Professor Wormington is a great professor. This class expanded my interest for biology. You learn a whop ton of information and have to be able to synthesize all of it and apply it to many different types of questions on the test. Preparation for tests is extensive. You need to start studying at least a week in advance for them to give yourself time to understand all of the different concepts. There are 4 exams and then you have homeworks due every 3 days that actually boost your final grade. Every single word that Wormington says is important so I recommend recording lectures and listening to them again and transcribing every word. If you are a biology lover, the amount of time and effort you have to put into this class to get an ok grade doesn't seem as overbearing and painful. The concepts are very interesting and apply to many different medical fields. I do NOT recommend getting the textbook. It overcomplicates the things you need to know and all of info he provides in class is enough to get you through the tests.

TL;DR this class is worth taking if you really enjoy studying biology at the cell/molecular level, enjoy the "cause and effect" style of biology exams, and are willing to spend a significant amount of time (~15-20 hours) preparing for exams. In that case, I would definitely recommend this course as an informative, interesting, and relevant experience. I'd say one should only take this with at most only one other hard class, as exam preparation can eat up at least a few days and put you in a tough spot with other coursework.


Mike Wormington is a good-to-great lecturer with an infectious passion for cell biology. This course will give you an in-depth understanding of various topics in cell biology, including cancer, cell signaling, some pharmacology, experimental techniques, apoptosis, and other hot topics. I came away with a new appreciation for how biologists discover cellular processes and how that knowledge can be used to devise novel therapeutic approaches. However, the sheer volume of information that gets tossed your way during a lecture can be overwhelming. That "drinking out of a fire-hose " analogy comes to mind. The majority of students find it necessary to record the lectures as they take notes, as Wormington doesn't waste a sentence while lecturing about some very complex systems and pathways. I would recommend taking notes on your laptop in PowerPoint, since taking written notes is something of a lost cause for most mortals. Starting a week before the next exam, I would suggest listening to each lecture again and transcribing your typed notes into written ones. All the homework together counts for a test grade, so really give your all in answering each question. I neglected to take a few of them seriously, and my otherwise good grade was shaved a few points as a result. Don't waste (relatively) easy points.


Exams take a significant investment to do well on. They are all multiple choice can be quite complicated. Reread the questions and make sure you understand what it is asking. Mike WILL throw in "not" and "except" and the other SAT trick question words to throw you off. Think through everything as carefully as possible. I always ended up changing multiple answers when I would check the exam before I turned it in. The questions are very similar in style to the homework questions, but you cannot rely on the homework alone as a study source, as Wormington has plenty of curveballs he will throw you. Prepare early and often. Listen to lectures over again, transcribe notes, review and discuss each slide with a buddy multiple times, and make quizlets that contain all the proteins and enzymes and mutations (this class is acronym HEAVY) so you don't have to spend any time or mental effort trying to remember what each acronym represents during an exam. One quizlet shortcut I can suggest is to search for pre-existing BIOL 3000 exam quizlets that other UVA students have already made, and simply go over the PowerPoint slides to see if you need to add anything. It will save you buckets of time. Another thing I would recommend is booking a room at Clem or wherever you can have access to a big whiteboard/marker surface and mapping out all the complicated pathways, especially those in the Cell Signaling unit. This will help your understanding immensely.


Specific recommendations: Give some extra attention (maybe even a triple listen of the lectures) to Units 4 and 6 (or whatever number the protein trafficking and cell signaling units are). These are easily the most complicated units associated with the most difficult exam questions. Really take care to memorize each protein, enzyme, etc. and its function. This is crucial to making any sense of Wormington's frankly confusing exam questions, which have many moving parts. Also, as I mentioned before, draw out each pathway and cellular process in these units. I cannot understate the importance of this.

