Dubear Kroening: You’re interested in just a biology degree. Biology degrees are often used for people who are thinking about maybe pre-med, pre-dentistry, physical therapy, occupational therapy. There’s a number of master’s degrees or beyond programs but in order to get into those programs you need a bachelor’s degree and a lot of times that either a bachelor’s degree in biology, in chemistry or sometimes in biochemistry. Usually any of those three are considered you know, kind of pre-med. There is no real official pre-med program or pre occupational therapy program there are certain courses you want to take and that’s what we’ll talk about a little bit right now. For any type of biology degree, I don’t care where you transfer to; the idea is that you need that introductory year of biology and that introductory year of chemistry. And so the biology is typically ZO 101 and Botany 130. You should know that ZO 101 is offered only in the fall and that Botany 130 is offered only in the Spring and so student who are on this kind of general Biology track will take ZO 101 in the Fall and Botany 130 in the Spring. One other thing that you can do is often times many of the universities accept our Biology 109 or Concepts of Biology as a substitute for ZO 101 or even sometimes as a substitute for Botany 130 and if you’re confused or wondering about it as I mentioned earlier you can always go to the transfer information system or TIS and see how those courses transfer just to make sure that, you know, that it’s going to transfer the right way. I had also mentioned chemistry. Even if you get a biology major, they expect you to have a certain amount of chemistry and this can kind of trip students up because the first year of chemistry is CHEM 145 and then CHEM 155. CHEM 145 is only offered in the Fall. The kind of sticking point is, in order to take CHEM 145 you either have to have already taken Math 110 or be currently enrolled in Math 110 and sometimes that can kind of slow our students down. So I’m letting you know this now that way you can be prepared that you have that prerequisite or you’re planning on taking that at the same time so that way you don’t fall behind. If you’re not ready to take CHEM 145 because of your math and you can’t do that in the fall of your first semester, you’re already starting a year behind. Why that effects things is because you’re also expected to take a year of organic chemistry. So this year of organic chemistry has Organic Chem in the first semester and then Organic Chem in the second semester and in order to take it you need that year of general chemistry. So if you get a year behind, then you’re a year behind for your general and then you’re another year behind for your organic. You know, you’re a junior by the time you’re getting done taking Organic at this point you’re already transferred to another institution. And sometimes those are prerequisites for like a biochemistry class or something else and so you’re taking a lot of specialized courses that last year just to kind of catch up on everything. So it’s good to know this ahead of time. Often as well the biology degree or chemistry degree or you know if you are thinking about Biochem even you have to have a year of physics and that year of physics is Physics 141 the first semester and again Physics 142 the second semester. So again these are consecutive. You can only take one in the fall and then a second one in the Spring so you want to think about that too because if you’re thinking about doing all of these in the first…  when you’re a freshman you know you’re taking three science classes all with labs in the fall that can you know tend to get a little overwhelming sometimes but, if you’re into sciences you’re going to find sometimes that’s going to happen there’s really no way around it. Taking the Bio 109 or the ZO 101 in the Fall and the Botany 130 or whatever in the Spring, sometimes those courses are prerequisites for other courses that you might want to take. Something like anatomy or physiology, you need to have an introductory biology class before you can take those so again, taking those as soon as you can helps you stay on track and kind of get things out of the way. Additionally, something like microbiology or genetics also has a general biology class as a prerequisite so you kind of want to think about that and also be sure to check if you know where you want to transfer to how those courses transfer in the transfer information system because if you have that information you know that it is going to transfer properly because if you are taking it because you think that is going to transfer as that same class, sometimes that’s not always the case so you want to protect yourself. Make sure you have that information so that way you’re not taking a class that doesn’t count or ya know doesn’t count the way you think it would. You’ll still get credit for it but it’s just called a general elective credit and it really doesn’t do you a whole lot of good. It gives you credits towards your degree but it doesn’t give you credit towards that specific class that you need  for that specific degree requirement. Again, there are certain things, depending on which school you want to transfer to sometimes they’ll have specific requirements maybe a year of foreign language or something like that. I know Madison requires a year of foreign language no matter what so you want to look at that if you’re planning on transferring there. And that’s even if you have an associate’s degree from here which I mentioned earlier. It would be a good idea to do to get away from a lot of those picky requirements except for a couple of instances and foreign language. That year of foreign language is one of the things that Madison requires even if you have an associate’s degree so you want to be careful for things like that.