BIOL 3010

Not as hard as everyone made it seem. All the extra homework really does help - make sure you do and understand all of it (the HW more than the tutorials and practice problems). Lectures are boring, learning curves are a nice waste of time, Claire is kind of crazy (she "raps".......). Personally, I don't like Claire. But she tries hard enough to be available to answer student's questions and at least pretends like she cares about her students.
First third of the semester is easy - all DNA/RNA review
Last 2/3 is all probability/pedigree/punnett square stuff that I find really difficult, but other people loved.
DON'T get bogged down on details. Claire like big pic.
Tests are unpredictable and a weird format, but as long as she continues giving partial credit, you'll do fine. There's no real way to prepare for them.. just go over lectures and practice problems. Some questions are super predictable, some will come out of NOWHERE. Literally never mentioned ever.
Discussion sections are super helpful - TA Brittany Sutherland is bomb. She's so great, she should teach. GO TO HER OFFICE HOURS.

All in all, I learned a lot. It wasn't that bad.

Genetics is a super interesting topic, and I would recommend taking it just to learn about it. Professor Cronmiller was a great lecturer, but overall her homework assignments and tests felt like the questions were wordy and tricky. It often felt like I was trying to interpret what she meant and would want rather than trying to actually solve a genetics problem. So the class ended up being difficult, but I think it was more from the wording rather than the subject material.

Worst class ever. Should be worth way more than 4 credits. Way harder than the material should be but required for bio majors so...

The class is designed for you to get ideas from lots of pre-class assignments and homework in order for you to get the "bigger picture". Professor Cronmiller or M.C. Milla (she raps like Tupac and breaks moves like Michael Jackson) is a great professor and wants you to succeed. Just go to office hours and experience it for yourself, but make sure you are willing to work your ass off for the semester.

This course was actually much more difficult than I gathered from other students' opinions. All I do is study, so I can say that I put in 150% effort, and the exams still seemed to be extremely difficult. Take easy classes when you take this class, as the work is nothing short of overwhelming (IF you care about your grade, of course).

This is a challenging class. But 75% of that challenge is purely the exams; they're brutal, and the questions seem like they come out of left field no matter how much/what material you study. Do not expect to do well on her exams, but the rest of the class is really not that bad at all. Readings, weekly homework sets (5 questions each), ~biweekly problem sets, and daily pre-class warmups (10 simple graded questions, 10 minutes) felt monotonous at times but really were great at making you feel like you were actually learning something interesting. TAs Adam and Brian were awesome. Cronmiller herself is even pretty cool.

All in all, pretty cool class, you'll learn a lot, just don't expect your grade to reflect that.

This class was interesting and Claire, while rude and always blunt, pretends to care for the students. She is very difficult to deal with personally yet "cares for her students and hopes they do well". I did learn a lot in the class however I still got a poor letter grade and I feel that that was not an accurate description of how I learned.

This class has too many online components and the grading sucks. She does not care if you know it and is just out to make the material harder than it needs to be. If this is an elective, run.

First of all, if this class is NOT a requirement for your major RUN AWAY NOW. I'm serious. As for the rest of us, this class is exceedingly, ridiculously difficult. Having already taken Physics, Organic Chem, Cell Bio, AND Immunology before this class, I felt well-equipped to handle this course. Oh how wrong I was. Claire centers the class around online homework--be prepared to be doing some sort of genetics homework every day. The questions are exceedingly challenging, but DO THEM--they will help save your grade later. Claire's tests are tricky and ambiguous, and there is no way to prepare for them except to make sure you know how to do each and every homework problem and do plenty of practice problems out of the book. Overall, my greatest disappointment with this class was that I truly didn't feel like I learned anything new--I only learned how to use logic and statistics to approach problems. If you have to take this class do the homework and rack up as many points as you can to buffer your test grade, if you don't have to take this class DO NOT TAKE IT.

I feel that Prof Conmiller assumes that everyone in the class as devoted to genetics as she is, and has 20+ hours a week to devote to her class, when this is just not the case. While the interactive classes (3 hours per week), discussion sections (1 hour per week), homework (~3 hours per week), practice problems, (2-6 hours per week) readings (2-3 hours per week), and screencasts (1 hour per week) were all helpful to my learning, I constantly felt overwhelmed by the amount of work I had to do, and the amount of material I was expected to learn. This was basically just the bare minimum, and didn't include the 20+ hours of studying I would do and the 2-3 hours of office hours I would attend the weekend before the test. Despite this time commitment, I was constantly discouraged by my grades in the class. Although I was pass this class due to the gratuitous points earned through mastering genetics and discussion, I feel as though the expectations for this class are just way more than I have ever had in ANY class in my 4 years at UVA.