Deborah Mowshowitz

while the workload was pretty light, this was by far my least favorite class. she would basically just review the week's lecture through a slideshow and have a boring, surface-level activity at the end about what we learned. she wasted a lot of time sorting people into groups and going on and on with the slides, so i felt like i didn't absorb anything she was saying. as someone who is not studying stem, i felt totally unprepared for the midterm because the questions she was giving us were not representative of the caliber of those on the exam. we had a pretty good sub one day and that's when i realized how bad the regular classes were. that being said, dr m is a very nice lady! she is super open for office hours/questions and responds to emails very quickly. she also brings snacks, which helps.

PLEASE AVOID IF YOU ARE NOT GOOD AT SCIENCE. she does not explain most of the things well and personally left me even more confused than before coming to her class. however that is not to say that she is not a kind person. she brings snacks and she will want to help you if you go to her office hours, however I do not think that she is good at summarizing and giving you the essential information to understand the concepts we learn in the lecture.

I am a former postbac who linked into medical school. I am writing now in hopes of giving prospective students my retrospective hope and advice. While taking Professor Mowshowitz's intro biology course did prepare me for the course content in medical school, it made me recall biochemistry with a specific unease. Coming into Columbia with no biology background, and looking back on the experience now, one of the long-term effects of experiencing this course the way I did was to plant a seed of dread in the subject matter, which I am now spending dedicated effort to undo. Students in this biology course perpetuated an atmosphere of constant alarm. Professor Mowshowitz's lectures were illuminating, but overshadowed by her trademark multiple choice examinations. Each exam was a jigsaw puzzle, and your learning experience doesn't need to be this way. What I wish I had done more of is to consciously seek joy in learning the clinical relevance of each topic early on, much earlier than medical school. Hidden behind each peril to my GPA was a fascinating world of molecular biology that I wish I had embraced. While this optimism may not improve your immediate score, it may salvage your relationship with the subject for the future. In terms of scores, some students will do well, and others will not. You are all capable individuals. Please remember this as you navigate school life at Colum…

as a successful medical student in a highly ranked US MD school i want to come back to address the stupidy regarding rumors about this class. 1: Not a single admissions comittee member of any medical school cares who you take intro bio with (they do care about your gpa though), 2: It will not prepare you for the MCAT as much as having more free time for practice questions will. 3: It will have no bearing on your clinical performance, to say otherwise is a complete joke and shows no knowledge of what medical training actually entails . 4: you'll have much harder classes in med school, if you need an academic challenge don't worry you have plenty ahead of you. After struggles in Gen Chem I tried taking this course but found the exams to be unreasonably difficult for intro biology. I switched out of this class to Barnard and loved it. We learned anatomy as well which was helpful for the mcat and year 1 of medical school. She is a great teacher and lecturer that's true, but Its really only one class. Make your focus to get into med school first and try to enjoy your undergrad years.

Take Intro Bio at Barnard. There is absolutely nothing else you need to know about this teacher.

What you need to know: 1. Take biology at Barnard. Columbia should be ashamed of itself for only offering a single "introductory" biology course. 2. The class average will be curved to a 73, which is set to a B-, so you have roughly a coin-flip's chance of getting a C+ or worse. 3. If you go to every single lecture, memorize all the information from the lecture notes for the class, understanding all of it perfectly, but fail to "understand" her questions from her problem sets, you will manage a 50-60 on the exam at best. 3. You will be gaslighted several times by her and Professor Chasin, who will tell you that memorizing the information isn't necessary, and simply understanding how to apply the information is key. NEWS FLASH: you can't learn to properly apply the information without memorizing it. Therefore, if you went to a great high school, are fresh off of AP bio, and you spent your summers during high school at expensive science camps, then you'll be one step ahead in this course. You will simply need to master solving Mowshowitz's questions. 4. All the questions are based on experimentation; experiments that are very difficult to understand and visualize. Chasin and Mowshowitz use tinker toys from the 1960s as visual aids. Once I started looking up the experiments on YouTube in order to see what is going on, I started to do very well. So ~$1800 per credit to study probl…

What you need to know: 1. Take biology at Barnard. If enough people start bypassing this garbage class, maybe then Columbia, which should be ashamed of itself for only offering a single "introductory" biology course, will cut out this nonsense of using this course to redirect undergrads out of premed and into other majors. 2. The class average will be curved to a 73, which translates to a B-. You have roughly a coin-flip's chance of getting a C+ or worse. 3. If you go to every single lecture, memorize all the information from the lecture notes for the class, understanding all of it perfectly, but fail to "understand" her questions from her problem sets, you will manage a 50-60 on the exam at best. 3. You will be gaslighted several times by her and Professor Chasin, who will tell you that memorizing the information isn't necessary, and simply understanding how to apply the information is key. NEWS FLASH: you can't learn to properly apply the information without memorizing it. Therefore, if you went to a great high school, are fresh off of AP bio, and you spent your summers during high school at expensive science camps, then you'll be one step ahead in this course. You will simply need to master solving Mowshowitz's questions. 4. All the questions are based on experimentation: experiments that are very difficult to understand through only written words. Chasin and Mowshowitz use…

This is a difficult class. If it matters to you, I got an A- the first semester and a B+ the second semester (FYI this was my first ever B at Columbia). If this were any other class I would be really mad at myself for getting a B, but the amount of interesting information I learned made up for it and I don't regret taking this class at all. I'm premed, and I thought Mowsh bio would be the reason I drop premed. The class ended up instead making me want to continue to be premed even more. I think professor Mowshowitz is one of the best teachers I've ever had at Columbia—there's a lot of information, and some of it is difficult, but she is so good at explaining concepts. This is why my number 1 tip for this class would be to simply FOCUS IN CLASS. I started to pay a lot less attention in class second semester and ended up having to learn a lot of information on my own (which is much, much, harder). Another thing that made this class so great is that there was no required readings—95% of the things you needed to know were taught in class (which is another reason you need to FOCUS IN CLASS). If you pay attention in class, do all of the practice problems in a timely manner, and read her lecture notes (which are easy to read, to the point, and teach you that last 5% you don't learn in class), then I promise you will enjoy this class and not get a terrible grade. Mowshowitz isn't this…

I had a really tough time with this class and decided Barnard was a better choice. It was just weird, and very tricky. Barnard is a traditional biology class, straightforward and organized from basics to advanced material. We learned about anatomy which I enjoyed.I took biochem separately as is required by many medical school admission committees. My study time as full time student was manageable and I was able to explore opportunities at the medical campus. I don't believe that I would have had as much time for that if I contributed with mowshowits as a full time student. I did well on my MCAT and have been accepted to multiple medical schools including highly ranked ones here in NY. Maybe if you are a postbacc and have time for it you will like it but I'm glad I switched. There are allot of rumors but the truth is that med schools care about your grades not where or who you took Bio with.

If you become a doctor, someone is eventually going to die because you could've done something better, or didn't know any better. That's going to be more difficult to deal with than getting a C+ in this class (or it should be). If you can't emotionally handle that, don't become a doctor. That said, don't take this class unless you have to.