The first round of midterms are over, and you might be feeling the squeeze of trying to repair that 68 you got in your upper-level biology class. As we all get back to hitting the library, we may be finding ourselves nostalgic for the lower-level class, where we aced the first midterm and then the final. So what happened?

Sometimes lower-level courses do not prepare you for the subsequent levels. The base knowledge your 300-level professor might assume you have simply isn’t there — leaving you miles behind the rest of the class.

While certainly not all UNC students will have had this experience, a good portion should find this relatable. The main issue is that there are no clear roots to this problem and no clear solution.

One could argue looking at pre-University education is the best place to start identifying why some students have more base knowledge than others. Say your high school had a wonderful biology teacher who went above and beyond what was expected of them to make sure their students had a superb understanding of the subject. 

Students from this high school class would be in a better place to do well in their Biology 101 class and then in the rest of the major. They spend less time and effort playing catch-up, freeing up their time to study other subjects.