BIOL 3030

So I had food poisoning from chipotle the other week, and it sucked. I vomited numerous times and man.. the diarrhea was awful. That being said, I'm literally NOT exaggerating when I say that I'd rather go through a semester of food poisoning than suffer through BIOL3030. At least that pain was temporary, and there was someone to HELP ME WITH MY PROBLEM. Dorothy Schafer should not be a professor at this University, or at any learning institution on this planet. Do you want to be a doctor? Don't take 3030.

Tbh, I'm very disappointed that UVA has not changed the professor and the structure for this class. If you are wondering what taking the class is like, my other classmates who have posted before describe it perfectly: hell. It's not too much work but you basically have to memorize everything from her powerpoints (I didn't bother reading the book cause she hasn't even read it herself) and cross your fingers and hope the tests don't ravage you too much. The questions are vague and even if you know every single minute detail from lectures, you won't be guaranteed an A. I really hope UVA looks at some of these reviews and decides to take action given that almost every single pre-med takes this class and has to suffer through it. For a school that touts its prestige all the time, it should be able to live up to its name and give kids the education they deserve, not a crazy old lady who doesn't know what she's doing half the time.

Honestly, I cannot reiterate enough how shitty Schafer's exams are. I vigorously studied every day for a complete week before each exam. I knew the material down pat, and yet I failed every single exam because of her incomprehensible wording and completely irrelevant questions. There is a difference between making a hard exam that asks you to apply what you learned and making an exam that has nothing to do with anything you learned in class. I truly wish UVA would have gotten rid of Schafer before I took this class because she really screwed me in my premed path. It sucks to know that I knew this material well (thanks to myself not to anything she did) and still did incredibly poorly in the class. Med/grad schools won't know how much Schafer blows as a professor, they will just see my below average grade! Thanks for ruining a lot of chances for me, Dorothy!

Sooo, here it goes. Professor Schafer is the absolute worst professor at this University. Her exams are very vague, convoluted, and often times hinge on a minute detail that might not even be entirely true. In order to be average in her class, I religiously read the textbook, attended every class, and memorized the powerpoint. The exams were difficult and not a true reflection of our understanding because of how poorly they were written. I have taken some rigorous courses in the Biology department and done well, but this has to be the most poorly taught/awfully graded course in the entire department. I think it would be best for future pre-med Hoos if all of us collectively emailed the head of the undergraduate biology department to get her removed from at least teaching this course. No way 300 future physicians (more like 250 after taking this class) should be subject to such grade deflation even after hours of studying and memorizing for her exams. That being said, you will teach yourself a level of biochemistry (actually an interesting subject and the basis of medicine) at a level more than sufficient for the MCAT --- the only good thing to come out of this course.

This class isn't a ton of work but it is one of the worst classes I have taken. It is a lot more chemistry based than biology, and Schafer is a horrible teacher. She stumbles through 30+ slides without caring if anyone actually understands the material or not. The exams are extremely difficult and even though they are multiple choice, they are very tricky. Most of the questions involved her giving four statements and then you had the pick the combination of statements that were true. I studied a week up to each exam and still felt like I was randomly guessing at times. The book is dense and she contradicts it multiple times, although the homeworks were usually right out of the textbook and were a good grade boost. Go to class because learning catalytics is a super easy 15% of the grade, but otherwise lecture is pointless. The undergrad TA is amazing, but the grad TA is completely unhelpful and unapproachable, and uses the entire two hour discussion to go over something that could have been covered in less than an hour. Schafer is actually way better in office hours when there are less people around, so go to those. She won't be super helpful but its better than nothing. Overall a hard class that was completely unenjoyable.

This class blows, and everyone knows it. I'm sure Schafer is a lovely person but she's a terrible lecturer and writes HORRIBLY vague and confusing (and highly irrelevant) test questions. If you have to take this class (obviously do not take it if you don't absolutely need to), I recommend taking it as late as possible during your four years so you have other experience in bio classes and background knowledge to draw on. God knows you'll need it. The only thing that got me through this class was the fact that her powerpoints were so long and full of information that I could exclusively study from them, and not the book, and manage to teach myself everything. You will get absolutely nothing out of lecture, but you still have to go for the learning catalytics questions. Truly unfortunate that this class is so bad. It's an interesting subject, but the class is just so poorly designed that no one learns anything and everyone hates it.

