BIOL 3010

This class killed my passion.

The professor doesn’t want to teach the class, in my opinion. As the previous post mentioned, there’s no rubric, no guidance, nothing for the exams. And that exam was the day after break, I spent my whole break studying for it instead of spending more time with my hometown friends.

Prof. Parichy, if you see this post (and I hope you do), please make the grading less harsh. I was very passionate about this class at the beginning of the school year, as I’m interested in genetics, and this is the kind of subject I want to focus on after school for my PhD. But this class has given me no hope. I kept telling myself after the first exam that if I studied harder, I would get a good grade or at least the grade I deserved, but it turns out the TAs just slapped me in the face with the Exam 2 grade.

TIP: Don’t take this class. It will kill your passion and completely burn you out.

I can't speak for previous semesters since they were open-note, online exams, from what I've heard, but this new format of having different TAs grade separate long-answer questions EACH WITH DIFFERENT RUBRICS makes this class incredibly frustrating. As a few reviews have mentioned, this class is exam heavy: 4 exams, one drop, and a somewhat optional final if you didn't like how your exams averaged out. The format is that you get 50 minutes to complete 10 multiple-choice and 2 long-answer questions. You get all of the questions beforehand; sounds super easy, right? Except that even if you answer every part of what the questions ask you, if you miss a mark off of an imaginary rubric not disclosed by anyone beforehand, you're almost certain to get about 3 points off, which, if you calculate it, is almost a whole letter grade knocked off your exam score. I've gone to so many OH to argue my score and ask for insight from different TAs, and half the time the TA says, "Yeah, I don't understand why you got points taken off for that." The class average is near 60%, and Professor Parichy doesn't seem fazed by it.

There’s zero standardization. You never see the rubric until it’s too late, so the whole thing feels like blind guessing. You can spend hours memorizing every prereleased question and still lose points for not using the exact buzzword that particular TA wanted. At that point, it stops testing your actual understanding of biology and instead rewards whoever can best reverse-engineer how each grader thinks.

What makes it worse is the lack of meaningful feedback. You’re told to go to office hours with the TA who graded your question, but even if you rearrange your entire schedule to do that, you’ll get vague comments like “missing detail” with zero explanation of what was missing or how to improve next time. Office hours become an exhausting game of trying to decode hidden grading patterns rather than actually learning the material. And because exams are weighted so heavily, one or two small deviations from an unspoken rubric can tank your overall grade — even if you genuinely understand the content.

Honestly, don’t take this class unless you absolutely have to. And if you do, try to wait until they (hopefully) fix this system or take it with a different professor. This is mentally draining and extremely discouraging, especially considering how many students have complained and nothing has changed.

Reading the reviews for my semester, they definitely seem very polarized and I do agree with some of their comments, but I don't think they are being entirely fair to Parichy.
The entire course is based on 4 exams, with one drop. The final can be taken and will replace your midterm average if you score high enough. The exams themselves are 10 mcqs and 2 long frqs. Yes you do get all the questions before hand (he does change some of the wording of the mcqs)
You can tell that Parichy is super knowledgeable about genetics, and I will say that you will learn a lot about genetics. He is very much into making sure we can apply our knowledge, as he brings in many research papers, case studies, and examples about diseases. It is a lot of information and is definitely not an easy class that you can study the night before the exam. But I did truly enjoy the content.
Regarding the grading, I can agree it can definitely feel arbitrary and unclear what exactly they want from us.
BUT Parichy was so generous with extra credit this semester. We 9 points added to our final grade for submitting handwritten notes, and I think one or two points extra for submitting a survey. I got an 85% average on the exams, but I only took 2 midterms out of 4. This was because one exam was canceled the day of bc the printing service failed us, and the other was canceled due to snow. But Parichy gave us a free 100 for one of the missed exams and averaged the three exams for the remaining exam. So in the end, I earned a 102% in the class.
But even if these exams were not canceled, you did not have to do amazing to get an A in this class. But if you are not a fan of this style of exam, I can guarantee that this will be Parichy's last semester of doing this. He may go back to the full mcq format.