This class isn't too bad once you get a hang of how to take notes and study for the tests. You MUST record the lectures -- I typed for 50 minutes straight all class, and still had missed small, important details when I went back and listened to the lectures. Wormington goes quickly, and his slides are often ambiguous, so recording really helps you later. I didn't record lectures or type word-for-word on the material for the first test and I got an F (so did 2/3 of the class). For the rest of the tests, I typed notes and listened to lectures later and I got B's on all of the tests; I ended up with a B in the class, so don't go crazy if you do bad on the first exam. He expands brackets in the end, but he doesn't expand each letter grade by the same amount, so I would STRONGLY recommend not relying on the expansion of the brackets to try and get a certain letter grade. I would also recommend studying your notes from class (your typed notes on the powerpoint slides) after each class, because you'll retain a lot more of the details this way. To study, go over all your powerpoints and lectures and make sure to know every step in any pathway and listen to the recordings of the lectures. There are also online homework questions that are important to know the answers to; when studying these make sure you can explain why all the other choices are incorrect, because he usually switches up the question somehow on the exam. Overall, if you put in 110% you can at least get a decent grade.

This is a great class, but it is a lot of work. As a student who got an A, I would listen to each lecture before doing the pre-class homeworks (which are hard even though they are open note) and studied a week leading up to each exam. There is a lot of material but the exams are pretty fair. Don't get the book, everything you need is in the lecture notes. Record lecture! Also Wormington is very approachable and helpful in office hours. Would not recommend taking this class with the 2000 series of physics because the exams are back to back. Overall a super interesting class!

I learned more in this course than I have ever learned in a course at UVA. BUT, I have also never taken a more difficult course. I only recommend taking this if you really have to or if you are really interested in cells. The textbook is absolutely unnecessary. Every lecture is required, record every lecture and relisten to it as you study. The exams are ridiculously hard and impossible. But, in the end, the homework grades and bracket extensions make a good grade attainable. Go to office hours leading up to the exam and absorb Professor Wormington's knowledge. He knows what he is talking about and really wants his students to learn, even though it is very challenging.

I really liked Wormington and he's a great professor, but the class is very hard. The exams and homework are very much memorization based, which isn't something I'm good at so I didn't do that well in the class, but lectures were very interesting. I totally recommend going to his office hours because they help a lot and he's a great professor to get to know. Also I thinks he helps your grade a little if you really show a lot of effort and dedication to the class.

(coming from a student that got an A)
I'll start by saying this course is by no means easy. Of course if you're a pre-med they RECOMMEND you take this class, but its not required. However, I am a bio major (and pre-med) so i needed to take this class regardless. As well, some people say "take this class because it'll help you on the MCAT." Based on the practice MCAT exams I've seen, this class could come in handy with the connections you make and how you understand how the cell works, but dont count on it to help you a lot.

Now with regards to the class,
It is not easy and it will require time outside of class to succeed. The homeworks you have due every other day are difficult and require you to think. It would take me about 1-2 hours doing the homeworks (they are only 5 questions) since i would go back and listen to the lectures, and even then there were times i still did not get 5s. Take the homeworks seriously since they are worth 15% of the final grade. There will be extra credit opportunities so dont worry if you miss some questions.

In preparation for the tests, i would re-listen to the lectures and write down EVERYTHING he said that was important (word by word). Now that might sound too much, but based on the questions he asked on the test, I did not want to take my chances with not knowing something. With that said, DO NOT BUY THE TEXTBOOK. It is not necessary because all his slides and lectures have more than enough information for you to succeed on the tests. This is good news because you do not have to waste time reading anything, allowing you to focus on the homeworks and prepare for the test.

His questions are tricky. There will be times where you know the information, but on his questions he leaves out information that you should know and you end up getting it wrong because you did not see the whole picture of the question he was asking you. You'll understand what i mean when you see his questions.

Look at everything carefully on his powerpoints. This is the first class that i've seen where the powerpoint slides provide an abundant amount of information that will actually help you on homework questions and for the test.

RECORD THE LECTURES. You might have never done this before for any class, but you will need to for this one. He spits out so much information in a matter of 50 minutes that you will not get everything down. You will need to go back and re-listen to finish writing your notes.

