General & Organic Chemistry is required for all major tracks except for computational biology. Students in the Computational Biology track are exempt from chemistry requirements to balance their required introductory courses in computing and statistics, but many choose to take chemistry anyway. Likewise, students from other major tracks may choose to take introductory computing and statistics courses but are not required to do so.

Biology major tracks that require General & Organic Chemistry

• General Biology (GB)
• Cellular & Molecular Biology (C&M)
• Physiological & Organismal Biology (P&O)
• Ecological & Evolutionary Biology (E&E)

Biology major tracks that require Introductory Computing & Statistics

• Computational Biology (CB)

Biology majors pursuing most biology major tracks must complete the following chemistry courses:

General Chemistry lecture and lab (at least one semester)

• CHEM BC2001 General Chemistry I (lecture and lab)

Organic Chemistry lecture and lab (at least one semester)

• CHEM BC3230 Organic Chemistry I - Lecture AND
• CHEM BC3328 Intro Organic Chemistry - Lab

Students who wish to take equivalent courses at Columbia to fulfill the chemistry requirement should discuss this option early on with their advisor.

Students pursuing a Computational Biology track must take one introductory course in coding and one introductory course in statistics. These courses may be prerequisite for other computational biology courses.

Courses that fulfill these requirements include the following:

Introductory Computing Courses (choose one)

• COMS W1004 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Java
• COMS BC1016 Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science
• ENGI E1006 Introduction to Computing for Engineers and Applied Scientists (taught in Python)

Introductory Statistics Courses (choose one)

• STAT UN1010 Statistical Thinking for Data Science with Python Labs
• STAT UN1101 Introduction to Statistics
• STAT UN2102 Applied Statistical Computing
• NSBV BC2002 Statistics and Experimental Design
• EEEB UN3005 Introduction to Statistics for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology