BIO 101/102/130 VS BIO 151/152

I only took 101 but it's extremely straightforward to study for. I didn't even go to lecture the last half of the course (don't do this obviously) and scored above average on both exams. All I did was create a word doc with all of the learning objectives for that exam, fill them out and re-read them multiple times. I color-coded the learning objectives based on my confidence in knowing that particular information. Red means I can't recall the information/it's unfamiliar to me, orange means I can remember the information if I see it, and green means I can recite the whole learning objective. I just aimed to get everything in orange. You don't need to memorize everything word for word. Answers on exams will jump out at you as wrong if you do this enough and you can answer by elimination if it comes to that. Here's en example of what my notes looked like: https://i.imgur.com/gj50los.png

The other big part of my studying was reading through the slides. While doing this, I created a mental mind map for the hierarchy of concepts. Just reading through the slides doesn't build connections between concepts. So it is important to understand the relationship between different slides. This helps in recalling information during an exam when you can visualize a slide and it's relation to the information you are trying to access.

I didn't study or look at the material (besides the weekly quizzes) until 3 days before exams. I gave myself 3 days, about ~6 hours a day and that was enough for me to score above average. If you know how to study, 101 isn't a big deal. If you have any questions about the course in general I'd be happy to answer.

/r/UWMadison Thread