so which professor does not matter a lot. The regular premeds have it much easier than engineers as they take only 4 courses a semester not 5. Kid knows many BioEng who have above a 3.8 after 2 years in it, not many at all have above a 3.9. Only one has less than a 3.5. Penn Engineering is known for deflation compared to the college but compared to the average premed the courses are fairly similar. Humanities kids are inflated relative to others because those courses have an A- or A given to about 70% of the class. premeds take them as electives. Some are deceptively heavy on reading and writing requirements but the easy grading helps. 
Advising is good if the student puts the work in and listens to advice. Some do not want to hear they should spread out courses after freshman year--ie leave orgo for junior year and biochem for senior, plan to take gaps. Most of them are doing well and plan on no gap years for grade reasons, though some plan intense research years to try to get into MD-PhD or aim for T10 Med schools. Basically everyone above a 3.4 gets into med school from Penn, from data. The problem is in a group like that where getting in to med school is not seen as too hard, it leads to gunning for top schools, hence chasing 3.8+. A family member went to JHU 3 years ago and described premed almost exactly the same, down to the means and the top-school-gunning. [/quote]

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