I would not recommend this course for pre-med students who want to boost their GPA. The amount of reading in this class is quite high, around 80 pages a week of single-spaced, densely packed material. Additionally, there is a book to read every month, so in total you read about thirty 20-page articles and three books.

For the tests, you need to know the material very well, and there is little room for error, so reading the books and articles twice is likely necessary. Frankly, this class is too much work for too little reward, and for people without strong reading skills, it is going to be overwhelming.

This course is a solid option whether you are pre-med, are just generally interested in healthcare related topics, or just are looking for an interesting and manageable Arts and Sciences course. The structure was 3 exams and 1 paper all worth 25% each. The exams were primarily on required readings and lecture material, and they were a blend of MCQ and essays. The paper was a blend of analysis based on readings and personal narrative. You had the entire semester to do the paper, but it was not very long. I felt everything was graded very fairly. The hardest part was probably some tricky MCQ questions in the exams. They were worth a lot of points so there was small margin of error. Overall, if you stayed on top of the material this was a very fair and interesting course!