The High School/College Thread (1 Viewer)

[Scott_J]

I agree, Andrew. But we have to take them. Good luck on yours.

I'm about to start my last day of college classes ever. Hard to believe.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I have to take the Calc AP exam tomorrow, but I'm not worried. I'm just happy that our teachers will be loosening up now that the APs are almost over.

 

[Andrew_A_Paul]

Ya, I had 2 finals today. One went really well. My finance final kicked my ass. I really do hate that class.

on a happier note......
douglas.min.net/essay

funny stuff, make ya laugh while you are studying.

 

[Seth--L]

Well, in theory if you've kept up with the readings and class work you shouldn't have to cram. And it's your own choice to wait until a few days before the test to study.

My only beef with finals is that there will probably be no situations in life when you're put in a room, and told that you have 2 and a half hours to put down everything you know about a particular subject on paper.

Thankfully, few of my profs have finals. Most just have a paper due sometime during finals week. The last time I had more than one final exam was two years ago.

 

[Andrew_A_Paul]

Well, in theory if you've kept up with the readings and class work you shouldn't have to cram. And it's your own choice to wait until a few days before the test to study.

Yes, good on paper, bad in practice.

My biggest problem with finals is that we have a "dead week" but we still have class and some of the profs have the last test then and still have a final. What's the point of calling it dead week if you still have class or a test?

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

My only beef with finals is that there will probably be no situations in life when you're put in a room, and told that you have 2 and a half hours to put
down everything you know about a particular subject on paper.

Yeah, that's pretty much my basic problem with them also. Its finals week up here too, doing all that and getting ready to go home, and looking for an apartment for the summer so that I don't have to stay at home the whole summer...a bit much. Toss on that looking for a steady job, and its all a blur right now.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I hate "academic" finals. I'm getting sick of thinking. But of course, I'm regessing as there should be a logical progression from simple regurgitation to critical thinking skills.

But therein lies a problem. I swear my professor can't give a straight answer to simple questions. His favorite answer to every question is, "Yes, no, maybe." You have multiple choice questions with seven different answers. And here's the kicker: three of them would be correct, just not the "best" answer. And what's the "best" answer? Whatever he believes in at the moment.

Take the following question:

9. Which of the following cell types is most likely to have IMP receptors for angiotensin II?
a. Hepatocytes.
b. Smooth muscle.
c. Neurons of the CNS.
d. Adrenal zona fasciculata.
e. Kidney collecting tubule.
f. Gastrointestinal enteroendocrine.

That was an easy question. This isn't a hard question, but damn if you try to come up with a good answer for this next one.

1. (15 points) There is a strain of mouse in which the regulation of glucocorticoid synthesis is rather unusual; in fact, it does not seem to be regulated at all, the glucocorticoids are present in the blood at a constant, very low concentration. To get at the basis of this abnormality, ACTH was injected into some of the mice and the concentrations of cortisol in the blood measured afterwards. Cortisol concentration in the blood increased after injection and stayed elevated for a few hours before returning to its usual low level. Physiologically effective amounts of CRF (corticotrophin releasing factor, a hypothalamic hormone) were then injected but no consequent increase in cortisol occurred. But the level of enkephalin in the blood did increase after CRF injection. Perplexed by this last result, the investigators removed pituitary glands from normal and abnormal mouse for histological and biochemical analysis.

By histological criteria, pituitary sections from the two kinds of mouse were indistinguishable.

Using a new technique to separate pituitary basophils from all other cells, the investigators were able to extract all the proteins contained in basophils and compare those present in normal and abnormal cells. To their great relief, there were only a few differences, one of them being the total absence of two particular normal proteins from the abnormal basophils. Thinking they had at least identified the CRF receptor, they sequenced the purified proteins but found nothing of much interest in either, no transmembrane domains nor kinase substrate sites. Feeling somewhat depressed they mixed one of the pure proteins with a couple of other proteins they happened to have around, angiotensinogen and serum albumin, and examined the mixture after a while. They found that the angiotensinogen was now present as three different peptides, each larger than 25 amino acids, while the albumin now appeared as two large peptides. The other protein gave similar results but the fragments of angiotensinogen and albumin were of different sizes. At this point they got very excited, did a few more quick experiments, and rushed a manuscript to The Journal of Molecular Endocrinology.

If you had been part of the research team, what would you have concluded is the basis of the odd glucocorticoid and enkephalin responses in this strain of mouse?

The thing that irks the hell out of me about this question is that no matter how good of an answer you give, it's impossible to get full credit. According to the professor, the answer to this question could be done in one paragraph. It's funny I have to sit and read this thing and figure out what the hell it's asking for in the context of two hours.

P.S. what the hell is enkephalin? I know it's in adrenal medulla cell granules, but not much else.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

You know what's worse than Finals? Studying for finals.

 

[Michael Pakula]

"Don't most schools want to see scores from three SATII tests? "

The only schools that require the SAT and three SAT 2's of your choice are the competitive colleges which include the following below.

The Ivy League Schools - Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale

The Little Ivies - Amherst, Emory, Moravian, Williams, St. John's, Swarthmore, Vanderbilt, Haverford

The New Kids On The Block - Duke, Cooper Union, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice

The Three Tech Giants - MIT, Cal Tech, and Stanford

Other Competitive colleges include - Boston University, College Of Willam And Marry, New York University, Washington And Lee, Tufts.

I will update the list as I find more.


-Mike

 

[Morgan Jolley]

The college I'm going to, Univ. of Rochester, didn't require anything beyond SATs.

 

[Seth--L]

Haverford is new? It's like 170 years-old. It's older than Cornell by quite a bit.

From what I remember of the College application process, most first and second tier schools either require 3 SAT II test (one of them in writing) or they strongly recommend them.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Good luck to anybody with other Finals remaining.

P.S. I'm scared.

 

[Michael Pakula]

It's good you mentioned that I will fix the Haverford mistake. I meant to put that under The Little Ivies.

-Mike

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Fin

 

[Rob Lutter]

I finished almost 2 weeks ago now... 3.6GPA, biatch! And I finished all my general ed courses, w00t!