Biology Tips?

[nsguy1350]

When I take science tests, I find that biology is often my worst section. On a hard test, it might be chem, but I can usually get the great majority of the chem questions, so I am not worried about them. I generally struggle with biology, and find that I rely on luck to get many of the questions. Any tips on how to study for it? Resources or strategies? It just seems like so much memorization, and I don't know how to deal with that.

[101dalmatians]

[martillaso]

From taking AP Bio myself I've noticed that there's some stuff on the AP test that's not on the UIL tests and vice versa. Reading the Campbell book definitely helps, but the best thing to do is to just go complete the Bio section of every science test and do some in-depth study over the stuff that appears most often. If you've already exhausted that option, then maybe take some AP and IBO-related tests.

[hfscience]

Being someone who is more comfortable with the physical sciences, I found that the only way I could succeed at the biology portion of the test was memorization. It kinda stinks, but that is just the way biology is structured. There are some things that have a logical order to them like genetics and the chemical processes inside of the cell, but that certainly isn't what the majority of the test is like. The way I got better at biology was by looking at old tests and basically memorizing the answers. I know it sounds awful, but it got me first place at district in biology. The biology writer has been writing the tests for a while and she often repeats questions either exactly or very similarly. Good luck.

[sxk1693]

[hfscience]

When I was talking about the structure of biology, I wasn't referring to a specific high school biology teacher's view on the way college board writes the AP exam. I was talking about how biology has developed as a science. It is fundamentally different from chemistry and physics because it can't be described with math. For example, the nomenclature for different species is arbitrary and there is no way to know it other than just memorizing all of the information. On the other hand with physics, someone sufficiently good at math can literally explain all of electromagnetic phenomena with a hand full of equations. When I referenced bio-chemistry and genetics, I was simply saying that they are some examples of topics in biology having a structure based on a few fundamental concepts, which is similar to the way physical sciences work. I wasn't suggesting that anyone should necessarily study those topics. Also, saying that you are good at a certain topics in biology has nothing to do with the original post.

[nsguy1350]

[8055]

I just started taking science UIL and I really feel that biology is nothing more than the memorization of facts. I am doing my best to practice. Hope you do too nsguy1350.

[101dalmatians]