Bio 2290 Final
A short "disclaimer" from the instructors:
The Biology 2290 Final Exam will be different from those of many other courses in that it will ask you to demonstrate skill in short answer style questions rather than simply to regurgitate information in the form of multiple choice questions. Although your grade in this course may be quite high going into the exam, recall that this grade reflects what you can do given lots of time and access to resources; therefore, it does not necessarily predict your performance under exam conditions.
The following sample questions and answers are provided only to give students ideas of the types of questioning styles and expectations of responses that may appear on the exam. No attempt has been made to ensure that these particular sample questions reflect the breadth or depth of expectation for this particular offering of the course. Please consult the Exam Review Sheet available on webCT for detailed objectives for the current course.
Some personal perparation advice:
Most people underestimate this exam because they go into the exam with a pretty high mark. A 30% final exam although less weightier than some of your other courses is enough to bring you down significantly. Many people who did this course can testify to that. I'm not saying that it's a killer exam. I'm just saying don't underestimate this exam just because you have a high mark going in. Some tips:
- Do the sample exam questions. They are very predictive of the kinds of questions that you will get. If you get something wrong on the sample exam, go in and ask questions. Clarify and make sure you understand because they're likely to appear again!
- Go through carefully all the objectives for each section. (The instructors will post a list of these objectives). Read related sections in the Resource Manual. Although definitions of common scientific terms seems kinda pointless, that's some of the things they are going to test. Below are some notes that I took for the final. These are by no means a complete set of what you need to know and are only meant as a reference.
The Biology 2290 Final Exam will be different from those of many other courses in that it will ask you to demonstrate skill in short answer style questions rather than simply to regurgitate information in the form of multiple choice questions. Although your grade in this course may be quite high going into the exam, recall that this grade reflects what you can do given lots of time and access to resources; therefore, it does not necessarily predict your performance under exam conditions.
The following sample questions and answers are provided only to give students ideas of the types of questioning styles and expectations of responses that may appear on the exam. No attempt has been made to ensure that these particular sample questions reflect the breadth or depth of expectation for this particular offering of the course. Please consult the Exam Review Sheet available on webCT for detailed objectives for the current course.
Some personal perparation advice:
Most people underestimate this exam because they go into the exam with a pretty high mark. A 30% final exam although less weightier than some of your other courses is enough to bring you down significantly. Many people who did this course can testify to that. I'm not saying that it's a killer exam. I'm just saying don't underestimate this exam just because you have a high mark going in. Some tips:
- Do the sample exam questions. They are very predictive of the kinds of questions that you will get. If you get something wrong on the sample exam, go in and ask questions. Clarify and make sure you understand because they're likely to appear again!
- Go through carefully all the objectives for each section. (The instructors will post a list of these objectives). Read related sections in the Resource Manual. Although definitions of common scientific terms seems kinda pointless, that's some of the things they are going to test. Below are some notes that I took for the final. These are by no means a complete set of what you need to know and are only meant as a reference.
Post-Exam Reflections
I wrote the Bio 2290F Exam on Dec.14, 2009 (first semester of 2nd year)
The exam was divided into 3 booklets, one for each of K, Z, D Units
Breakdown and Analysis by Section
D Unit: This section was extremely similar to the practice exam. I had to fill out two charts (similar to practice exam), calculate reaction rate, calculate volume in the haemocytometer, list 3 features of a buffer. There were 5 questions with multiple parts to each question. It was a really fair section. One question did throw me off though and that was "how many times does this certain volume fit into 1 mL?" I think I was rushing at the time and didn't realize that 1 mL = 1 cm^3 (I know, you must think I'm dumb :P) So yeah, know your conversions. Other than that, the only other thing was that when I went in to review my exam, I realized I made some pretty careless mistakes. Part of the reason was because I didn't really have time to check over things carefully and well, with about 50 min for each section.
Marked out of 22. (I know eh... make sure you check carefully, one number copied wrong will cost)
K Unit: No tricks here, just be very specific and detailed in your answers. Literally, you're going to going to be marked by each correct word you have on the paper. What I mean by that is if the answer was "There was a significant decrease in the number of gadolinium-enhanced lesions between treatment A and treatment B", you would get a mark for writing the following words: "significant, decrease, number, gadolinium-enhanced lesions, treatment A and B". Get my drift? Be specific and you'll get all 15 marks for a question that asks "What were the findings of this experiment?" Now for my exam, they also awarded bonuses. So for you keeners, write down the general trends as well in addition to significant differences: "In general, as concentration of drug dose A increased, the number of lesions decreased"
Marked out of 87.
Z Unit: 5 questions. There are some simple calculation questions like the quiz in the beginning. On my exam, they asked: "What assumptions are made in determining the number of bacterial colonies?" I think the answer was all transformants grew into colonies or something and other reasons could be human error etc...
Question 2: You're given the data of the experiment and told to state the Hypothesis or Conclusion.
Question 3: What would happen if you increased 37 degree incubation time?
Question 4: Design experiment to test for streptomycin resistance. The twist to this question was that the plasmid pB2290 (how ironic) creates an antibiotic destroying protein. Answering this question is similar to what you've done in the in-class transformation, but make sure to refer to key terms and again, be specific about what you're referring to i.e. the LB plate would show growth -> always mention what treatment you're referring to
For bonus, we had to mention what would happen to the satellite colonies. Similarly to K Unit, we didn't even know that bonus marks could be awarded. I only discovered I was given bonus marks till after I saw my marked exam.
Question 5: Talk about how the controls work in the experiment you designed in Question 4. Marked out of 27.
Coming out of the exam, I thought I had destroyed it (i.e. 90+) but I only ended up with ~80 (averaged for all 3 sections) I think part of the reason was that I underestimated this exam (as did many others). Lack of preparation (not reading carefully over past-exam answers) and not being specific enough when referring to stuff on the exam (i.e. K Unit results to experiments) led to a somewhat unexpected result. Lastly, I had my organic chem exam the day after so I was focusing more of my time on that.
As a sidenote: CHECK YOUR EXAM AFTER! When my marks were posted on webCT, it was like 60 something for K and Z Unit which was pretty horrifying lol. After looking over my exam, I realized that for K Unit, the TA miscalculated my mark by like 20%...(I'm not joking) and for Z-Unit, I got a failing grade for one question, but I had most of the key points on there, but I didn't mention some things in detail so I talked to Ray about it and he gave me a passing grade.
TAs are marking hundreds of exams and it's very likely that they'll slip up somewhere. Do yourself a favour (it's going to take 20 min) and make sure your exams were marked correctly. I'm so glad I went in to talk to the profs because I came out with a 5% increase in my final mark. I know my case is pretty exceptional, but nevertheless, no harm in checking.
So that's my experience with 2290. I know everyone keeps complaining about how it's so horrible and stuff. I don't think it's that bad. It's definitely a lot of work, but look at it this way: you put in effort and you're rewarded pretty generously in my opinion. 6% for keeping a lab book tidy, two 5% quizzes that test gr.11 chemistry knowledge, 1% for plating stuff properly...
Wish you all the best with this course!