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long and in-depth review. To start off, this was what I wrote for the course eval at the end of the semester: Of all the courses I've taken here at UVA, this may be the most ambiguous and least-defined of them all. The material was presented in no logical, ordered manner, the tests did not necessarily rely on the material covered in the course, and Prof. Schafer, although very affable, was an ineffective teacher and possibly the poorest lecturer I've ever had. She seemed to put in a lot of effort into the class, but, on multiple occasions, she gave incorrect answers to questions, replied with vague responses, and bounced around the course information asystematically. Prof. Schafer often skipped through powerpoint slides in lecture, downplaying their importance or relevance, then proceeded to include the skipped material in the exams. The powerpoint slide information that she did cover, she blazed through, making it nearly impossible to take notes with paper and pencil, saying no more than 3 sentences about a slide stuffed full with information, then briskly skipped along to the next slide, despite the clearly audible groans of the class. In addition, the exams were often only loosely related to the class material, and frequently, after the exam, Prof. Schafer would admit that there were multiple correct answers to a specific question, or no correct answer at all. It is clear that she tries her best to teach this course, but I do not feel like the quality of education provided by Prof. Schafer and this course were an accurate reflection of the amount of money we pay in tuition. I would strongly recommend replacing Prof. Schafer with a more competent and confident Professor, or at least relegating her to a much lesser role in regards to this course.

And of all my friends who took this class, I wrote the nicest review. This class is awful. The one bright spot is that there is little outside work, as there are only short homework assignments that are generally straight out of the book. I pulled out an A- in this class somehow, but most people were not so fortunate. The tests are absolutely impossible, I never left a test knowing whether I did well or horribly on it. You know how you circle questions to come back to later while taking a test? I did that for at least half of the questions on each exam. I spent hours and hours memorizing every little detail on every slide (because she will not hesitate to ask you about obscure, unimportant, not touched on minute details), and it barely helped. There are 4 tests, each worth 15%, and each made up of 30 multiple-choice questions, and each test took the full 2-3 hours available. About 10 of the questions would be easy gimme questions, about 10 of them would require in-depth knowledge of useless information that she barely covered in class, and about 10 of them were pulled straight from satan's behind. For the tests, I really could only look at about 1/2 of the questions and actually deduce the answer. For the other 1/2, the only way to answer them is through the process of elimination, as the answer choices will range from "oh, that kinda looks familiar" to "did I show up to the wrong test". The wording of the questions is incredibly vague, and I don't think that Prof. Schafer actually knows what she is talking about half the time. There will also be 4 quizzes, each worth 3%, which she says will be easy, but which are actually just as hard and poorly written as the exams. You better make sure you show up to class and get the free learning catalytics points, because those are the only free points you'll get. I would not recommend reading the textbook, as it goes way further in-depth than the class does, and Prof. Schafer has openly admitted that she hasn't even read the textbook. A few times after class, my friends and I went up to her to ask her a question, and each time she got defensive and ended up giving us information that directly contradicted the powerpoint slides or the textbook. This class is straight up awful, and Prof. Schafer not only dresses like a homeless extra in a rap video, but every time she pulls up a new powerpoint slide, it seems like she is seeing it for the first time. If you think that you are going to take notes with a pencil and paper in this class, boy are you wrong. She absolutely blazes through the material, and frequently skips between slides while talking. You probably won't hear any voices during lecture, for 2 reasons - only half the class shows up to lecture, and because there is no time. All you will hear is the furious typing of people with laptops trying to keep up with word vomit she is constantly spewing out at an ever-increasing rate. I truly do not understand why she is still a professor at this university, and I only wish that the department heads would actually read the course evaluations of her, even if she is tenured. I would recommend this class to no one, this class is only loosely related to the biochemistry material on the MCAT, and offered the most ridiculous tests I've ever seen. I would offer advice as to how I ended up doing somewhat well on the tests, but I'm not sure there is much to say. I hope you're a good guesser.

Yes this course is utterly difficult and yes the tests are tricky and challenging. However there are a lot of resources provided: there are practice problems, study questions, piazza, etc. I would suggest keeping up with the reading as much as possible as you do not want to read 100+ pages of biochem the day before (trust me). This is a 3000 level course with 300 students so it is meant to be painful so try to get to know Mrs. Schafer if possible - she is definitely more helpful outside of lecture (which is not very helpful, but her slides are). Homeworks are from the book, and be ready for the worst for the quizzes.

Honestly spent a good amount of time and effort towards this class and the material. I'd say it is extremely comparable to Cell Bio with a teacher that students seems to like a lot less. I never saw Schaffer outside of class but found little issue with her in class. Difficult material, sometimes test questions were worded in a frustrating manner but found most of the strongly negative reviews I heard prior to the class to be dramatic. Not my favorite class but I enjoyed the material itself and thought the class was fair and entertaining.

such a shitty professor. definitely recommend taking the Chem version of this course instead. She piles on a lot of busy work, is a pretty bad lecturer. I ended up doing fine in the class but only because I had self studied most of the material for the MCAT- and honestly her tests were WORSE. Confusing wording, asking questions about totally unimportant details, and doesn't budge even when a lot of the class gets the same question wrong. All of this could be forgivable if she was a nice person, at least in my book. However she is also just plain condescending and rude to me and most of my friends; she liked one guy in my study group so by the end of the semester we had him go and ask all of our questions because he was one of maybe 5 students in the class that Schafer didn't degrade.

TLDR; do chem if you have self-esteem and care about learning the material.