My Review of the Freshman Science Honors Program
By: Sanaa Alam ‘25
Coming from a graduating senior class of 40 students in Texas, I was intimidated by the incoming freshman class of approximately 4,000 students at USC. Moreover, as an incoming Chemistry major who is following the premedical track, I was scared to enter General Chemistry and Biology classrooms with 100+ students. I knew I would have to take the large introductory courses throughout college, but I didn’t feel prepared for that transition. After I accepted my offer to USC, I looked into USC’s Freshman Science Honors (FSH) Program. It is advertised to Natural Science majors and offers accelerated courses in general biology and chemistry for two semesters (CHEM 115a/115b and BISC 121/221) with class sizes of 60 students. For me, a student who craved to be in an academically rigorous environment, FSH offered all of the things I wanted. However, something I did not consider was that my high school was not very challenging, and I did not know how challenging the academics at USC would already be. Still, I knew going to college at USC was going to be a transition for me, and I felt that the smaller class sizes would provide a more seamless transition coming from my background.
Image from Hal Gatewood
After getting accepted into the program, I was excited but a bit hesitant on my first day of class because I had done the International Baccalaureate program in high school, and I completed the Higher Level courses of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics, but not Biology. I realized that not only was I at a disadvantage in the course because I didn’t take Biology but also because I did not take any courses in the Advanced Placement program. On the first day of biology class, my professor asked our class, “Who here has taken AP Biology?” and almost 90% raised their hands. My teacher said that if we didn’t take the course, we might struggle in the course. I realized, very early on in college, that studying in the college requires much more effort than studying in high school, especially when I came into the class without a foundation that many of my peers had. Without creating a proper schedule or being able to efficiently manage my time, I ended up leaving a lot of my studying for Biology and Chemistry for a few days before my exam which did not yield me high-achieving grades.
Image from the National Cancer Institute
In my first semester, my chemistry class (CHEM 115a) was based on creating foundations in chemistry (some of the stuff we saw I had gone over in high school) and my biology class (BISC 121) focused on ecology, evolution, and the diversity of life on Earth. CHEM 115a was hard for me because we had bi-monthly midterms which I was very busy preparing for; as soon as one chemistry exam finished, I was stressed thinking about the material I had to study for the next exam. BISC 121 was manageable with 3 tests in the semester along with one final. Even if I didn’t do the best in the exams, the professors had weekly, 5 question online quizzes that reviewed my understanding of the content that week. Supplemental Instruction for chemistry and biology was also key to attending each week in order to have a proper review of the lecture material.
For the next semester, I found that BISC 221 was much harder (cell biology and physiology) and required more application of knowledge than the regurgitation of memory. For CHEM 115b, I noticed that there were only 3 exams and a final exam. However, the content of the course was not introduced to me before in high school, so I turned to the textbook to fill my gaps in understanding (I did not do this in CHEM 115a). Moreover, the labs for chemistry were much harder; usually, I was in the lab for all three hours, and analyzing data and writing information for the lab reports took me 4-5 hours to complete. For the biology lab, each semester FSH students join the Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) lab, where they are able to join current research labs instead of completing pre-determined lab experiments each week. For the first semester, I worked with bacteriophages, but for the second semester, I worked on kelp research. I really enjoyed contributing to current research projects and learning about marine biology research which is a field that I never saw myself getting into.
Image taken by Avel Chuklanov
My study habits from high school took some time to evolve and it caused me not to do as well as my peers. Along with that, imposter syndrome at USC hit me, and I fell so behind as a freshman. During the first semester, I spent so much time working on my grades which barely increased. However, in the next semester, I spent more time getting to know the people in FSH, and they became some of my closest friends. The small class sizes allowed me to talk to them more often and create long-lasting relationships. Moreover, being in such a small environment allowed me to further evaluate and improve myself. I learned how to take care of myself, such as getting proper rest the night before an exam, in order to help me succeed. Finally, FSH has external benefits (field trips), like a 1 day trip to Catalina Island, trips to the Getty Museum and Abalone Tide Pools, and more.
Looking back at my year in FSH, I made many new friends who share similar interests in our careers, but I also have never received any grades lower than the ones I received in my FSH classes. I felt like I had to rush through understanding and applying the material learned in class because there was so much to cover in such a short time span (between each exam). I wish I had focused more on changing my study habits and reviewing my material earlier than the week before the exam. There are many pros and cons to entering the FSH program, but if I had the chance, I would still join the program because I feel like I learned a lot about how to improve myself and change my perspective on my academic self-worth from a fixed to a growth mindset.
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