How to Pass BIOL 1107 and BIOL 1108 at UGA

If you’re reading this in week three and the first exam grades just dropped, you are not alone. BIOL 1107 and 1108 are the gateway sequence for biology, ecology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, pre-medicine, pre-PT, pre-PA, pre-vet, and pre-dental tracks at UGA. The combined enrollment is in the thousands every year, and the courses function as a filter — not because UGA wants them to, but because the course design assumes a specific kind of preparation that high school AP Biology does not always provide.

This guide walks through what the courses actually cover, where students typically lose points, and the study system that consistently produces A’s and B’s.

What BIOL 1107 and 1108 Actually Cover

BIOL 1107 (Principles of Biology I) focuses on information flow and evolution. The major units are:

• Macromolecules and the chemistry of life
• Cell structure and the endomembrane system
• DNA replication, transcription, and translation (the central dogma)
• Cell division (mitosis and meiosis)
• Mendelian and molecular genetics
• Population genetics and evolutionary mechanisms

BIOL 1108 (Principles of Biology II) typically covers organismal biology, physiology, and ecology — diversity of life, plant and animal systems, and ecological dynamics. The conceptual demands shift from molecular reasoning in 1107 to integrative systems thinking in 1108.

Both courses require co-enrollment in a lab (BIOL 1107L and 1108L), which carries its own grade and uses TopHat and post-lab assignments. The lab is a separate credit but a similar workload.

Why Students Struggle (the Honest Version)

Most BIOL 1107 grades are not lost on the content — they’re lost on the format mismatch. AP Biology rewards memorization of vocabulary and content recall. UGA’s BIOL 1107 rewards the ability to apply concepts to novel scenarios, interpret data, and reason from first principles. If your study method is flashcards alone, you will plateau in the C range no matter how many hours you put in.

Specific friction points:

1. Exam questions are scenario-based. A typical exam question presents an experiment you’ve never seen, a graph you’ve never looked at, or a mutation you’ve never studied — and asks you to reason about the outcome using principles from class.
2. The pace is unforgiving. Most professors cover one major topic per week. If you fall behind by two weeks, you are functionally ten percentage points behind on the next exam.
3. TopHat attendance is non-trivial. Most BIOL 1107 sections use TopHat for in-class participation questions. Missing class quietly erodes 5 to 10 points off your final grade.
4. The lab is a separate beast. Lab reports are graded for scientific writing quality, not just correct conclusions. Students who treat the lab as a side task often see the lab grade pull their overall biology GPA down by half a letter.
5. Retakes don’t erase grades. UGA does not replace grades on repeated courses — both attempts factor into your GPA. This makes prevention much more valuable than recovery.

The Exam Structure Most Professors Use

Common patterns in BIOL 1107 sections (varies by instructor, but the shape holds):

• 4 to 5 unit exams across the semester, each covering one major content block
• A non-cumulative final or a partially cumulative final
• TopHat or in-class participation worth 5 to 15% of the grade
• Pre-class assignments or homework worth 10 to 15%
• Optional extra credit, often through office-hour attendance or supplemental assignments

The grading is not curved in most sections. The contract is laid out in the syllabus, and that’s the contract you’re held to.

The Study System That Works

The students who consistently earn A’s in BIOL 1107 do four things:

1. Active recall on the conceptual layer, not just terms. After every lecture, close your notes and explain the day’s material out loud as if teaching it to a friend. If you can’t get through the explanation without checking notes, you don’t know it yet. Flashcards work for vocabulary; they do not work for concepts like “explain why a frameshift mutation is more disruptive than a missense mutation.”

2. Practice problems before review sessions. Most students review notes and feel like they understand. Then the exam asks a novel scenario and they freeze. Working practice problems exposes the gap between recognition and application. Use the textbook end-of-chapter problems, the professor’s old exams if available, and any practice provided through the course.

3. Build the central dogma diagram from memory weekly. If you can draw DNA → mRNA → protein with all enzymes, locations, directionalities, and regulatory points labeled — without looking — you will get a substantial fraction of the exam right by default. This is the single highest-yield study activity in 1107.

4. Treat lab like a writing course. Read the rubric before you write the lab report, not after. Your introduction needs a clear hypothesis. Your discussion needs to connect results to mechanism. Lab reports written the night before lose 15 to 20 points on writing quality alone.

What to Do When You’ve Already Had a Bad First Exam

If you scored below a 70 on the first exam, the recoverable path looks like this:

• Calculate exactly what you need on remaining exams to land at your target grade. Don’t guess. The math usually shows that recovery is possible with consistent B+ performance, which is a different mental frame than “I need to be perfect.”
• Identify the specific category of mistakes you made. Were they conceptual, careless, or time-pressure errors? The fix is different for each.
• Adjust your study system in the next week, not the next month. The longer you wait to change, the steeper the recovery curve.
• Consider getting outside help if your study system isn’t producing returns by exam two. Diagnostic-first tutoring (figuring out what specifically is missing) is usually more efficient than “more hours of the same thing.”

How BIOL 1107/1108 Connects to Pre-Health and Scholarships

BIOL 1107 and 1108 are required prerequisites for almost every pre-health track at UGA. They appear directly on your prerequisite GPA for medical, dental, PA, PT, and vet school applications — meaning a B- here costs you more than a B- in an elective. The full prerequisite map is in the UGA Pre-Med Prerequisites guide.

BIOL 1107 and 1108 are also approved STEM weighted courses for HOPE and Zell Miller, so a grade of B, C, or D receives a 0.5 GPA boost in your calculated HOPE GPA. The mechanics are covered in the HOPE and Zell Miller GPA guide, and if you’ve already lost the scholarship, the Zell Miller recovery guide walks through what to do next.

When to Get Help

If you’ve reworked your study approach for two weeks and your practice-problem performance still hasn’t moved, the gap is usually structural — a missing piece in your foundation, not effort. At that point, an outside tutor who can identify the specific bottleneck saves more time than a third week of trying alone. Rainwater Tutoring uses a diagnostic-first approach: we find the actual gap before prescribing a fix, so you spend tutoring time on what’s broken rather than what’s already working.