3 tests, each worth 20%. Final (non-cumulative...thankfully) 25%. Homeworks - 15%
In reality, the class does not require a lot of time (compared to say, genetics). All you do is answer 15 questions throughout the week (5 on mon, wed, fri). Re-listening to lectures will take most of your time as you prepare for the test. Get ready to spend at least 10-20 hours to prepare for the test the week before.

Now with all this said, I loved this class. I honestly learned so much and its what really made me want to be a bio major. You learn so much and its not boring. You'll begin to learn how drugs work to treat specific types of diseases, why cancer is so difficult to cure, the importance of vesicle trafficking to prevent diseases like ALS, and so much more. The regular intro bio class first semester is so basic and boring it made me not want to take another bio course, but after taking this class, i liked biology even more. I feel that anyone that takes this course will like it in the end although its difficult and a lot of work, but you definitely will learn things that will help you with future classes.

The positive reviews for this class are definitely the minority, but even so, there are too many. This was probably my second least favorite class, behind physics lab. Professor Wormington's lectures are fairly interesting, but he is very unapproachable outside of class, and very condescending when asked a question. This class will not test your understanding of the material, but your ability to memorize huge quantities of unrelated information and acronyms. I do not exaggerate when I say that you are responsible for committing every single aside, figure, and research article on the slides, whether or not they are covered in class. The homework assignments are unnecessarily hard and arbitrary (as in you can argue different answers for some questions), just like the tests. I showed up to the tests feeling like I knew everything, but then came across questions that made really weak and long-stretched out connections between topics. I am not saying that getting an A in this class is impossible, but you have to make this class your number 1 priority, and shove your other classes aside, because of the raw amount of material you are expected to shove down and the stupid amount of time required to do so. Do not underestimate this class, I am not in any way exaggerating, you will need to dedicate more time to this class than to orgo - listening to all of the lectures and going over the homework and slides over and over again takes upwards of 15-20 hours per test. I am a chemistry major, not a biology major, so I was not required to take this class, but I did so anyway because I heard it was helpful for the MCAT (which I found out to be entirely false) - a decision which I strongly regret. Do not take this class unless you have to

Professor Wormington is amazing. As someone who though she was more interested in ecology before this class, cell was truly inspiring. I feel like I learned so much about the processes in our cells and everything that they need to do just to survive. Professor Wormington was super great at lecturing so I never really opened the textbook I got. I just studied the notes I took in class. For me, it was best to record the lectures on a recorder (your phone storage will fill up real quick if you use that) then listen to them and add to my class notes that day or the day after. Then I would do the homework assignments. The HW assignments are usually 5 questions and can be tricky even though they're open note, but they're good practice for the exams. There are 4 exams including the final (which isn't cumulative thankfully).Lots of material to memorize for the tests but overall they weren't unreasonable I don't think. I definitely recommend this class.

I feel like there's a disproportionate number of positive comments here. In my experience, you either love or hate this course, and I must say (after having taken orgo and physics), this was the hardest class I've taken at UVA. If you didn't enjoy Kittlesen's first semester of intro bio, buckle up bc this class is gonna be a struggle bus. This class had its moments, especially when we delved into the mechanisms of genetic diseases, cancer, caffeine, etc., but for most of the class, I felt like it was way more information than I was interested in knowing. Like previous commenters have mentioned, be prepared to focus during lecture and type down as much of what he says as possible, listen to the recordings again afterward and fill in/redo your notes, and DO NOT underestimate those 5 question homeworks due before every lecture -- they really add up. You don't need to read the textbook, bc he is the textbook. Know every word he says, verbatim. At least a few of the homework questions will appear on the exam every time, so make sure you know them. If that sounds like a lot of work, that's bc it is. Anyone who does well on his exams without consistently putting in a minimum of 12hrs/week is lying or obtained a copy of his old exams.